The house the Bishop resided in consisted, as we have said, of a ground floor and one above it, three rooms on the ground, three bed-rooms on the first floor, and above them a store-room. Behind the house was a quarter of an acre of garden. The two females occupied the first floor, and the Bishop lodged below. The first room, which opened on the street, served him as dining-room, the second as bed-room, the third as oratory. You could not get out of the oratory without passing through the bed-room, or out of the bed-room without passing through the sitting-room. At the end of the oratory was a closed alcove with a bed, for any one who stayed the night, and the Bishop offered this bed to country curés whom business or the calls of their parish brought to D——.
The hospital surgery, a small building added to the house and built on a part of the garden, had been transformed into kitchen and cellar. There was also in the garden a stable, which had been the old hospital kitchen, and in which the Bishop kept two cows. Whatever the quantity of milk they yielded, he invariably sent one half every morning to the hospital patients. "I am paying my tithes," he was wont to say.
His room was rather spacious, and very difficult to heat in the cold weather. As wood is excessively dear at D——, he hit on the idea of partitioning off with planks a portion of the cow-house. Here he spent his evenings during the great frosts, and called it his "winter drawing-room." In this room, as in the dining-room, there was no other furniture but a square deal table and four straw chairs. The dining-room was also adorned with an old buffet stained to imitate rosewood. The Bishop had made the altar which decorated his oratory out of a similar buffet, suitably covered with white cloths and imitation lace. His rich penitents and the religious ladies of D—— had often subscribed to pay for a handsome new altar for Monseigneur's oratory; each time he took the money and gave it to the poor. "The finest of all altars," he would say, "is the soul of an unhappy man who is consoled and thanks God."
There were in his oratory two straw priedieus, and an arm-chair, also of straw, in his bed-room. When he by chance received seven or eight persons at the same time, the Prefect, the General, the staff of the regiment quartered in the town, or some pupils of the Lower Seminary, it was necessary to fetch the chairs from the winter drawing-room, the priedieus from the oratory, and the easy chair from the bed-room: in this way as many as eleven seats could be collected for the visitors. At each new visit a room was unfurnished. It happened at times that there would be twelve; in such a case the Bishop concealed the embarrassing nature of the situation by standing before the chimney if it were winter, or walking up and down the room were it summer.
There was also another chair in the alcove, but it was half robbed of the straw, and had only three legs to stand on, so that it could only be used when resting against a wall. Mlle. Baptistine also had in her bed-room a very large settee of wood, which had once been gilt and covered with flowered chintz, but it had been necessary to raise this settee to the first floor through the window, owing to the narrowness of the stairs: and hence it could not be reckoned on in any emergency. It had been Mlle. Baptistine's ambition to buy drawing-room furniture of mahogany and covered with yellow Utrecht velvet, but this would have cost at least 500 francs, and seeing that she had only succeeded in saving for this object 42 francs 5 sous in five years, she gave up the idea. Besides, who is there that ever attains his ideal?
Nothing more simple can be imagined than the Bishop's bed-room. A long window opening on the garden; opposite the bed, an iron hospital bed with a canopy of green serge; in the shadow of the bed, behind a curtain, toilet articles, still revealing the old elegant habits of the man of fashion; two doors, one near the chimney leading to the oratory, the other near the library leading to the dining-room. The library was a large glass case full of books; the chimney of wood, painted to imitate marble, was habitually fireless; in the chimney were a pair of iron andirons ornamented with two vases, displaying garlands and grooves which had once been silvered, which was a species of episcopal luxury; over the chimney a crucifix of unsilvered copper fastened to threadbare black velvet, in a frame which had lost its gilding; near the window was a large table with an inkstand, loaded with irregularly arranged papers and heavy tomes; before the table the straw arm-chair; in front of the bed a priedieu borrowed from the oratory.
Two portraits, in oval frames, hung on the wall on either side of the bed. Small gilded inscriptions on the neutral tinted ground of the canvas by the side of the figures indicated that the portraits represented, one the Abbé de Chaliot, Bishop of St. Claude; the other the Abbé Tourteau, Vicar-general of Agde, and Abbé of Grand Champs, belonging to the Cistertian order in the diocese of Chartres. The Bishop, on succeeding to the hospital infirmary, found the pictures there and left them. They were priests, probably donors,—two motives for him to respect them. All he knew of the two personages was that they had been nominated by the King, the one to his bishopric, the other to his benefice, on the same day, April 27, 1785. Madame Magloire having unhooked the portraits to remove the dust, the Bishop found this circumstance recorded in faded ink on a small square of paper which time had turned yellow, and fastened by four wafers behind the portrait of the Abbé of Grand Champs.
