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. Thesky is but a vent-hole. The whole day is a cavern. The sun has the airof a beggar. A frightful season! Winter changes the water of heaven andthe heart of man into a stone. Her creditors harrassed her.

  Fantine earned too little. Her debts had increased. The Thénardiers, whowere not promptly paid, wrote to her constantly letters whose contentsdrove her to despair, and whose carriage ruined her. One day they wroteto 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 leastten francs for this. She received the letter, and crushed it in herhands all day long. That evening she went into a barber's shop at thecorner of the street, and pulled out her comb. Her admirable golden hairfell 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 Thénardiers. Thispetticoat made the Thénardiers furious. It was the money that theywanted. They gave the petticoat to Éponine. The poor Lark continued toshiver.

  Fantine thought: "My child is no longer cold. I have clothed her with myhair." She put on little round caps which concealed her shorn head, andin 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 hateevery one about her. She had long shared the universal veneration forFather Madeleine; yet, by dint of repeating to herself that it was hewho had discharged her, that he was the cause of her unhappiness, shecame to hate him also, and most of all. When she passed the factory inworking hours, when the workpeople were at the door, she affected tolaugh and sing.

  An old workwoman who once saw her laughing and singing in this fashionsaid, "There's a girl who will come to a bad end."

  She took a lover, the first who offered, a man whom she did not love,out of bravado and with rage in her heart. He was a miserable scamp,a sort of mendicant musician, a lazy beggar, who beat her, and whoabandoned her as she had taken him, in disgust.

  She adored her child.

  The lower she descended, the darker everything grew about her, the moreradiant shone that little angel at the bottom of her heart. She said,"When I get rich, I will have my Cosette with me;" and she laughed. Hercough did not leave her, and she had sweats on her back.

  One day she received from the Thénardiers a letter couched in thefollowing terms: "Cosette is ill with a malady which is going the roundsof the neighborhood. A miliary fever, they call it. Expensive drugs arerequired. This is ruining us, and we can no longer pay for them. If youdo not send us forty francs before the week is out, the little one willbe dead."

  She burst out laughing, and said to her old neighbor: "Ah! they aregood! Forty francs! the idea! That makes two napoleons! Where do theythink I am to get them? These peasants are stupid, truly."

  Nevertheless she went to a dormer window in the staircase and read theletter once more. Then she descended the stairs and emerged, running andleaping and still laughing.

  Some one met her and said to her, "What makes you so gay?"

  She replied: "A fine piece of stupidity that some country people havewritten to me. They demand forty francs of me. So much for you, youpeasants!"

  As she crossed the square, she saw a great many people collected arounda carriage of eccentric shape, upon the top of which stood a man dressedin red, who was holding forth. He was a quack dentist on his rounds,who was offering to the public full sets of teeth, opiates, powders andelixirs.

  Fantine mingled in the group, and began to laugh with the rest atthe harangue, which contained slang for the populace and jargon forrespectable people. The tooth-puller espied the lovely, laughing girl,and suddenly exclaimed: "You have beautiful teeth, you girl there, whoare laughing; if you want to sell me your palettes, I will give you agold napoleon apiece for them."

  "What are my palettes?" asked Fantine.

  "The palettes," replied the dental professor, "are the front teeth, thetwo upper ones."

  "How horrible!" exclaimed Fantine.

  "Two napoleons!" grumbled a toothless old woman who was present. "Here'sa lucky girl!"

  Fantine fled and stopped her ears that she might not hear the hoarsevoice of the man shouting to her: "Reflect, my beauty! two napoleons;they may prove of service. If your heart bids you, come this evening tothe inn of the _Tillac d'Argent_; you will find me there."

  Fantine returned home. She was furious, and related the occurrence toher good neighbor Marguerite: "Can you understand such a thing? Is henot an abominable man? How can they allow such people to go about thecountry! Pull out my two front teeth! Why, I should be horrible! My hairwill grow again, but my teeth! Ah! what a monster of a man! I shouldprefer to throw myself head first on the pavement from the fifth story!He told me that he should be at the _Tillac d'Argent_ this evening."

  "And what did he offer?" asked Marguerite.

  "Two napoleons."

  "That makes forty francs."

  "Yes," said Fantine; "that makes forty francs."

