Chapter Chapter 49 · MADAME VICTURNIEN’S SUCCESS

So the monk’s widow was good for something.

But M. Madeleine had heard nothing of all this. Life is full of just

such combinations of events. M. Madeleine was in the habit of almost

never entering the women’s workroom.

At the head of this room he had placed an elderly spinster, whom the

priest had provided for him, and he had full confidence in this

superintendent,—a truly respectable person, firm, equitable, upright,

full of the charity which consists in giving, but not having in the

same degree that charity which consists in understanding and in

forgiving. M. Madeleine relied wholly on her. The best men are often

obliged to delegate their authority. It was with this full power, and

the conviction that she was doing right, that the superintendent had

instituted the suit, judged, condemned, and executed Fantine.

As regards the fifty francs, she had given them from a fund which M.

Madeleine had intrusted to her for charitable purposes, and for giving

assistance to the workwomen, and of which she rendered no account.

Fantine tried to obtain a situation as a servant in the neighborhood;

she went from house to house. No one would have her. She could not

leave town. The second-hand dealer, to whom she was in debt for her

furniture—and what furniture!—said to her, “If you leave, I will have

you arrested as a thief.” The householder, whom she owed for her rent,

said to her, “You are young and pretty; you can pay.” She divided the

fifty francs between the landlord and the furniture-dealer, returned to

the latter three-quarters of his goods, kept only necessaries, and

found herself without work, without a trade, with nothing but her bed,

and still about fifty francs in debt.

She began to make coarse shirts for soldiers of the garrison, and

earned twelve sous a day. Her daughter cost her ten. It was at this

point that she began to pay the Thénardiers irregularly.

However, the old woman who lighted her candle for her when she returned

at night, taught her the art of living in misery. Back of living on

little, there is the living on nothing. These are the two chambers; the

first is dark, the second is black.

Fantine learned how to live without fire entirely in the winter; how to

give up a bird which eats a half a farthing’s worth of millet every two

days; how to make a coverlet of one’s petticoat, and a petticoat of

one’s coverlet; how to save one’s candle, by taking one’s meals by the

light of the opposite window. No one knows all that certain feeble

creatures, who have grown old in privation and honesty, can get out of

a sou. It ends by being a talent. Fantine acquired this sublime talent,

and regained a little courage.

At this epoch she said to a neighbor, “Bah! I say to myself, by only

sleeping five hours, and working all the rest of the time at my sewing,

I shall always manage to nearly earn my bread. And, then, when one is

sad, one eats less. Well, sufferings, uneasiness, a little bread on one

hand, trouble on the other,—all this will support me.”

It would have been a great happiness to have her little girl with her

in this distress. She thought of having her come. But what then! Make

her share her own destitution! And then, she was in debt to the

Thénardiers! How could she pay them? And the journey! How pay for that?

The old woman who had given her lessons in what may be called the life

of indigence, was a sainted spinster named Marguerite, who was pious

with a true piety, poor and charitable towards the poor, and even

towards the rich, knowing how to write just sufficiently to sign

herself Marguerite, and believing in God, which is science.

There are many such virtuous people in this lower world; some day they

will be in the world above. This life has a morrow.

At first, Fantine had been so ashamed that she had not dared to go out.

When she was in the street, she divined that people turned round behind

her, and pointed at her; every one stared at her and no one greeted

her; the cold and bitter scorn of the passers-by penetrated her very

flesh and soul like a north wind.

It seems as though an unfortunate woman were utterly bare beneath the

sarcasm and the curiosity of all in small towns. In Paris, at least, no

one knows you, and this obscurity is a garment. Oh! how she would have

liked to betake herself to Paris! Impossible!

She was obliged to accustom herself to disrepute, as she had accustomed

herself to indigence. Gradually she decided on her course. At the

expiration of two or three months she shook off her shame, and began to

go about as though there were nothing the matter. “It is all the same

to me,” she said.

She went and came, bearing her head well up, with a bitter smile, and

was conscious that she was becoming brazen-faced.

Madame Victurnien sometimes saw her passing, from her window, noticed

the distress of “that creature” who, “thanks to her,” had been “put

back in her proper place,” and congratulated herself. The happiness of

the evil-minded is black.

Excess of toil wore out Fantine, and the little dry cough which

troubled her increased. She sometimes said to her neighbor, Marguerite,

“Just feel how hot my hands are!”

Nevertheless, when she combed her beautiful hair in the morning with an

old broken comb, and it flowed about her like floss silk, she

experienced a moment of happy coquetry.