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MADAME VICTURNIEN'S SUCCESS
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 Thenardiers
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 Thenardiers!
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.
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