CHAPTER XI
CHRISTUS NOS LIBERAVIT
What is this story of Fantine? It is society buying a slave.
Of whom? Of misery, of hunger, of cold, of loneliness, of desertion, of destitution. Cursed bargain! A soul for a morsel of bread. Misery offers its wares, and society accepts.
The holy law of Jesus Christ governs our civilization, but it does not yet pervade it. They say that slavery has disappeared from European civilization. That's a mistake. It still exists; but it weighs now only on woman, and its name is prostitution.
It weighs on woman; that is, on grace, on helplessness, on beauty, on motherhood. This is not one of the least reproaches upon man.
At the point which we have reached in this painful drama, there is nothing left in Fantine of her former self. She became marble when she became mud. Whoever touches her is chilled. She is handed along, she submits to you, but she forgets your presence. She is the type of dishonor and rigidity. Life and social order have said to her their last word. Everything that can happen to her, has already happened. She has felt all, borne all, endured all, suffered all, lost all, wept for all. She is resigned with a resignation which is as like indifference as death is like sleep. She shuns nothing now. She fears nothing now. Let the whole sky fall on her, let the whole ocean pass over her! What does she care? She is a sponge soaked full.
At least she thinks so; but it is never safe to think that you have drained the cup of misfortune, or that you have reached the end of anything.
Alas! what are all these destinies driven along thus helter-skelter? Where are they going? Why are they what they are?
He who knows this sees the whole shadow. He is one alone. His name is God.
CHAPTER XII
M. BAMATABOIS' IDLENESS
There is in all small towns, and there was at M – in particular, a class of young men, who squander fifteen hundred francs a year in the provinces with the same air as those of the same set in Paris devour two hundred thousand. They are beings of the great neutral species; geldings, parasites, nobodies, who possess a little land, a little folly, and a little wit, who would be rustics in a drawing-room, and believe themselves gentlemen in a pot-house. They talk about my fields, my woods, my peasants, horses, the actresses, to prove themselves men of taste; quarrel with the officers, to prove themselves men of war; shoot, smoke, yawn, drink, smell of tobacco, play at billiards, watch the travellers get out of the stage-coach, live at the café, dine at the inn, have a dog that gnaws bones under the table, and a mistress who places the dishes upon it; haggle over a son, exaggerate the fashions, admire tragedy, despise women, wear out their old boots, copy London through Paris, and Paris through Pont-à-Mousson; grow stupidly old, do not work, are of no use, and do no great harm. Had M. Félix Tholomyès remained in his province and not seen Paris, he would have been one of them. If they were richer, people would say they are dandies; if poorer, they are loafers; but they are simply men without occupation. Among them there are bores and bored, dreamers, and a few scamps.
At that day, a dandy was composed of a tall collar, a large cravat, a watch and seals, three waist-coats over one another, blue and red inside, a short-waisted olive-colored coat, with a swallow tail, and a double row of silver buttons, sewn on close together, and ascending to the shoulders, and trousers of a lighter olive, adorned on the seams with an undetermined but always uneven number of ribs, varying from one to eleven, a limit which was never exceeded. Add to this, slipper-boots with iron-capped heels, a tall, narrow-brimmed hat, hair in a tuft, an enormous cane, and a conversation improved by Potier's puns; over and above all these were spurs and moustachios, for at that period moustachios indicated the civilian, and spurs the pedestrian. The provincial dandy wore longer spurs and more ferocious moustachios. It was the period of the struggle of the South American Republics against the King of Spain, of Bolivar against Morillo. Narrow-brimmed hats were Royalist, and called Morillos, while the Liberals wore broad brims, which were called Bolivars.
