Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [133]
While speaking thus, he did not stir a step, but cast upon Jean Valjean a look like a grappling hook, with which he was accustomed to draw the wretched to him by force.
It was the same look which Fantine had felt penetrate to the very marrow of her bones, two months before.
At the exclamation of Javert, Fantine had opened her eyes again. But the mayor was there, what could she fear?
Javert advanced to the middle of the chamber, exclaiming:
“Hey, there; are you coming?”
The unhappy woman looked around her. There was no one but the nun and the mayor. To whom could this contemptuous familiarity be addressed? To herself alone. She shuddered.
Then she saw a mysterious thing, so mysterious that its like had never appeared to her in the darkest delirium of fever.
She saw the spy Javert seize Monsieur the Mayor by the collar; she saw Monsieur the Mayor bow his head. The world seemed vanishing before her sight.
Javert, in fact, had taken Jean Valjean by the collar.
“Monsieur Mayor!” shouted Fantine.
Javert burst into a horrid laugh, displaying all his teeth.
“There is no Monsieur the Mayor here any longer!” said he.
Jean Valjean did not attempt to disturb the hand which grasped the collar of his coat. He said:
“Javert——”
Javert interrupted him: “Call me Monsieur the Inspector!”
“Monsieur,” continued Jean Valjean, “I would like to speak a word with you in private.”
“Aloud, speak aloud,” said Javert, “people speak aloud to me.”
Jean Valjean went on, lowering his voice.
“It is a request that I have to make of you——”
“I tell you to speak aloud.”
“But this should not be heard by any one but yourself.”
“What is that to me? I will not listen.”
Jean Valjean turned to him and said rapidly and in a very low tone:
“Give me three days! Three days to go for the child of this unhappy woman! I will pay whatever is necessary. You shall accompany me if you like.”
“Are you laughing at me!” cried Javert. “Hey! I did not think you so stupid! You ask for three days to get away, and tell me that you are going for this girl’s child! Ha, ha, that’s good! That is good!”
Fantine shivered.
“My child!” she exclaimed, “going for my child! Then she is not here! Sister, tell me, where is Cosette? I want my child! Monsieur Madeleine, Monsieur the Mayor!”
Javert stamped his foot.
“There goes the other now! Hold your tongue, hussy! Miserable country, where galley slaves are magistrates and women of the town are nursed like countesses! Ha, but all this will be changed; it was time!”
He gazed steadily at Fantine, and added, grasping anew the cravat, shirt, and coat collar of Jean Valjean:
“I tell you that there is no Monsieur Madeleine, and that there is no Monsieur the Mayor. There is a robber, there is a brigand, there is a convict called Jean Valjean, and I have got him! That is what there is!”
Fantine started upright, supporting herself by her rigid arms and hands; she looked at Jean Valjean, then at Javert, and then at the nun; she opened her mouth as if to speak; a rattle came from her throat, her teeth struck together, she stretched out her arms in anguish, convulsively opening her hands, and groping about her like one who is drowning; then sank suddenly back upon the pillow.
Her head struck the head of the bed and fell forward on her breast, the mouth gaping, the eyes open and glazed.
She was dead.
Jean Valjean put his hand on that of Javert which held him, and unclasped it as he would have opened the hand of a child; then he said:
“You have killed this woman.”
“Have done with this!” cried Javert, furious. “I am not here to listen to sermons; save all that; the guard is below; come right along, or the handcuffs!”
There stood in a corner of the room an old iron bedstead in a dilapidated condition, which the sisters used as a camp-bed when they watched. Jean Valjean went to the bed, wrenched out the rickety head bar—a thing easy for muscles like his—in the twinkling of an eye, and with