He had at his window an antique curtain of heavy woollen stuff, which had grown so old that Madame Magloire, in order to avoid the expense of a new one, was obliged to make a large seam in the very middle of it. The seam formed a cross, and the Bishop often drew attention to it. "How pleasant that is," he would say. All the rooms in the house, ground floor and first floor, were white-washed, which is a barrack and hospital fashion. Still, some years later, Madame Magloire discovered, as we shall see further on, paintings under the white-washed paper, in Mlle. Baptistine's bed-room. The rooms were paved with red bricks which were washed every week, and there were straw mats in front of all the beds. This house, moreover, managed by two females, was exquisitely clean from top to bottom. This was the only luxury the Bishop allowed himself, for, as he said, "It takes nothing from the poor." We must allow, however, that of the old property there still remained six silver spoons and forks and a soup-ladle, which Madame Magloire daily saw with delight shining splendidly on the coarse white table-cloth. And as we are here depicting the Bishop of D—— as he was, we must add that he had said, more than once, "I do not think I could give up eating with silver." To this plate must be added two heavy candlesticks of massive silver, which the Bishop inherited from a great-aunt. These branched candlesticks each held two wax candles, and usually figured on the Bishop's chimney. When he had any one to dinner, Madame Magloire lit the candles and placed the two candlesticks on the table. There was in the Bishop's bed-room, at the head of his bed, a small cupboard in the wall, in which Madame Magloire each night placed the plate and the large ladle. I am bound to add that the key was never taken out.
The garden, spoiled to some extent by the ugly buildings to which we have referred, was composed of four walks, radiating round a cesspool; another walk ran all round the garden close to the surrounding white wall. Between these walks were four box-bordered squares. In three of them Madame Magloire grew vegetables; in the fourth the Bishop had placed flowers; here and there were a few fruit-trees. Once Madame Magloire had said, with a sort of gentle malice, "Monseigneur, although you turn everything to use, here is an unemployed plot. It would be better to have lettuces there than bouquets." "Madame Magloire," the Bishop answered, "you are mistaken; the beautiful is as useful as the useful." He added, after a moment's silence, "More so, perhaps."
This square, composed of three or four borders, occupied the Bishop almost as much as his books did. He liked to spend an hour or two there, cutting, raking, and digging holes in which he placed seeds. He was not so hostile to insects as a gardener would have liked. However, he made no pretensions to botany; he was ignorant of groups and solidism; he did not make the slightest attempt to decide between Tournefort and the natural method; he was not a partisan either of Jussieu or Linnæus. He did not study plants, but he loved flowers. He greatly respected the professors, but he respected the ignorant even more; and without ever failing in this respect, he watered his borders every summer evening with a green-painted tin pot.
The house had not a single door that locked. The door of the dining-room, which, as we said, opened right on the cathedral square, had formerly been adorned with bolts and locks like a prison gate. The Bishop had all this iron removed, and the door was only hasped either night or day: the first passer-by, no matter the hour, had only to push it. At the outset the two females had been greatly alarmed by this never-closed door; but the Bishop said to them, "Have bolts placed on the doors of your rooms if you like." In the end they shared his confidence, or at least affected to do so: Madame Magloire alone was from time to time alarmed. As regards the Bishop, his idea is explained, or at least indicated, by these three lines, which he wrote on the margin of a Bible: "This is the distinction: the physician's doors must never be closed, the priest's door must always be open." On another book, entitled "Philosophy of Medical Science," he wrote this other note: "Am I not a physician like them? I also have my patients: in the first place, I have theirs, whom they call the sick, and then I have my own, whom I call the unhappy." Elsewhere he also wrote: "Do not ask the name of the man who seeks a bed from you, for it is before all the man whom his name embarrasses that needs an asylum."