Eight or ten months after the events we have described in the previous chapter, toward the beginning of January, and on a night when snow had fallen, one of these dandies – a man of "right sentiments," for he wore a Morillo, and was also warmly wrapped up in one of the large Spanish cloaks which at that time completed the fashionable costume in cold weather – was amusing himself by annoying a creature who was prowling about in a low-neck balldress, and with flowers in her hair, before the window of the officers' café. This dandy was smoking, as that was a decided mark of fashion. Each time this woman passed him, he made some remark to her, which he fancied witty and amusing, as: "How ugly you are! – Why don't you go to kennel? – You have no teeth," etc., etc. This gentleman's name was Monsieur Bamatabois. The woman, a sad-dressed phantom walking backwards and forwards in the snow, made him no answer, did not even look at him, but still continued silently and with a gloomy regularity her walk, which, every few minutes, brought her under his sarcasms, like the condemned soldier running the gauntlet. The slight effect produced doubtless annoyed the idler, for taking advantage of her back being turned, he crept up behind her, stooped to pick up a handful of snow, and suddenly plunged it between her bare shoulders. The girl uttered a yell, turned, leaped like a panther on the man, and dug her nails into his face with the most frightful language that could fall from a guard-room into the gutter. These insults, vomited by a voice rendered hoarse by brandy, hideously issued from a mouth in which the two front teeth were really missing. It was Fantine.
At the noise, the officers left the café in a throng, the passers-by stopped, and a laughing, yelling, applauding circle was made round these two beings, in whom it was difficult to recognize a man and a woman, – the man struggling, his hat on the ground, the woman striking with feet and fists, bareheaded, yelling, without teeth or hair, livid with passion, and horrible. All at once a tall man quickly broke through the crowd, seized the woman's satin dress, which was covered with mud, and said: "Follow me." The woman raised her hand, and her passionate voice suddenly died out. Her eyes were glassy, she grew pale instead of being livid, and trembled with fear. She had recognized Javert. The dandy profited by this incident to make his escape.
CHAPTER XIII
THE POLICE OFFICE
Javert broke through the circle and began walking with long strides toward the police office, which is at the other end of the market-place, dragging the wretched girl after him. She allowed him to do so mechanically, and neither he nor she said a word. The crowd of spectators, in a paroxysm of delight, followed them with coarse jokes, for supreme misery is an occasion for obscenities. On reaching the police office, which was a low room, heated by a stove, and guarded by a sentry, and having a barred glass door opening on the street, Javert walked in with Fantine, and shut the door after him, to the great disappointment of the curious, who stood on tip-toe, and stretched out their necks in front of the dirty window trying to see. Curiosity is gluttony, and seeing is devouring.
On entering, Fantine crouched down motionless in a corner like a frightened dog. The sergeant on duty brought in a candle. Javert sat down at a table, took a sheet of stamped paper from his pocket, and began writing. Women of this class are by the French laws left entirely at the discretion of the police: they do what they like with them, punish them as they think proper, and confiscate the two sad things which they call their trade and their liberty. Javert was stoical: his grave face displayed no emotion, and yet he was seriously and deeply preoccupied. It was one of those moments in which he exercised without control, but with all the scruples of a strict conscience, his formidable discretionary power. At this instant he felt that his high stool was a tribunal, and himself the judge. He tried and he condemned: he summoned all the ideas he had in his mind round the great thing he was doing. The more he examined the girl's deed, the more outraged he felt: for it was evident that he had just seen a crime committed. He had seen in the street, society, represented by a householder and elector, insulted and attacked by a creature beyond the pale of everything. A prostitute had assaulted a citizen, and he, Javert, had witnessed it. He wrote on silently. When he had finished, he affixed his signature, folded up the paper, and said to the sergeant as he handed it to him: "Take these men and lead this girl to prison." Then he turned to Fantine, "You will have six months for it."
The wretched girl started.
"Six months, six months' imprisonment!" she cried; "six months! and only earn seven sous a day! Why, what will become of Cosette, my child, my child! Why, I owe more than one hundred francs to Thénardier, M. Inspector; do you know that?"
She dragged herself across the floor, dirtied by the muddy boots of all these men, without rising, with clasped hands and taking long strides with her knees.
