Chapter 46

Fantine

The great sufferings of Fantine, a single, working mother, in her struggles to satisfy the selfish
demands of the Thenardiers in their care for her of Cossette.

Fantine had been at the factory for more than a year, when, one morning, the
superintendent of the workroom handed her fifty francs from the mayor, told her that she was no
longer employed in the shop, and requested her, in the mayor's name, to leave the neighborhood.

This was the very month when the Thenardiers, after having demanded twelve francs
instead of six, had just exacted fifteen francs instead of twelve. Fantine was overwhelmed. She
could not leave the neighborhood; she was in debt for her rent and furniture. Fifty francs was
not sufficient to cancel this debt. She stammered a few supplicating words. The superintendent
ordered her to leave the shop on the instant. Besides, Fantine was only a moderately good
workwoman. Overcome with shame, even more than with despair, she quitted the shop, and
returned to her room. So her fault was now known to every one.

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.

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.

She had been dismissed towards the end of the winter; the summer passed, but winter
came again. Short days, less work. Winter: no warmth, no light, no noonday, the evening joining
on to the morning, fogs, twilight; the window is gray; it is impossible to see clearly at it. The sky
is but a vent-hole. The whole day is a cavern. The sun has the air of a beggar. A frightful season!
Winter changes the water of heaven and the heart of man into a stone. Her creditors harrassed
her. Fantine earned too little. Her debts had increased. The Thenardiers, who were not promptly
paid, wrote to her constantly letters whose contents drove her to despair, and whose carriage
ruined her. One day they wrote to her that her little Cosette was entirely naked in that cold
weather, that she needed a woollen skirt, and that her mother must send at least ten francs for
this. She received the letter, and crushed it in her hands all day long. That evening she went into
a barber's shop at the corner of the street, and pulled out her comb. Her admirable golden hair
fell to her knees. "What splendid hair!" exclaimed the barber. "How much will you give me for
it?" said she. "Ten francs." "Cut it off."

She adored her child. The lower she descended, the darker everything grew about her,
the more radiant shone that little angel at the bottom of her heart. She said, "When I get rich, I
will have my Cosette with me;" and she laughed. Her cough did not leave her, and she had
sweats on her back.

One day she received from the Thenardiers a letter couched in the following terms:
"Cosette is ill with a malady which is going the rounds of the neighborhood. A miliary fever, they
call it. Expensive drugs are required. This is ruining us, and we can no longer pay for them. If
you do not send us forty francs before the week is out, the little one will be dead." She burst out
laughing, and said to her old neighbor: "Ah! they are good! Forty francs! the idea! That makes
two napoleons! Where do they think I am to get them? These peasants are stupid, truly."
Nevertheless she went to a dormer window in the staircase and read the letter once more. Then
she descended the stairs and emerged, running and leaping and still laughing. Some one met her
and said to her, "What makes you so gay?" She replied: "A fine piece of stupidity that some
country people have written to me. They demand forty francs of me. So much for you, you
peasants!" As she crossed the square, she saw a great many people collected around a carriage
of eccentric shape, upon the top of which stood a man dressed in red, who was holding forth. He
was a quack dentist on his rounds, who was offering to the public full sets of teeth, opiates,
powders and elixirs. Fantine mingled in the group, and began to laugh with the rest at the
harangue, which contained slang for the populace and jargon for respectable people. The tooth-
puller espied the lovely, laughing girl, and suddenly exclaimed: "You have beautiful teeth, you
girl there, who are laughing; if you want to sell me your palettes, I will give you a gold napoleon
apiece for them." "What are my palettes?" asked Fantine. "The palettes," replied the dental
professor, "are the front teeth, the two upper ones."

"How horrible!" exclaimed Fantine.

"Two napoleons!" grumbled a toothless old woman who was present. "Here's a lucky
girl!"

Fantine fled and stopped her ears that she might not hear the hoarse voice of the man
shouting to her:

"Reflect, my beauty! two napoleons; they may prove of service. If your heart bids you,
come this evening to the inn of the Tillac d'Argent; you will find me there."

Fantine returned home. She was furious, and related the occurrence to her good
neighbor Marguerite:

"Can you understand such a thing? Is he not an abominable man? How can they allow
such people to go about the country! Pull out my two front teeth! Why, I should be horrible! My
hair will grow again, but my teeth! Ah! what a monster of a man! I should prefer to throw myself
head first on the pavement from the fifth story! He told me that he should be at the Tillac
d'Argent this evening."

"And what did he offer?" asked Marguerite.

"Two napoleons."

"That makes forty francs."

