Bab Bab 67 · IN WHAT MIRROR M. MADELEINE CONTEMPLATES HIS HAIR

The day had begun to dawn. Fantine had passed a sleepless and feverish

night, filled with happy visions; at daybreak she fell asleep. Sister

Simplice, who had been watching with her, availed herself of this

slumber to go and prepare a new potion of chinchona. The worthy sister

had been in the laboratory of the infirmary but a few moments, bending

over her drugs and phials, and scrutinizing things very closely, on

account of the dimness which the half-light of dawn spreads over all

objects. Suddenly she raised her head and uttered a faint shriek. M.

Madeleine stood before her; he had just entered silently.

“Is it you, Mr. Mayor?” she exclaimed.

He replied in a low voice:—

“How is that poor woman?”

“Not so bad just now; but we have been very uneasy.”

She explained to him what had passed: that Fantine had been very ill

the day before, and that she was better now, because she thought that

the mayor had gone to Montfermeil to get her child. The sister dared

not question the mayor; but she perceived plainly from his air that he

had not come from there.

“All that is good,” said he; “you were right not to undeceive her.”

“Yes,” responded the sister; “but now, Mr. Mayor, she will see you and

will not see her child. What shall we say to her?”

He reflected for a moment.

“God will inspire us,” said he.

“But we cannot tell a lie,” murmured the sister, half aloud.

It was broad daylight in the room. The light fell full on M.

Madeleine’s face. The sister chanced to raise her eyes to it.

“Good God, sir!” she exclaimed; “what has happened to you? Your hair is

perfectly white!”

“White!” said he.

Sister Simplice had no mirror. She rummaged in a drawer, and pulled out

the little glass which the doctor of the infirmary used to see whether

a patient was dead and whether he no longer breathed. M. Madeleine took

the mirror, looked at his hair, and said:—

“Well!”

He uttered the word indifferently, and as though his mind were on

something else.

The sister felt chilled by something strange of which she caught a

glimpse in all this.

He inquired:—

“Can I see her?”

“Is not Monsieur le Maire going to have her child brought back to her?”

said the sister, hardly venturing to put the question.

“Of course; but it will take two or three days at least.”

“If she were not to see Monsieur le Maire until that time,” went on the

sister, timidly, “she would not know that Monsieur le Maire had

returned, and it would be easy to inspire her with patience; and when

the child arrived, she would naturally think Monsieur le Maire had just

come with the child. We should not have to enact a lie.”

M. Madeleine seemed to reflect for a few moments; then he said with his

calm gravity:—

“No, sister, I must see her. I may, perhaps, be in haste.”

The nun did not appear to notice this word “perhaps,” which

communicated an obscure and singular sense to the words of the mayor’s

speech. She replied, lowering her eyes and her voice respectfully:—

“In that case, she is asleep; but Monsieur le Maire may enter.”

He made some remarks about a door which shut badly, and the noise of

which might awaken the sick woman; then he entered Fantine’s chamber,

approached the bed and drew aside the curtains. She was asleep. Her

breath issued from her breast with that tragic sound which is peculiar

to those maladies, and which breaks the hearts of mothers when they are

watching through the night beside their sleeping child who is condemned

to death. But this painful respiration hardly troubled a sort of

ineffable serenity which overspread her countenance, and which

transfigured her in her sleep. Her pallor had become whiteness; her

cheeks were crimson; her long golden lashes, the only beauty of her

youth and her virginity which remained to her, palpitated, though they

remained closed and drooping. Her whole person was trembling with an

indescribable unfolding of wings, all ready to open wide and bear her

away, which could be felt as they rustled, though they could not be

seen. To see her thus, one would never have dreamed that she was an

invalid whose life was almost despaired of. She resembled rather

something on the point of soaring away than something on the point of

dying.

The branch trembles when a hand approaches it to pluck a flower, and

seems to both withdraw and to offer itself at one and the same time.

The human body has something of this tremor when the instant arrives in

which the mysterious fingers of Death are about to pluck the soul.

M. Madeleine remained for some time motionless beside that bed, gazing

in turn upon the sick woman and the crucifix, as he had done two months

before, on the day when he had come for the first time to see her in

that asylum. They were both still there in the same attitude—she

sleeping, he praying; only now, after the lapse of two months, her hair

was gray and his was white.

The sister had not entered with him. He stood beside the bed, with his

finger on his lips, as though there were some one in the chamber whom

he must enjoin to silence.

She opened her eyes, saw him, and said quietly, with a smile:—

“And Cosette?”