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.