Les Misérables
have just heard, Police Inspector Javert was seen to turn toward the
mayor, pale, cold, with blue lips, and a look of despair, his whole
body agitated by an imperceptible quiver and an unprecedented
occurrence, and say to him, with downcast eyes but a firm voice:—
“Mr. Mayor, that cannot be.”
“Why not?” said M. Madeleine.
“This miserable woman has insulted a citizen.”
“Inspector Javert,” replied the mayor, in a calm and conciliating tone,
“listen. You are an honest man, and I feel no hesitation in explaining
matters to you. Here is the true state of the case: I was passing
through the square just as you were leading this woman away; there were
still groups of people standing about, and I made inquiries and learned
everything; it was the townsman who was in the wrong and who should
have been arrested by properly conducted police.”
Javert retorted:—
“This wretch has just insulted Monsieur le Maire.”
“That concerns me,” said M. Madeleine. “My own insult belongs to me, I
think. I can do what I please about it.”
“I beg Monsieur le Maire’s pardon. The insult is not to him but to the
law.”
“Inspector Javert,” replied M. Madeleine, “the highest law is
conscience. I have heard this woman; I know what I am doing.”
“And I, Mr. Mayor, do not know what I see.”
“Then content yourself with obeying.”
“I am obeying my duty. My duty demands that this woman shall serve six
months in prison.”
M. Madeleine replied gently:—
“Heed this well; she will not serve a single day.”
At this decisive word, Javert ventured to fix a searching look on the
mayor and to say, but in a tone of voice that was still profoundly
respectful:—
“I am sorry to oppose Monsieur le Maire; it is for the first time in my
life, but he will permit me to remark that I am within the bounds of my
authority. I confine myself, since Monsieur le Maire desires it, to the
question of the gentleman. I was present. This woman flung herself on
Monsieur Bamatabois, who is an elector and the proprietor of that
handsome house with a balcony, which forms the corner of the esplanade,
three stories high and entirely of cut stone. Such things as there are
in the world! In any case, Monsieur le Maire, this is a question of
police regulations in the streets, and concerns me, and I shall detain
this woman Fantine.”
Then M. Madeleine folded his arms, and said in a severe voice which no
one in the town had heard hitherto:—
“The matter to which you refer is one connected with the municipal
police. According to the terms of articles nine, eleven, fifteen, and
sixty-six of the code of criminal examination, I am the judge. I order
that this woman shall be set at liberty.”
Javert ventured to make a final effort.
“But, Mr. Mayor—”
“I refer you to article eighty-one of the law of the 13th of December,
1799, in regard to arbitrary detention.”
“Monsieur le Maire, permit me—”
“Not another word.”
“But—”
“Leave the room,” said M. Madeleine.
Javert received the blow erect, full in the face, in his breast, like a
Russian soldier. He bowed to the very earth before the mayor and left
the room.
Fantine stood aside from the door and stared at him in amazement as he
passed.
Nevertheless, she also was the prey to a strange confusion. She had
just seen herself a subject of dispute between two opposing powers. She
had seen two men who held in their hands her liberty, her life, her
soul, her child, in combat before her very eyes; one of these men was
drawing her towards darkness, the other was leading her back towards
the light. In this conflict, viewed through the exaggerations of
terror, these two men had appeared to her like two giants; the one
spoke like her demon, the other like her good angel. The angel had
conquered the demon, and, strange to say, that which made her shudder
from head to foot was the fact that this angel, this liberator, was the
very man whom she abhorred, that mayor whom she had so long regarded as
the author of all her woes, that Madeleine! And at the very moment when
she had insulted him in so hideous a fashion, he had saved her! Had
she, then, been mistaken? Must she change her whole soul? She did not
know; she trembled. She listened in bewilderment, she looked on in
affright, and at every word uttered by M. Madeleine she felt the
frightful shades of hatred crumble and melt within her, and something
warm and ineffable, indescribable, which was both joy, confidence and
love, dawn in her heart.
When Javert had taken his departure, M. Madeleine turned to her and
said to her in a deliberate voice, like a serious man who does not wish
to weep and who finds some difficulty in speaking:—
“I have heard you. I knew nothing about what you have mentioned. I
believe that it is true, and I feel that it is true. I was even
ignorant of the fact that you had left my shop. Why did you not apply
to me? But here; I will pay your debts, I will send for your child, or
you shall go to her. You shall live here, in Paris, or where you
please. I undertake the care of your child and yourself. You shall not
work any longer if you do not like. I will give all the money you
require. You shall be honest and happy once more. And listen! I declare
to you that if all is as you say,—and I do not doubt it,—you have never
ceased to be virtuous and holy in the sight of God. Oh! poor woman.”
This was more than Fantine could bear. To have Cosette! To leave this
life of infamy. To live free, rich, happy, respectable with Cosette; to
see all these realities of paradise blossom of a sudden in the midst of
her misery. She stared stupidly at this man who was talking to her, and
could only give vent to two or three sobs, “Oh! Oh! Oh!”
Her limbs gave way beneath her, she knelt in front of M. Madeleine, and
before he could prevent her he felt her grasp his hand and press her
lips to it.