  She remained thoughtful, and began her work. At the expiration of aquarter of an hour she left her sewing and went to read the Thénardiers'letter once more on the staircase.

  On her return, she said to Marguerite, who was at work beside her:--

  "What is a miliary fever? Do you know?"

  "Yes," answered the old spinster; "it is a disease."

  "Does it require many drugs?"

  "Oh! terrible drugs."

  "How does one get it?"

  "It is a malady that one gets without knowing how."

  "Then it attacks children?"

  "Children in particular."

  "Do people die of it?"

  "They may," said Marguerite.

  Fantine left the room and went to read her letter once more on thestaircase.

  That evening she went out, and was seen to turn her steps in thedirection of the Rue de Paris, where the inns are situated.

  The next morning, when Marguerite entered Fantine's room beforedaylight,--for they always worked together, and in this manner used onlyone candle for the two,--she found Fantine seated on her bed, pale andfrozen. She had not lain down. Her cap had fallen on her knees.Her candle had burned all night, and was almost entirely consumed.Marguerite halted on the threshold, petrified at this tremendouswastefulness, and exclaimed:--

  "Lord! the candle is all burned out! Something has happened."

  Then she looked at Fantine, who turned toward her her head bereft of itshair.

  Fantine had grown ten years older since the preceding night.

  "Jesus!" said Marguerite, "what is the matter with you, Fantine?"

  "Nothing," replied Fantine. "Quite the contrary. My child will not dieof that frightful malady, for lack of succor. I am content."

  So saying, she pointed out to the spinster two napoleons which wereglittering on the table.

  "Ah! Jesus God!" cried Marguerite. "Why, it is a fortune! Where did youget those louis d'or?"

  "I got them," replied Fantine.

  At the same time she smiled. The candle illuminated her countenance. Itwas a bloody smile. A reddish saliva soiled the corners of her lips, andshe had a black hole in her mouth.

  The two teeth had been extracted.

  She sent the forty francs to Montfermeil.

  After all it was a ruse of the Thénardiers to obtain money. Cosette wasnot ill.

  Fantine threw her mirror out of the window. She had long since quittedher cell on the second floor for an attic with only a latch to fastenit, next the roof; one of those attics whose extremity forms an anglewith the floor, and knocks you on the head every instant. The pooroccupant can reach the end of his chamber as he can the end of hisdestiny, only by bending over more and more.

  She had no longer a bed; a rag which she called her coverlet, a mattresson the floor, and a seatless chair still remained. A little rosebushwhich she had, had dried up, forgotten, in one corner. In the othercorner was a butter-pot to hold water, which froze in winter, and inwhich the various levels of the water remained long marked by thesecircles of ice. She had lost her shame; she lost her coquetry. A finalsign. She went out, with dirty caps. Whether from lack of time or fromindifference, she no longer mended her linen. As the heels wore out,she dragged her stockings down into her shoes. This was evident from theperpendicular wrinkles. She patched her bodice, which was old and wornout, with scraps of calico which tore at the slightest movement. Thepeople to whom she was indebted made "scenes" and gave her no peace.She found them in the street, she found them again on her staircase. Shepassed many a night weeping and thinking. Her eyes were very bright,and she felt a steady pain in her shoulder towards the top of theleft shoulder-blade. She coughed a great deal. She deeply hated FatherMadeleine, but made no complaint. She sewed seventeen hours a day; buta contractor for the work of prisons, who made the prisoners work at adiscount, suddenly made prices fall, which reduced the daily earningsof working-women to nine sous. Seventeen hours of toil, and nine sous aday! Her creditors were more pitiless than ever. The second-hand dealer,who had taken back nearly all his furniture, said to her incessantly,"When will you pay me, you hussy?" What did they want of her, good God!She felt that she was being hunted, and something of the wild beastdeveloped in her. About the same time, Thénardier wrote to her that hehad waited with decidedly too much amiability and that he must have ahundred francs at once; otherwise he would turn little Cosette out ofdoors, convalescent as she was from her heavy illness, into the cold andthe streets, and that she might do what she liked with herself, and dieif she chose. "A hundred francs," thought Fantine. "But in what tradecan one earn a hundred sous a day?"

  "Come!" said she, "let us sell what is left."

  The unfortunate girl became a woman of the town.