It came about that a worthy curé—I forget whether it were he of Couloubroux or he of Pompierry—thought proper to ask him one day, probably at the instigation of Madame Magloire, whether Monseigneur was quite certain that he was not acting to some extent imprudently by leaving his door open day and night for any who liked to enter, and if he did not fear lest some misfortune might happen in a house so poorly guarded. The Bishop tapped his shoulder with gentle gravity, and said to him, "Nisi Dominus custodierit domum, in vanum vigilant qui custodiunt eam."
Then he spoke of something else. He was fond of saying too, "There is the Priest's bravery as well as that of the Colonel of Dragoons. The only thing is that ours must be quiet."
Toward the middle of the night Jean Valjean awoke. He belonged to a poor peasant family of La Brie. In his childhood he had not been taught to read, and when he was of man's age he was a wood-lopper at Faverolles. His mother's name was Jeanne Mathieu, his father's Jean Valjean or Vlajean, probably a sobriquet and a contraction of Voilà Jean. Jean Valjean possessed a pensive but not melancholy character, which is peculiar to affectionate natures; but altogether he was a dull, insignificant fellow, at least apparently. He had lost father and mother when still very young: the latter died of a badly-managed milk fever; the former, a pruner like himself, was killed by a fall from a tree. All that was left Jean Valjean was a sister older than himself, a widow with seven children, boys and girls. This sister brought Jean Valjean up, and so long as her husband was alive she supported her brother. When the husband died, the oldest of the seven children was eight years of age, the youngest, one, while Jean Valjean had just reached his twenty-fifth year; he took the place of the father, and in his turn supported the sister who had reared him. This was done simply as a duty, and even rather roughly by Jean Valjean; and his youth was thus expended in hard and ill-paid toil. He was never known to have had a sweetheart, for he had no time for love-making.
At night he came home tired, and ate his soup without saying a word. His sister, mother Jeanne, while he was eating, often took out of his porringer the best part of his meal, the piece of meat, the slice of bacon, or the heart of the cabbage, to give it to one of her children; he, still eating, bent over the table with his head almost in the soup, and his long hair falling round his porringer and hiding his eyes, pretended not to see it, and let her do as she pleased. There was at Faverolles, not far from the Valjeans' cottage, on the other side of the lane, a farmer's wife called Marie Claude. The young Valjeans, who were habitually starving, would go at times and borrow in their mother's name a pint of milk from Marie Claude, which they drank behind a hedge or in some corner, tearing the vessel from each other so eagerly that the little girls spilt the milk over their aprons. Their mother, had she been aware of this fraud, would have severely corrected the delinquents, but Jean Valjean, coarse and rough though he was, paid Marie Claude for the milk behind his sister's back, and the children were not punished.
He earned in the pruning season eighteen sous a day, and besides hired himself out as reaper, laborer, neat-herd, and odd man. He did what he could; his sister worked too, but what could she do with seven children? It was a sad group, which wretchedness gradually enveloped and choked. One winter was hard, and Jean had no work to do, and the family had no bread. No bread, literally none, and seven children!
One Sunday evening, Maubert Isabeau, the baker in the church square at Faverolles, was just going to bed when he heard a violent blow dealt the grating in front of his shop. He arrived in time to see an arm passed through a hole made by a fist through the grating and window pane; the arm seized a loaf, and carried it off. Isabeau ran out hastily; the thief ran away at his hardest, but the baker caught him and stopped him. The thief had thrown away the loaf, but his arm was still bleeding; it was Jean Valjean.
This took place in 1795. Jean Valjean was brought before the courts of the day, charged "with burglary committed with violence at night, in an inhabited house." He had a gun, was a splendid shot, and a bit of a poacher, and this injured him. There is a legitimate prejudice against poachers, for, like smugglers, they trench very closely on brigandage. Still we must remark that there is an abyss between these classes and the hideous assassins of our cities: the poacher lives in the forest; the smuggler in the mountains and on the sea. Cities produce ferocious men, because they produce corrupted men; the forest, the mountain, and the sea produce savage men, but while they develop their ferocious side, they do not always destroy their human part. Jean Valjean was found guilty, and the terms of the code were precise. There are in our civilization formidable hours; they are those moments in which penal justice pronounces a shipwreck. What a mournful minute is that in which society withdraws and consummates the irreparable abandonment of a thinking being! Jean Valjean was sentenced to five years at the galleys.