"Monsieur Javert," she said, "I ask for mercy. I assure you that I was not in the wrong; if you had seen the beginning, you would say so; I swear by our Saviour that I was not to blame. That gentleman, who was a stranger to me, put snow down my back. Had he any right to do that when I was passing gently, and doing nobody a harm? It sent me wild, for you must know I am not very well, and besides he had been abusing me – "You are ugly, you have no teeth." I am well aware that I have lost my teeth. I did nothing, and said to myself, "This gentleman is amusing himself." I was civil to him, and said nothing, and it was at this moment he put the snow down my back. My good M. Javert, is there no one who saw it to tell you that this is the truth? I was, perhaps, wrong to get into a passion, but at the moment, as you are aware, people are not masters of themselves, and I am quick-tempered. And then, something so cold put down your back, at a moment when you are least expecting it! It was; wrong to destroy the gentleman's hat, but why has he gone away? I would ask his pardon. Oh! I would willingly do so. Let me off this time. M. Javert, perhaps you do not know that in prison you can only earn seven sous a day; it is not the fault of Government, but you only earn seven sous; and just fancy! I have one hundred francs to pay, or my child will be turned into the street. Oh! I cannot have her with me, for my mode of life is so bad! Oh, my Cosette, oh, my little angel, what ever will become of you, poor darling! I must tell you that the Thénardiers are inn-keepers, peasants, and unreasonable; they insist on having their money. Oh, do not send me to prison! Look you, the little thing will be turned into the streets in the middle of winter to go where she likes, and you must take pity on that, my kind M. Javert. If she were older she could earn her living, but at her age it is impossible. I am not a bad woman at heart, it is not cowardice and gluttony that have made me what I am. If I drink brandy, it is through wretchedness; I do not like it, but it makes me reckless. In happier times you need only have looked into my chest of drawers, and you would have seen that I was not a disorderly woman, for I had linen, plenty of linen. Take pity on me, M. Javert!"
She spoke thus, crushed, shaken by sobs, blinded by tears, wringing her hands, interrupted by a sharp dry cough, and stammering softly, with death imprinted on her voice. Great sorrow is a divine and terrible ray which transfigures the wretched, and at this moment Fantine became lovely again. From time to time she stopped, and tenderly kissed the skirt of the policeman's coat. She would have melted a heart of granite, – but a wooden heart cannot be moved.
"Well," said Javert, "I have listened to you. Have you said all? Be off now; you have six months. The Eternal Father in person could not alter it."
On hearing this solemn phrase, she understood that sentence was passed; she fell all of a heap, murmuring, "Mercy!" But Javert turned his back, and the soldiers seized her arm. Some minutes previously a man had entered unnoticed; he had closed the door, leaned against it, and heard Fantine's desperate entreaties. At the moment when the soldiers laid hold of the unhappy girl, who would not rise, he emerged from the gloom, and said, —
"Wait a minute, if you please."
Javert raised his eyes, and recognized M. Madeleine; he took off his hat, and bowed with a sort of vexed awkwardness.
"I beg your pardon, M. le Maire – "
The words "M. le Maire" produced a strange effect on Fantine; she sprang up like a spectre emerging from the ground, thrust back the soldiers, walked straight up to M. Madeleine before she could be prevented, and, looking at him wildly, she exclaimed, —
"So you are the Mayor?"
Then she burst into a laugh, and spat in his face. M. Madeleine wiped his face, and said, —
"Inspector Javert, set this woman at liberty."
