Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [88]
“How horrible!” cried Fantine.
“Two Napoleons!” grumbled a toothless old hag who stood by. “How lucky she is!”
Fantine fled away and stopped her ears not to hear the shrill voice of the man who called after her: “Consider, my beauty! two Napoleons! how much good they will do you! If you have the courage for it, come this evening to the inn of the Tillac d‘Argent; you will find me there.”
Fantine returned home; she was raving, and told the story to her good neighbour Marguerite: “Do you understand that? isn’t he an abominable man? Why do they let such people go about the country? Pull out my two front teeth! why, I should be horrible! The hair is bad enough, but the teeth! Oh! what a monster of a man! I would rather throw myself from the sixth story, head first, to the pavement! He told me that he would be this evening at the Tillac d‘Argent.”
“And what was it he offered you?” asked Marguerite.
“Two Napoleons.”
“That is forty francs.”
“Yes,” said Fantine, “that makes forty francs.”
She became thoughtful and went about her work. In a quarter of an hour she left her sewing and went to the stairs to read again the Thénardiers’ letter.
On her return she said to Marguerite, who was at work near her:
“What does this mean, a miliary fever? Do you know?”
“Yes,” answered the old woman, “it is a disease.”
“Then it needs a good many drugs?”
“Yes; terrible drugs.”
“How does it come upon you?”
“It is a disease that comes in a moment.”
“Does it attack children?”
“Children especially.”
“Do people die of it?”
“Very often,” said Marguerite.
Fantine withdrew and went once more to read over the letter on the stairs.
In the evening she went out, and took the direction of the Rue de Paris where the inns are.
The next morning, when Marguerite went into Fantine’s chamber before daybreak, for they always worked together, and so made one candle do for the two, she found Fantine seated upon her couch, pale and icy. She had not been in bed. Her cap had fallen upon her knees. The candle had burned all night, and was almost consumed.
Marguerite stopped upon the threshold, petrified by this wild disorder, and exclaimed: “Good Lord! the candle is all burned out. Something has happened.”
Then she looked at Fantine, who sadly turned her shorn head.
Fantine had grown ten years older since evening.
“Bless us!” said Marguerite, “what is the matter with you, Fantine?”
“Nothing,” said Fantine. “Quite the contrary. My child will not die with that frightful sickness for lack of aid. I am satisfied.”
So saying, she showed the old woman two Napoleons that glistened on the table.
“Oh! good God!” said Marguerite. “Why there is a fortune! where did you get these louis d‘or?”
“I got them,” answered Fantine.
At the same time she smiled. The candle lit up her face. It was a sickening smile, for the corners of her mouth were stained with blood, and a dark cavity revealed itself there.
The two teeth were gone.
She sent the forty francs to Montfermeil.
And this was a ruse of the Thénardiers to get money. Cosette was not sick.
Fantine threw her looking-glass out of the window. Long before she had left her little room on the third story for an attic room with no other fastening than a latch; one of those garret rooms the ceiling of which makes an angle with the floor and hits your head at every moment. The poor cannot go to the end of their chamber or to the end of their destiny, but by bending continually more and more. She no longer had a bed, she retained a rag that she called her coverlid, a mattress on the floor, and a worn-out straw chair. Her little rose-bush was dried up in the corner, forgotten. In the other corner was a butter-pot for water, which froze in the winter, and the different levels at which the water had stood remained marked a long time by circles of ice. She had lost her modesty, she was losing her coquetry. The last sign. She would go out with a dirty cap. Either from want of time or from indifference she no longer washed her linen. As fast as the heels of her stockings wore