On April 22d, 1796, men were crying in the streets of Paris the victory of Montenotte, gained by the General-in-chief of the army of Italy, whom the message of the Directory to the Five Hundred, of the 2 Floréal, year IV., calls Buona-Parte; and on the same day a heavy gang was put in chains at Bicetre, and Jean Valjean formed part of the chain. An ex-jailer of the prison, who is now nearly ninety years of age, perfectly remembers the wretched man, who was chained at the end of the fourth cordon, in the north angle of the court-yard. He was seated on the ground like the rest, and seemed not at all to understand his position, except that it was horrible. It is probable that he also saw something excessive through the vague ideas of an utterly ignorant man. While the bolt of his iron collar was being riveted with heavy hammer-blows behind his head, he wept, tears choked him, and prevented him from speaking, and he could only manage to say from time to time: "I was a wood-cutter at Faverolles." Then, while still continuing to sob, he raised his right hand, and lowered it gradually seven times, as if touching seven uneven heads in turn, and from this gesture it could be guessed that whatever the crime he had committed, he had done it to feed and clothe seven children.
He started for Toulon, and arrived there after a journey of twenty-seven days in a cart, with the chain on his neck. At Toulon he was dressed in the red jacket. All that had hitherto been his life, even to his name, was effaced. He was no longer Jean Valjean, but No. 24,601. What became of his sister? What became of the seven children? Who troubles himself about that? What becomes of the spray of leaves when the stem of the young tree has been cut at the foot? It is always the same story. These poor living beings, these creatures of God, henceforth without support, guide, or shelter, went off hap-hazard, and gradually buried themselves in that cold fog in which solitary destinies are swallowed up, that mournful gloom in which so many unfortunates disappear during the sullen progress of the human race. They left their country; what had once been their steeple forgot them; what had once been their hedge-row forgot them; and after a few years' stay in the bagne, Jean Valjean himself forgot them. In that heart where there had once been a wound there was now a scar: that was all. He only heard about his sister once during the whole time he spent at Toulon; it was, I believe, toward the end of the fourth year of his captivity, though I have forgotten in what way the information reached him. She was in Paris, living in the Rue du Geindre, a poor street, near St. Sulpice, and had only one child with her, the youngest, a boy. Where were the other six? Perhaps she did not know herself. Every morning she went to a printing-office, No. 3, Rue du Sabot, where she was a folder and stitcher; she had to be there at six in the morning, long before daylight in winter. In the same house as the printing-office there was a day-school, to which she took the little boy, who was seven years of age, but as she went to work at six and the school did not open till seven o'clock, the boy was compelled to wait in the yard for an hour, in winter,—an hour of night in the open air. The boy was not allowed to enter the printing-office, because it was said that he would be in the way. The workmen as they passed in the morning saw the poor little fellow seated on the pavement, and often sleeping in the darkness, with his head on his satchel. When it rained, an old woman, the portress, took pity on him; she invited him into her den, where there were only a bed, a spinning-wheel, and two chairs, when the little fellow fell asleep in a corner, clinging to the cat, to keep him warm. This is what Jean Valjean was told; it was a momentary flash, as it were a window suddenly opened in the destiny of the beings he had loved, and then all was closed again; he never heard about them more. Nothing reached him from them; he never saw them again, never met them, and we shall not come across them in the course of this melancholy narrative.
Toward the end of this fourth year, Jean Valjean's turn to escape arrived, and his comrades aided him as they always do in this sorrowful place. He escaped and wandered about the fields at liberty for two days: if it is liberty to be hunted down; to turn ones head at every moment; to start at the slightest sound; to be afraid of everything,—of a chimney that smokes, a man who passes, a barking dog, a galloping horse, the striking of the hour, of day because people see, of night because they do not see, of the highway, the path, the thicket, and even sleep. On the evening of the second day he was recaptured; he had not eaten or slept for six-and-thirty hours. The maritime tribunal added three years to his sentence for his crime, which made it eight years. In the sixth year, it was again his turn to escape; he tried, but could not succeed. He was missing at roll-call, the gun was fired, and at night the watchman found him hidden under the keel of a ship that was building, and he resisted the garde chiourme, who seized him. Escape and rebellion: this fact, foreseen by the special code, was punished by an addition of five years, of which two would be spent in double chains. Thirteen years. In his tenth year his turn came again, and he took advantage of it, but succeeded no better: three years for this new attempt, or sixteen years in all. Finally, I think it was during his thirteenth year that he made a last attempt, and only succeeded so far as to be recaptured in four hours: three years for these four hours, and a total of nineteen years. In October, 1815, he was liberated; he had gone in in 1796 for breaking a window and stealing a loaf.