Javert felt for a moment as if he were going mad; he experienced at this instant the most violent emotions he had ever felt in his life, following each other in rapid succession, and almost mingled. To see a girl of the town spit in the Mayor's face was so monstrous a thing that he would have regarded it as sacrilege even to believe it possible. On the other side, he confusedly made a hideous approximation in his mind between what this woman was and what this Mayor might be, and then he saw with horror something perfectly simple in this prodigious assault. But when he saw this Mayor, this magistrate, calmly wipe his face, and say, "Set this woman at liberty," he had a bedazzlement of stupor, so to speak; thought and language failed him equally, for he had passed the limits of possible amazement. He remained dumb. His sentence had produced an equally strange effect on Fantine; she raised her bare arm, and clung to the chimney-key of the stove like a tottering person. She looked around, and began saying in a low voice, as if speaking to herself, —
"At liberty! I am to be let go! I shall not be sent to prison for six months! Who said that? It is impossible that any one said it. I must have heard badly; it cannot be that monster of a Mayor. Was it you, my kind M. Javert, who said that I was to be set at liberty? Well, I will tell you all about it, and you will let me go. That monster of a Mayor, that old villain of a Mayor, is the cause of it all. Just imagine, M. Javert, he discharged me on account of a parcel of sluts gossiping in the shop. Was not that horrible, – to discharge a poor girl who is doing her work fairly! After that I did not earn enough, and all this misfortune came. In the first place, there is an improvement which the police gentry ought to make, and that is to prevent persons in prison injuring poor people. I will explain this to you; you earn twelve sous for making a shirt, but it falls to seven, and then you can no longer live, and are obliged to do what you can. As I had my little Cosette I was forced to become a bad woman. You can now understand how it was that beggar of a Mayor who did all the mischief. My present offence is that I trampled on the gentleman's hat before the officers' café, but he had ruined my dress with snow; and our sort have only one silk dress for night. Indeed, M. Javert, I never did any harm purposely, and I see everywhere much worse women than myself who are much more fortunate. Oh, Monsieur Javert, you said that I was to be set at liberty, did you not? Make inquiries, speak to my landlord; I pay my rent now, and you will hear that I am honest. Oh, good gracious! I ask your pardon, but I have touched the damper of the stove without noticing it, and made a smoke."
M. Madeleine listened to her with deep attention: while she was talking, he took out his purse, but as he found it empty on opening it, he returned it to his pocket. He now said to Fantine, —
"How much did you say that you owed?"
Fantine, who was looking at Javert, turned round to him, —
"Am I speaking to you?"
Then she said to the soldiers, —
"Tell me, men, did you see how I spat in his face? Ah, you old villain of a Mayor! you have come here to frighten me, but I am not afraid of you; I am only afraid of M. Javert, my kind Monsieur Javert."
While saying this, she turned again to the Inspector, —
"After all, people should be just. I can understand that you are a just man, M. Javert; in fact, it is quite simple; a man who played at putting snow down a woman's back, made the officers laugh; they must have some amusement, and we girls are sent into the world for them to make fun of. And then you came up: you are compelled to restore order; you remove the woman who was in the wrong, but, on reflection, as you are kind-hearted, you order me to be set at liberty, for the sake of my little girl, for six months' imprisonment would prevent my supporting her. Only don't come here again, fagot! Oh, I will not come here again, M. Javert; they can do what they like to me in future, and I will not stir. Still I cried out to-night because it hurt me; I did not at all expect that gentleman's snow; and then besides, as I told you; I am not very well, – I cough, I have something like a ball in my stomach which burns, and the doctor says: "Take care of yourself." Here, feel, give me your hand; do not be frightened."
She no longer cried, her voice was caressing; she laid Javert's large coarse hand on her white, delicate throat, and looked up at him smilingly. All at once she hurriedly repaired the disorder in her clothes, let the folds of her dress fall, which had been almost dragged up to her knee, and walked toward the door, saying to the soldiers with a friendly nod, —
"My lads, M. Javert says I may go, so I will be off."
She laid her hand on the hasp; one step further, and she would be in the street. Up to this moment Javert had stood motionless, with his eyes fixed on the ground, appearing in the centre of this scene like a statue waiting to be put up in its proper place. The sound of the hasp aroused him: he raised his head with an expression of sovereign authority, – an expression the more frightful, the lower the man in power stands; it is ferocity in the wild beast, atrocity in the nobody.