Then she fainted.
BOOK SIXTH—JAVERT
CHAPTER I—THE BEGINNING OF REPOSE
M. Madeleine had Fantine removed to that infirmary which he had
established in his own house. He confided her to the sisters, who put
her to bed. A burning fever had come on. She passed a part of the night
in delirium and raving. At length, however, she fell asleep.
On the morrow, towards midday, Fantine awoke. She heard some one
breathing close to her bed; she drew aside the curtain and saw M.
Madeleine standing there and looking at something over her head. His
gaze was full of pity, anguish, and supplication. She followed its
direction, and saw that it was fixed on a crucifix which was nailed to
the wall.
Thenceforth, M. Madeleine was transfigured in Fantine’s eyes. He seemed
to her to be clothed in light. He was absorbed in a sort of prayer. She
gazed at him for a long time without daring to interrupt him. At last
she said timidly:—
“What are you doing?”
M. Madeleine had been there for an hour. He had been waiting for
Fantine to awake. He took her hand, felt of her pulse, and replied:—
“How do you feel?”
“Well, I have slept,” she replied; “I think that I am better. It is
nothing.”
He answered, responding to the first question which she had put to him
as though he had just heard it:—
“I was praying to the martyr there on high.”
And he added in his own mind, “For the martyr here below.”
M. Madeleine had passed the night and the morning in making inquiries.
He knew all now. He knew Fantine’s history in all its heart-rending
details. He went on:—
“You have suffered much, poor mother. Oh! do not complain; you now have
the dowry of the elect. It is thus that men are transformed into
angels. It is not their fault they do not know how to go to work
otherwise. You see this hell from which you have just emerged is the
first form of heaven. It was necessary to begin there.”
He sighed deeply. But she smiled on him with that sublime smile in
which two teeth were lacking.
That same night, Javert wrote a letter. The next morning be posted it
himself at the office of M. sur M. It was addressed to Paris, and the
superscription ran: _To Monsieur Chabouillet, Secretary of Monsieur le
Préfet of Police_. As the affair in the station-house had been bruited
about, the post-mistress and some other persons who saw the letter
before it was sent off, and who recognized Javert’s handwriting on the
cover, thought that he was sending in his resignation.
M. Madeleine made haste to write to the Thénardiers. Fantine owed them
one hundred and twenty francs. He sent them three hundred francs,
telling them to pay themselves from that sum, and to fetch the child
instantly to M. sur M., where her sick mother required her presence.
This dazzled Thénardier. “The devil!” said the man to his wife; “don’t
let’s allow the child to go. This lark is going to turn into a milch
cow. I see through it. Some ninny has taken a fancy to the mother.”
He replied with a very well drawn-up bill for five hundred and some odd
francs. In this memorandum two indisputable items figured up over three
hundred francs,—one for the doctor, the other for the apothecary who
had attended and physicked Éponine and Azelma through two long
illnesses. Cosette, as we have already said, had not been ill. It was
only a question of a trifling substitution of names. At the foot of the
memorandum Thénardier wrote, _Received on account, three hundred
francs_.
M. Madeleine immediately sent three hundred francs more, and wrote,
“Make haste to bring Cosette.”
“Christi!” said Thénardier, “let’s not give up the child.”
In the meantime, Fantine did not recover. She still remained in the
infirmary.
The sisters had at first only received and nursed “that woman” with
repugnance. Those who have seen the bas-reliefs of Rheims will recall
the inflation of the lower lip of the wise virgins as they survey the
foolish virgins. The ancient scorn of the vestals for the ambubajæ is
one of the most profound instincts of feminine dignity; the sisters
felt it with the double force contributed by religion. But in a few
days Fantine disarmed them. She said all kinds of humble and gentle
things, and the mother in her provoked tenderness. One day the sisters
heard her say amid her fever: “I have been a sinner; but when I have my
child beside me, it will be a sign that God has pardoned me. While I
was leading a bad life, I should not have liked to have my Cosette with
me; I could not have borne her sad, astonished eyes. It was for her
sake that I did evil, and that is why God pardons me. I shall feel the
benediction of the good God when Cosette is here. I shall gaze at her;
it will do me good to see that innocent creature. She knows nothing at
all. She is an angel, you see, my sisters. At that age the wings have
not fallen off.”
M. Madeleine went to see her twice a day, and each time she asked him:—
“Shall I see my Cosette soon?”
He answered:—
“To-morrow, perhaps. She may arrive at any moment. I am expecting her.”
And the mother’s pale face grew radiant.
“Oh!” she said, “how happy I am going to be!”
We have just said that she did not recover her health. On the contrary,
her condition seemed to become more grave from week to week. That
handful of snow applied to her bare skin between her shoulder-blades
had brought about a sudden suppression of perspiration, as a
consequence of which the malady which had been smouldering within her
for many years was violently developed at last. At that time people
were beginning to follow the fine Laënnec’s fine suggestions in the
study and treatment of chest maladies. The doctor sounded Fantine’s
chest and shook his head.
M. Madeleine said to the doctor:—
“Well?”
“Has she not a child which she desires to see?” said the doctor.
“Yes.”
“Well! Make haste and get it here!”