Let us make room for a short parenthesis. This is the second time that, during his essays on the penal question and condemnation by the law, the author of this book has come across a loaf as the starting point of the disaster of a destiny. Claude Gueux stole a loaf, and so did Jean Valjean, and English statistics prove that in London four robberies out of five have hunger as their immediate cause. Jean Valjean entered the bagne sobbing and shuddering: he left it stoically. He entered it in despair: he came out of it gloomy. What had taken place in this soul?
Love talk and table talk are equally indescribable, for the first is a cloud, the second smoke. Fantine and Dahlia were humming a tune, Tholomyès was drinking, Zéphine laughing, Fantine smiling, Listolier was blowing a penny trumpet bought at St. Cloud, Favourite was looking tenderly at Blachevelle and saying,—
"Blachevelle, I adore you."
This led to Blachevelle asking,—
"What would you do, Favourite, if I ceased to love you?"
"I?" Favourite exclaimed, "oh, do not say that, even in fun! If you ceased to love me I would run after you, claw you, throw water over you, and have you arrested."
Blachevelle smiled with the voluptuous fatuity of a man whose self-esteem is tickled. Dahlia, while still eating, whispered to Favourite through the noise,—
"You seem to be very fond of your Blachevelle?"
"I detest him," Favourite answered in the same key, as she seized her fork again. "He is miserly, and I prefer the little fellow who lives opposite to me. He is a very good-looking young man; do you know him? It is easy to see that he wants to be an actor, and I am fond of actors. So soon as he comes in, his mother says,—'Oh, good heavens! my tranquillity is destroyed: he is going to begin to shout; my dear boy, you give me a headache;' because he goes about the house, into the garrets as high as he can get, and sings and declaims, so that he can be heard from the streets! He already earns 20 sous a day in a lawyer's office. He is the son of an ex-chorister at St. Jacques du Haut Pas. Ah! he adores me to such a pitch that one day when he saw me making batter for pancakes, he said to me, 'Mamselle, make fritters of your gloves, and I will eat them.' Only artists are able to say things like that. Ah! he is very good-looking, and I feel as if I am about to fall madly in love with the little fellow. No matter, I tell Blachevelle that I adore him: what a falsehood, eh, what a falsehood!"
After a pause, Favourite continued,—
"Dahlia, look you, I am sad. It has done nothing but rain all the summer: the wind annoys me, Blachevelle is excessively mean, there are hardly any green peas in the market, one does not know what to eat; I have the spleen, as the English say, for butter is so dear; and then it is horrifying that we are dining in a room with a bed in it, and that disgusts me with life."
When M. Madeleine was passing one morning through an unpaved lane in the town, he heard a noise and saw a group at some distance, to which he walked up. An old man, known as Father Fauchelevent, had fallen under his cart, and his horse was lying on the ground. This Fauchelevent was one of the few enemies M. Madeleine still had at this time. When Madeleine came to these parts, Fauchelevent, a tolerably well-educated peasant, was doing badly in business; and he saw the simple workman grow rich, while he, a master, was being ruined. This filled him with jealousy, and he had done all in his power, on every possible occasion, to injure Madeleine. Then bankruptcy came, and in his old days, having only a horse and cart left, and no family, he turned carter to earn a living.
The horse had both legs broken and could not get up, while the old man was entangled between the wheels. The fall had been so unfortunate, that the whole weight of the cart was pressing on his chest, and it was heavily loaded. Fauchelevent uttered lamentable groans, and attempts had been made, though in vain, to draw him out; any irregular effort, any clumsy help or shock, might kill him. It was impossible to extricate him except by raising the cart from below, and Javert, who came up at the moment of the accident, had sent to fetch a jack. When M. Madeleine approached, the mob made way respectfully.
"Help!" old Fauchelevent cried; "is there no good soul who will save an old man?"
M. Madeleine turned to the spectators.
"Have you a jack?"