"Yes," said Fantine; "that makes forty francs."

She remained thoughtful, and began her work. At the expiration of a quarter of an hour
she left her sewing and went to read the Thenardiers' letter once more on the staircase. On her
return, she said to Marguerite, who was at work beside her:—

"What is a miliary fever? Do you know?"

"Yes," answered the old spinster; "it is a disease."

"Does it require many drugs?"

"Oh! terrible drugs."

How does one get it?"

"It is a malady that one gets without knowing how."

"Then it attacks children?"

"Children in particular."

"Do people die of it?"

"They may," said Marguerite.

Fantine left the room and went to read her letter once more on the staircase. That
evening she went out, and was seen to turn her steps in the direction of the Rue de Paris, where
the inns are situated.

She purchased a knitted petticoat and sent it to the Thenardiers. This petticoat made the
Thenardiers furious. It was the money that they wanted. They gave the petticoat to Eponine. The
poor Lark continued to shiver. Fantine thought: "My child is no longer cold. I have clothed her
with my hair." She put on little round caps which concealed her shorn head, and in which she
was still pretty.

The next morning, when Marguerite entered Fantine's room before daylight,—for they
always worked together, and in this manner used only one candle for the two,—she found
Fantine seated on her bed, pale and frozen. She had not lain down. Her cap had fallen on her
knees. Her candle had burned all night, and was almost entirely consumed. Marguerite halted on
the threshold, petrified at this tremendous wastefulness, and exclaimed:—

At the same time she smiled. The candle illuminated her countenance. It was a bloody
smile. A reddish saliva soiled the corners of her lips, and she had a black hole in her mouth. The
two teeth had been extracted.

She sent the forty francs to Montfermeil. After all it was a ruse of the Thenardiers to
obtain money. Cosette was not ill.

Fantine threw her mirror out of the window. She had long since quitted her cell on the
second floor for an attic with only a latch to fasten it, next the roof; one of those attics whose
extremity forms an angle with the floor, and knocks you on the head every instant. The poor
occupant can reach the end of his chamber as he can the end of his destiny, only by bending over
more and more. She had no longer a bed; a rag which she called her coverlet, a mattress on the
floor, and a seatless chair still remained. A little rosebush which she had, had dried up,
forgotten, in one corner. In the other corner was a butter-pot to hold water, which froze in
winter, and in which the various levels of the water remained long marked by these circles of ice.
She had lost her shame; she lost her coquetry. A final sign. She went out, with dirty caps.
Whether from lack of time or from indifference, she no longer mended her linen. As the heels
wore out, she dragged her stockings down into her shoes. This was evident from the
perpendicular wrinkles. She patched her bodice, which was old and worn out, with scraps of
calico which tore at the slightest movement. The people to whom she was indebted made
"scenes" and gave her no peace. She found them in the street, she found them again on her
staircase. She passed many a night weeping and thinking. Her eyes were very bright, and she felt
a steady pain in her shoulder towards the top of the left shoulder-blade. She coughed a great
deal.

She deeply hated Father Madeleine, but made no complaint. She sewed seventeen hours a
day; but a contractor for the work of prisons, who made the prisoners work at a discount,
suddenly made prices fall, which reduced the daily earnings of working-women to nine sous.
Seventeen hours of toil, and nine sous a day! Her creditors were more pitiless than ever. The
second-hand dealer, who had taken back nearly all his furniture, said to her incessantly, "When
will you pay me, you hussy?" What did they want of her, good God! She felt that she was being
hunted, and something of the wild beast developed in her. About the same time, Thenardier wrote
to her that he had waited with decidedly too much amiability and that he must have a hundred
francs at once; otherwise he would turn little Cosette out of doors, convalescent as she was from
her heavy illness, into the cold and the streets, and that she might do what she liked with herself,
and die if she chose.

"A hundred francs," thought Fantine. "But in what trade can one earn a hundred sous a
day?"

At the point in this melancholy drama which we have now reached, nothing is left to
Fantine of that which she had formerly been. She has become marble in becoming mire.
Whoever touches her feels cold. She passes; she endures you; she ignores you; she is the severe
and dishonored figure. Life and the social order have said their last word for her. All has
happened to her that will happen to her. She has felt everything, borne everything, experienced
everything, suffered everything, lost everything, mourned everything. She is resigned, with that
resignation which resembles indifference, as death resembles sleep. She no longer avoids
anything. Let all the clouds fall upon her, and all the ocean sweep over her! What matters it to
her? She is a sponge that is soaked.

He who knows that sees the whole of the shadow. He is alone. His name is God.