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.
There are many such virtuous people in this lower world; some day they will be in the world above.
This life has a morrow.
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.
CHAPTER X—RESULT OF THE SUCCESS
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 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.
Dark thoughts held possession of Fantine’s heart. When she saw that she could no longer dress her hair, she began to hate every one about her.
She had long shared the universal veneration for Father Madeleine; yet, by dint of repeating to herself that it was he who had discharged her, that he was the cause of her unhappiness, she came to hate him also, and most of all.