"They have gone to fetch one," a peasant answered.
"How soon will it be here?"
"Well, the nearest is at Flachot the blacksmith's, but it cannot be brought here under a good quarter of an hour."
"A quarter of an hour!" Madeleine exclaimed.
It had rained on the previous night, the ground was soft, the cart sunk deeper into it every moment, and more and more pressed the old man's chest. It was evident that his ribs would be broken within five minutes.
"It is impossible to wait a quarter of an hour," said M. Madeleine to the peasants who were looking on.
"We must."
"But do you not see that the cart is sinking into the ground?"
"Hang it! so it is."
"Listen to me," Madeleine continued; "there is still room enough for a man to slip under the cart and raise it with his back. It will only take half a minute, and the poor man can be drawn out. Is there any one here who has strong loins? There are five louis to be earned."
No one stirred.
"Ten louis," Madeleine said.
His hearers looked down, and one of them muttered, "A man would have to be deucedly strong, and, besides, he would run a risk of being smashed."
"Come," Madeleine began again, "twenty louis." The same silence.
"It is not the good-will they are deficient in," a voice cried.
M. Madeleine turned and recognized Javert: he had noticed him when he came up. Javert continued,—
"It is the strength. A man would have to be tremendously strong to lift a cart like that with his back."
Then, looking fixedly at M. Madeleine, he continued, laying a marked stress on every word he uttered,—
"Monsieur Madeleine, I never knew but one man capable of doing what you ask."
Madeleine started, but Javert continued carelessly, though without taking his eyes off Madeleine,—
"He was a galley-slave."
"Indeed!" said Madeleine.
"At the Toulon Bagne."
Madeleine turned pale; all this while the cart was slowly settling down, and Father Fauchelevent was screaming,—
"I am choking: it is breaking my ribs: a jack! something—oh!"
Madeleine looked around him.
"Is there no one here willing to earn twenty louis and save this poor old man's life?"
No one stirred, and Javert repeated,—
"I never knew but one man capable of acting as a jack, and it was that convict."
"Oh, it is crushing me!" the old man yelled.
Madeleine raised his head, met Javert's falcon eye still fixed on him, gazed at the peasants, and sighed sorrowfully. Then, without saying a word, he fell on his knees, and, ere the crowd had time to utter a cry, was under the cart. There was a frightful moment of expectation and silence. Madeleine almost lying flat under the tremendous weight, twice tried in vain to bring his elbows up to his knees. The peasants shouted: "Father Madeleine, come out!" And old Fauchelevent himself said: "Monsieur Madeleine, go away! I must die, so leave me; you will be killed too."
Madeleine made no answer; the spectators gasped; the wheels had sunk deeper, and it was now almost impossible for him to get out from under the cart. All at once the enormous mass shook, the cart slowly rose, and the wheels half emerged from the rut. A stifled voice could be heard crying, "Make haste, help!" It was Madeleine, who had made a last effort. They rushed forward, for the devotion of one man had restored strength and courage to all. The cart was lifted by twenty arms, and old Fauchelevent was saved. Madeleine rose; he was livid, although dripping with perspiration: his clothes were torn and covered with mud. The old man kissed his knees, and called him his savior, while Madeleine had on his face a strange expression of happy and celestial suffering, and turned his placid eye on Javert, who was still looking at him.
At this very moment Fantine was joyful. She had passed a very bad night, she had coughed fearfully, and her fever had become worse. In the morning, when the physician paid his visit, she was raving; he felt alarmed, and begged to be sent for so soon as M. Madeleine arrived. All the morning she was gloomy, said little, and made folds in sheets, while murmuring in a low voice, and calculating what seemed to be distances. Her eyes were hollow and fixed, they seemed almost extinct, and then, at moments, they were relit, and flashed like stars. It seems as if, on the approach of a certain dark hour, the brightness of heaven fills those whom the brightness of earth is quitting. Each time that Sister Simplice asked her how she was, she invariably answered, "Well, but I should like to see M. Madeleine."
