I would ask his pardon.
Oh, my God! It makes no difference to me whether I ask his pardon.
Do me the favor to-day, for this once, Monsieur Javert.
Hold! you do not know that in prison one can earn only seven sous a day; it is not the government’s fault, but seven sous is one’s earnings; and just fancy, I must pay one hundred francs, or my little girl will be sent to me.
Oh, my God!
I cannot have her with me.
What I do is so vile!
Oh, my Cosette! Oh, my little angel of the Holy Virgin! what will become of her, poor creature?
I will tell you: it is the Thenardiers, inn-keepers, peasants; and such people are unreasonable.
They want money.
Don’t put me in prison!
You see, there is a little girl who will be turned out into the street to get along as best she may, in the very heart of the winter; and you must have pity on such a being, my good Monsieur Javert.
If she were older, she might earn her living; but it cannot be done at that age.
I am not a bad woman at bottom.
It is not cowardliness and gluttony that have made me what I am.
If I have drunk brandy, it was out of misery.
I do not love it; but it benumbs the senses.
When I was happy, it was only necessary to glance into my closets, and it would have been evident that I was not a coquettish and untidy woman.
I had linen, a great deal of linen.
Have pity on me, Monsieur Javert!”
She spoke thus, rent in twain, shaken with sobs, blinded with tears, her neck bare, wringing her hands, and coughing with a dry, short cough, stammering softly with a voice of agony.
Great sorrow is a divine and terrible ray, which transfigures the unhappy.
At that moment Fantine had become beautiful once more.
From time to time she paused, and tenderly kissed the police agent’s coat.
She would have softened a heart of granite; but a heart of wood cannot be softened.
“Come!” said Javert, “I have heard you out.
Have you entirely finished?
You will get six months. Now march! The Eternal Father in person could do nothing more.”
At these solemn words, “the Eternal Father in person could do nothing more,” she understood that her fate was sealed.
She sank down, murmuring,
“Mercy!”
Javert turned his back.
The soldiers seized her by the arms.
A few moments earlier a man had entered, but no one had paid any heed to him. He shut the door, leaned his back against it, and listened to Fantine’s despairing supplications.
At the instant when the soldiers laid their hands upon the unfortunate woman, who would not rise, he emerged from the shadow, and said:—
“One moment, if you please.”
Javert raised his eyes and recognized M. Madeleine.
He removed his hat, and, saluting him with a sort of aggrieved awkwardness:—
“Excuse me, Mr. Mayor—”
The words “Mr. Mayor” produced a curious effect upon Fantine.
She rose to her feet with one bound, like a spectre springing from the earth, thrust aside the soldiers with both arms, walked straight up to M. Madeleine before any one could prevent her, and gazing intently at him, with a bewildered air, she cried:—
“Ah! so it is you who are M. le Maire!”
Then she burst into a laugh, and spit in his face.
M. Madeleine wiped his face, and said:—
“Inspector Javert, set this woman at liberty.”
Javert felt that he was on the verge of going mad.
He experienced at that moment, blow upon blow and almost simultaneously, the most violent emotions which he had ever undergone in all his life.
To see a woman of the town spit in the mayor’s face was a thing so monstrous that, in his most daring flights of fancy, he would have regarded it as a sacrilege to believe it possible.
On the other hand, at the very bottom of his thought, he made a hideous comparison as to what this woman was, and as to what this mayor might be; and then he, with horror, caught a glimpse of I know not what simple explanation of this prodigious attack.
But when he beheld that mayor, that magistrate, calmly wipe his face and say,