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.