A few months previously, at the time when Fantine lost her last modesty, her last shame, and her last joy, she was the shadow of herself: now she was the ghost. Physical suffering had completed the work of moral suffering. This creature of five-and-twenty years of age had a wrinkled forehead, sunken cheeks, a pinched nose, a leaden complexion, a bony neck, projecting shoulder-blades, thin limbs, an earthy skin, and white hairs were mingled with the auburn. Alas! how illness improvises old age! At mid-day, the physician returned, wrote a prescription, inquired whether M. Madeleine had been to the infirmary, and shook his head. M. Madeleine usually came at three o'clock, and as punctuality was kindness, he was punctual. At about half-past two Fantine began to grow agitated, and in the next twenty minutes asked the nun more than ten times, "What o'clock is it?"
Three o'clock struck: at the third stroke Fantine, who usually could scarce move in her bed, sat up; she clasped her thin yellow hands in a sort of convulsive grasp, and the nun heard one of those deep sighs, which seem to remove a crushing weight, burst from her chest. Then Fantine turned and looked at the door: but no one entered, and the door was not opened. She remained thus for a quarter of an hour, with her eyes fixed on the door, motionless, and holding her breath. The nun did not dare speak to her, and as the clock struck the quarter, Fantine fell back on her pillow. She said nothing, and began again making folds in the sheet. The half-hour passed, then the hour, and no one came. Each time the clock struck Fantine sat up, looked at the door, and then fell back again. Her thoughts could be clearly read, but she did not say a word, complain, or make any accusation: she merely coughed in a sad way. It seemed as if something dark was settling down on her, for she was livid and her lips were blue. She smiled every now and then.
When five o'clock struck, the nun heard her say very softly and sweetly, "As I am going away to-morrow, it was wrong of him not to come to-day." Sister Simplice herself was surprised at M. Madeleine's delay. In the mean while Fantine looked up at the top of her bed, and seemed to be trying to remember something: all at once she began singing in a voice faint as a sigh. It was an old cradle-song with which she had in former times lulled her little Cosette to sleep, and which had not once recurred to her during the five years she had been parted from her child. She sang with so sad a voice and to so soft an air, that it was enough to make any one weep, even a nun. The sister, who was accustomed to austere things, felt a tear in her eye. The clock struck, and Fantine did not seem to hear it: she appeared not to pay any attention to things around her. Sister Simplice sent a servant-girl to inquire of the portress of the factory whether M. Madeleine had returned and would be at the infirmary soon: the girl came back in a few minutes. Fantine was still motionless and apparently engaged with her own thoughts. The servant told Sister Simplice in a very low voice that the Mayor had set off before six o'clock that morning in a small tilbury; that he had gone alone, without a driver; that no one knew what direction he had taken, for while some said they had seen him going along the Arras road, others declared they had met him on the Paris road. He was, as usual, very gentle, and he had merely told his servant she need not expect him that night.
While the two women were whispering with their backs turned to Fantine, the sister questioning, and the servant conjecturing, Fantine, with the feverish vivacity of certain organic maladies which blend the free movements of health with the frightful weakness of death, had knelt in bed, with her two clenched hands supported by the pillow, and listened with her head thrust between the curtains. All at once she cried,—
"You are talking about M. Madeleine: why do you whisper? What is he doing, and why does he not come?"
Her voice was so loud and hoarse that the two women fancied it a man's voice, and they turned round in alarm.
"Answer!" Fantine cried.
The servant stammered,—
"The portress told me that he could not come to-day."
"My child," the sister said, "be calm and lie down again."
Fantine, without changing her attitude, went on in a loud voice and with an accent at once imperious and heart-rending,—
"He cannot come: why not? You know the reason. You were whispering it to one another, and I insist on knowing."
The servant hastily whispered in the nun's ear, "Tell her that he is engaged at the Municipal Council."
Sister Simplice blushed slightly, for it was a falsehood that the servant proposed to her. On the other hand it seemed to her that telling the patient the truth would doubtless deal her a terrible blow, and this was serious in Fantine's present condition. The blush lasted but a little while: the sister fixed her calm sad eye on Fantine, and said,—
"The Mayor is gone on a journey."
Fantine rose and sat up on her heels, her eyes sparkled, and an ineffable joy shone on her sad face.
"He has gone to fetch Cosette," she exclaimed.
Then she raised her hands to heaven, and her lips moved: she was praying. When she had finished she said, "My sister, I am willing to lie down again and do everything you wish: I was naughty just now. I ask your pardon for having spoken so loud, for I know that it was wrong, good sister; but, look you, I am so happy. God is good, and M. Madeleine is good: only think, he has gone to Montfermeil to fetch my little Cosette."
