“Monsieur le Maire!” shrieked Fantine.
Javert burst out laughing with that frightful laugh which displayed all his gums.
“There is no longer any Monsieur le Maire here!”
Jean Valjean made no attempt to disengage the hand which grasped the collar of his coat.
He said:—
“Javert—”
Javert interrupted him: “Call me Mr. Inspector.”
“Monsieur,” said Jean Valjean, “I should like to say a word to you in private.”
“Aloud!
Say it aloud!” replied Javert; “people are in the habit of talking aloud to me.”
Jean Valjean went on in a lower tone:—
“I have a request to make of you—”
“I tell you to speak loud.”
“But you alone should hear it—”
“What difference does that make to me?
I shall not listen.”
Jean Valjean turned towards him and said very rapidly and in a very low voice:—
“Grant me three days’ grace! three days in which to go and fetch the child of this unhappy woman.
I will pay whatever is necessary.
You shall accompany me if you choose.”
“You are making sport of me!” cried Javert. “Come now, I did not think you such a fool!
You ask me to give you three days in which to run away!
You say that it is for the purpose of fetching that creature’s child!
Ah! Ah!
That’s good!
That’s really capital!”
Fantine was seized with a fit of trembling.
“My child!” she cried, “to go and fetch my child!
She is not here, then!
Answer me, sister; where is Cosette?
I want my child!
Monsieur Madeleine!
Monsieur le Maire!”
Javert stamped his foot.
“And now there’s the other one!
Will you hold your tongue, you hussy?
It’s a pretty sort of a place where convicts are magistrates, and where women of the town are cared for like countesses!
Ah!
But we are going to change all that; it is high time!”
He stared intently at Fantine, and added, once more taking into his grasp Jean Valjean’s cravat, shirt and collar:—
“I tell you that there is no Monsieur Madeleine and that there is no Monsieur le Maire.
There is a thief, a brigand, a convict named Jean Valjean!
And I have him in my grasp!
That’s what there is!”
Fantine raised herself in bed with a bound, supporting herself on her stiffened arms and on both hands: she gazed at Jean Valjean, she gazed at Javert, she gazed at the nun, she opened her mouth as though to speak; a rattle proceeded from the depths of her throat, her teeth chattered; she stretched out her arms in her agony, opening her hands convulsively, and fumbling about her like a drowning person; then suddenly fell back on her pillow.
Her head struck the head-board of the bed and fell forwards on her breast, with gaping mouth and staring, sightless eyes.
She was dead.
Jean Valjean laid his hand upon the detaining hand of Javert, and opened it as he would have opened the hand of a baby; then he said to Javert:—
“You have murdered that woman.”
“Let’s have an end of this!” shouted Javert, in a fury; “I am not here to listen to argument.