Curiosity is a sort of gluttony.
To see is to devour.
On entering, Fantine fell down in a corner, motionless and mute, crouching down like a terrified dog.
The sergeant of the guard brought a lighted candle to the table.
Javert seated himself, drew a sheet of stamped paper from his pocket, and began to write.
This class of women is consigned by our laws entirely to the discretion of the police.
The latter do what they please, punish them, as seems good to them, and confiscate at their will those two sorry things which they entitle their industry and their liberty.
Javert was impassive; his grave face betrayed no emotion whatever.
Nevertheless, he was seriously and deeply preoccupied.
It was one of those moments when he was exercising without control, but subject to all the scruples of a severe conscience, his redoubtable discretionary power.
At that moment he was conscious that his police agent’s stool was a tribunal.
He was entering judgment.
He judged and condemned.
He summoned all the ideas which could possibly exist in his mind, around the great thing which he was doing.
The more he examined the deed of this woman, the more shocked he felt.
It was evident that he had just witnessed the commission of a crime.
He had just beheld, yonder, in the street, society, in the person of a freeholder and an elector, insulted and attacked by a creature who was outside all pales.
A prostitute had made an attempt on the life of a citizen.
He had seen that, he, Javert.
He wrote in silence.
When he had finished he signed the paper, folded it, and said to the sergeant of the guard, as he handed it to him,
“Take three men and conduct this creature to jail.” Then, turning to Fantine, “You are to have six months of it.”
The unhappy woman shuddered.
“Six months! six months of prison!” she exclaimed.
“Six months in which to earn seven sous a day!
But what will become of Cosette?
My daughter! my daughter!
But I still owe the Thenardiers over a hundred francs; do you know that, Monsieur Inspector?”
She dragged herself across the damp floor, among the muddy boots of all those men, without rising, with clasped hands, and taking great strides on her knees.
“Monsieur Javert,” said she,
“I beseech your mercy.
I assure you that I was not in the wrong.
If you had seen the beginning, you would have seen.
I swear to you by the good God that I was not to blame!
That gentleman, the bourgeois, whom I do not know, put snow in my back.
Has any one the right to put snow down our backs when we are walking along peaceably, and doing no harm to any one?
I am rather ill, as you see.
And then, he had been saying impertinent things to me for a long time:
‘You are ugly! you have no teeth!’
I know well that I have no longer those teeth.
I did nothing; I said to myself,
‘The gentleman is amusing himself.’
I was honest with him; I did not speak to him.
It was at that moment that he put the snow down my back.
Monsieur Javert, good Monsieur Inspector! is there not some person here who saw it and can tell you that this is quite true?
Perhaps I did wrong to get angry.
You know that one is not master of one’s self at the first moment.
One gives way to vivacity; and then, when some one puts something cold down your back just when you are not expecting it!
I did wrong to spoil that gentleman’s hat.
Why did he go away?