Did those Thenardiers keep her clean?
How have they fed her?
Oh! if you only knew how I have suffered, putting such questions as that to myself during all the time of my wretchedness.
Now, it is all past.
I am happy.
Oh, how I should like to see her!
Do you think her pretty, Monsieur le Maire?
Is not my daughter beautiful?
You must have been very cold in that diligence!
Could she not be brought for just one little instant?
She might be taken away directly afterwards.
Tell me; you are the master; it could be so if you chose!”
He took her hand.
“Cosette is beautiful,” he said, “Cosette is well. You shall see her soon; but calm yourself; you are talking with too much vivacity, and you are throwing your arms out from under the clothes, and that makes you cough.”
In fact, fits of coughing interrupted Fantine at nearly every word.
Fantine did not murmur; she feared that she had injured by her too passionate lamentations the confidence which she was desirous of inspiring, and she began to talk of indifferent things.
“Montfermeil is quite pretty, is it not?
People go there on pleasure parties in summer.
Are the Thenardiers prosperous?
There are not many travellers in their parts.
That inn of theirs is a sort of a cook-shop.”
M. Madeleine was still holding her hand, and gazing at her with anxiety; it was evident that he had come to tell her things before which his mind now hesitated.
The doctor, having finished his visit, retired. Sister Simplice remained alone with them.
But in the midst of this pause Fantine exclaimed:—
“I hear her! mon Dieu, I hear her!”
She stretched out her arm to enjoin silence about her, held her breath, and began to listen with rapture.
There was a child playing in the yard—the child of the portress or of some work-woman.
It was one of those accidents which are always occurring, and which seem to form a part of the mysterious stage-setting of mournful scenes.
The child—a little girl—was going and coming, running to warm herself, laughing, singing at the top of her voice.
Alas! in what are the plays of children not intermingled.
It was this little girl whom Fantine heard singing.
“Oh!” she resumed, “it is my Cosette!
I recognize her voice.”
The child retreated as it had come; the voice died away. Fantine listened for a while longer, then her face clouded over, and M. Madeleine heard her say, in a low voice:
“How wicked that doctor is not to allow me to see my daughter!
That man has an evil countenance, that he has.”
But the smiling background of her thoughts came to the front again.
She continued to talk to herself, with her head resting on the pillow:
“How happy we are going to be!
We shall have a little garden the very first thing; M. Madeleine has promised it to me.
My daughter will play in the garden.
She must know her letters by this time.
I will make her spell.
She will run over the grass after butterflies.
I will watch her.
Then she will take her first communion.
Ah! when will she take her first communion?”
She began to reckon on her fingers.
“One, two, three, four—she is seven years old.
In five years she will have a white veil, and openwork stockings; she will look like a little woman.