第 四十八 章 · MADAME VICTURNIEN EXPENDS THIRTY FRANCS ON MORALITY

When Fantine saw that she was making her living, she felt joyful for a

moment. To live honestly by her own labor, what mercy from heaven! The

taste for work had really returned to her. She bought a looking-glass,

took pleasure in surveying in it her youth, her beautiful hair, her

fine teeth; she forgot many things; she thought only of Cosette and of

the possible future, and was almost happy. She hired a little room and

furnished on credit on the strength of her future work—a lingering

trace of her improvident ways. As she was not able to say that she was

married she took good care, as we have seen, not to mention her little

girl.

At first, as the reader has seen, she paid the Thénardiers promptly. As

she only knew how to sign her name, she was obliged to write through a

public letter-writer.

She wrote often, and this was noticed. It began to be said in an

undertone, in the women’s workroom, that Fantine “wrote letters” and

that “she had ways about her.”

There is no one for spying on people’s actions like those who are not

concerned in them. Why does that gentleman never come except at

nightfall? Why does Mr. So-and-So never hang his key on its nail on

Tuesday? Why does he always take the narrow streets? Why does Madame

always descend from her hackney-coach before reaching her house? Why

does she send out to purchase six sheets of note paper, when she has a

“whole stationer’s shop full of it?” etc. There exist beings who, for

the sake of obtaining the key to these enigmas, which are, moreover, of

no consequence whatever to them, spend more money, waste more time,

take more trouble, than would be required for ten good actions, and

that gratuitously, for their own pleasure, without receiving any other

payment for their curiosity than curiosity. They will follow up such

and such a man or woman for whole days; they will do sentry duty for

hours at a time on the corners of the streets, under alley-way doors at

night, in cold and rain; they will bribe errand-porters, they will make

the drivers of hackney-coaches and lackeys tipsy, buy a waiting-maid,

suborn a porter. Why? For no reason. A pure passion for seeing,

knowing, and penetrating into things. A pure itch for talking. And

often these secrets once known, these mysteries made public, these

enigmas illuminated by the light of day, bring on catastrophies, duels,

failures, the ruin of families, and broken lives, to the great joy of

those who have “found out everything,” without any interest in the

matter, and by pure instinct. A sad thing.

Certain persons are malicious solely through a necessity for talking.

Their conversation, the chat of the drawing-room, gossip of the

anteroom, is like those chimneys which consume wood rapidly; they need

a great amount of combustibles; and their combustibles are furnished by

their neighbors.

So Fantine was watched.

In addition, many a one was jealous of her golden hair and of her white

teeth.

It was remarked that in the workroom she often turned aside, in the

midst of the rest, to wipe away a tear. These were the moments when she

was thinking of her child; perhaps, also, of the man whom she had

loved.

Breaking the gloomy bonds of the past is a mournful task.

It was observed that she wrote twice a month at least, and that she

paid the carriage on the letter. They managed to obtain the address:

_Monsieur, Monsieur Thénardier, inn-keeper at Montfermeil_. The public

writer, a good old man who could not fill his stomach with red wine

without emptying his pocket of secrets, was made to talk in the

wine-shop. In short, it was discovered that Fantine had a child. “She

must be a pretty sort of a woman.” An old gossip was found, who made

the trip to Montfermeil, talked to the Thénardiers, and said on her

return: “For my five and thirty francs I have freed my mind. I have

seen the child.”

The gossip who did this thing was a gorgon named Madame Victurnien, the

guardian and door-keeper of every one’s virtue. Madame Victurnien was

fifty-six, and re-enforced the mask of ugliness with the mask of age. A

quavering voice, a whimsical mind. This old dame had once been

young—astonishing fact! In her youth, in ’93, she had married a monk

who had fled from his cloister in a red cap, and passed from the

Bernardines to the Jacobins. She was dry, rough, peevish, sharp,

captious, almost venomous; all this in memory of her monk, whose widow

she was, and who had ruled over her masterfully and bent her to his

will. She was a nettle in which the rustle of the cassock was visible.

At the Restoration she had turned bigot, and that with so much energy

that the priests had forgiven her her monk. She had a small property,

which she bequeathed with much ostentation to a religious community.

She was in high favor at the episcopal palace of Arras. So this Madame

Victurnien went to Montfermeil, and returned with the remark, “I have

seen the child.”

All this took time. Fantine had been at the factory for more than a

year, when, one morning, the superintendent of the workroom handed her

fifty francs from the mayor, told her that she was no longer employed

in the shop, and requested her, in the mayor’s name, to leave the

neighborhood.

This was the very month when the Thénardiers, after having demanded

twelve francs instead of six, had just exacted fifteen francs instead

of twelve.

Fantine was overwhelmed. She could not leave the neighborhood; she was

in debt for her rent and furniture. Fifty francs was not sufficient to

cancel this debt. She stammered a few supplicating words. The

superintendent ordered her to leave the shop on the instant. Besides,

Fantine was only a moderately good workwoman. Overcome with shame, even

more than with despair, she quitted the shop, and returned to her room.

So her fault was now known to every one.

She no longer felt strong enough to say a word. She was advised to see

the mayor; she did not dare. The mayor had given her fifty francs

because he was good, and had dismissed her because he was just. She

bowed before the decision.