She lay down again, helped the nun to smooth her pillow, and kissed a little silver cross she wore on her neck, and which Sister Simplice had given her.
"My child," the sister said, "try to go to sleep now, and do not speak any more."
"He started this morning for Paris, and indeed had no occasion to go there; for Montfermeil is a little to the left before you get there. You remember how he said to me yesterday when I asked him about Cosette, "Soon, soon"? He wishes to offer me a surprise, for, do you know, he made me sign a letter to get her back from the Thénardiers. They cannot refuse to give up Cosette, can they? for they are paid; the authorities would not allow a child to be kept, for now there is nothing owing. Sister, do not make me signs that I must not speak, for I am extremely happy: I am going on very well, I feel no pain at all; I am going to see Cosette again, and I even feel very hungry. It is nearly five years since I saw her: you cannot imagine how a mother clings to her child,—and then she must be so pretty. She has such pretty pink fingers, and she will have beautiful hands. She must be a great girl now, for she is going on to seven. I call her Cosette, but her real name is Euphrasie. This morning I was looking at the dust on the mantel-piece, and I had a notion that I should soon see Cosette again. Good Lord! how wrong it is for a mother to be so many years without seeing her child! She ought to reflect that life is not eternal. Oh, how kind it is of the Mayor to go! Is it true that it is so cold? I hope he took his cloak. He will be here again to-morrow, will he not? and we will make a holiday of it. To-morrow morning, sister, you will remind me to put on my little cap with the lace border. Montfermeil is a great distance, and I came from there to this town on foot, and it took me a long time; but the stage-coaches travel so quickly! He will be here to-morrow with Cosette. How far is it to Montfermeil?"
The sister, who had no notion of distances, answered, "Oh, I believe he can be here to-morrow."
"To-morrow! to-morrow!" said Fantine; "I shall see Cosette to-morrow, my good sister! I am not ill now; I feel wild, and would dance if you permitted me."
Any one who had seen her a quarter of an hour before would not have understood it; she was now quite flushed, she spoke with an eager natural voice, and her whole face was a smile. At times she laughed while speaking to herself in a low voice. A mother's joy is almost a childish joy.
"Well!" the nun said, "you are now happy. So obey me and do not speak any more."
Fantine laid her head on the pillow, and said in a low voice, "Yes, lie down, behave yourself, as you are going to have your child. Sister Simplice is right: all in this place are right."
And then, without stirring, without moving her head, she began looking around with widely opened eyes and a joyous air, and said nothing more. The sister closed the curtains, hoping she would fall off to sleep. The physician arrived between seven and eight o'clock. Hearing no sound, he fancied Fantine asleep. He entered softly and walked up to the bed on tip-toe. He opened the curtains, and by the light of the lamp saw Fantine's large calm eyes fixed on him. She said to him,—
"Oh, sir, my child will be allowed to sleep in a little cot by my bed-side?"
The physician fancied she was delirious. She added,—
"Only look; there is exactly room."
The physician took Sister Simplice on one side who explained the matter to him: that M. Madeleine was absent for a day or two, and being in doubt they had not thought it right to undeceive the patient, who fancied that he had gone to Montfermeil, and she might possibly be in the right. The physician approved, and drew near to Fantine's bed. She said to him,—
"In the morning, when the poor darling wakes, I will say good-day to her, and at night I, who do not sleep, will listen to her sleeping. Her gentle little breathing will do me good."
"Give me your hand," said the physician.
"Oh yes, you do not know that I am cured. Cosette arrives to-morrow."
The physician was surprised to find her better: the oppression was slighter, her pulse had regained strength, and a sort of altogether unlooked-for life reanimated the poor exhausted being.
"Doctor," she continued, "has the sister told you that M. Madeleine has gone to fetch my darling?"
The physician recommended silence, and that any painful emotion should be avoided: he prescribed a dose of quinine, and if the fever returned in the night, a sedative; and as he went away, he said to the sister: "She is better. If the Mayor were to arrive with the child to-morrow, I do not know what would happen: there are such astounding crises; great joy has been known to check diseases; and though hers is an organic malady, and in an advanced stage, it is all a mystery;—we might perchance save her."