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?”