"Sergeant," he shouted, "do you not see that the wench is bolting? Who told you to let her go?"
"I did," said Madeleine.
Fantine, at the sound of Javert's voice, trembled, and let go the hasp, as a detected thief lets fall the stolen article. At Madeleine's voice she turned, and from this moment, without uttering a word, without even daring to breathe freely, her eye wandered from Madeleine to Javert, and from Javert to Madeleine, according as each spoke. It was evident that Javert must have been "lifted off the hinges," as people say, when he ventured to address the sergeant as he had done, after the Mayor's request that Fantine should be set at liberty. Had he gone so far as to forget the Mayor's presence? Did he eventually declare to himself that it was impossible for "an authority" to have given such an order, and that the Mayor must certainly have said one thing for another without meaning it? Or was it that, in the presence of all the enormities he had witnessed during the last two hours, he said to himself that he must have recourse to a supreme resolution, that the little must become great, the detective be transformed into the magistrate, and that, in this prodigious extremity, order, law, morality, government, and society were personified in him, Javert? However this may be, when M. Madeleine said "I did," the Inspector of Police could be seen to turn to the Mayor, pale, cold, with blue lips, with a desperate glance, and an imperceptible tremor all over him, and – extraordinary circumstance! – to say to him, with downcast eye, but in a fierce voice, —
"Monsieur le Maire, that cannot be."
"Why so?"
"This creature has insulted a gentleman."
"Inspector Javert," M. Madeleine replied with a conciliating and calm accent, "listen to me. You are an honest man, and I shall have no difficulty in coming to an explanation with you. The truth is as follows: I was crossing the market-place at the time you were leading this girl away; a crowd was still assembled; I inquired, and know all. The man was in the wrong, and, in common justice, ought to have been arrested instead of her."
Javert objected, —
"The wretched creature has just insulted M. le Maire."
"That concerns myself," M. Madeleine said; "my insult is, perhaps, my own, and I can do what I like with it."
"I ask your pardon, sir; the insult does not belong to you, but to the Judicial Court."
"Inspector Javert," Madeleine replied, "conscience is the highest of all courts. I have heard the woman, and know what I am doing."
"And I, Monsieur le Maire, do not know what I am seeing."
"In that case, be content with obeying."
"I obey my duty; my duty orders that this woman should go to prison for six months."
M. Madeleine answered gently, —
"Listen to this carefully; she will not go for a single day."
On hearing these decided words, Javert ventured to look fixedly at the Mayor, and said to him, though still with a respectful accent, —
"I bitterly regret being compelled to resist you. Monsieur le Maire, it is the first time in my life, but you will deign to let me observe that I am within the limits of my authority. As you wish it, sir, I will confine myself to the affair with the gentleman. I was present; this girl attacked M. Bamatabois, who is an elector and owner of that fine three-storied house, built of hewn stone, which forms the corner of the Esplanade. Well, there are things in this world! However this may be, M. le Maire, this is a matter of the street police which concerns me, and I intend to punish the woman Fantine."
M. Madeleine upon this folded his arms, and said in a stern voice, which no one in the town had ever heard before, —
"The affair to which you allude belongs to the Borough police; and by the terms of articles nine, eleven, fifteen, and sixty-six of the Criminal Code, I try it. I order that this woman be set at liberty."
Javert tried a final effort.
"But, Monsieur le Maire – "
"I call your attention to article eighty-one of the law of Dec. 13th, 1799, upon arbitrary detention."
"Permit me, sir – "
"Not a word!"
"Still – "
"Leave the room!" said M. Madeleine.
Javert received the blow right in his chest like a Russian soldier; he bowed down to the ground to the Mayor, and went out. Fantine stood up against the door, and watched him pass by her in stupor. She too was suffering from a strange perturbation: for she had seen herself, so to speak, contended for by two opposite powers. She had seen two men struggling in her presence, who held in their hands her liberty, her life, her soul, her child. One of these men dragged her towards the gloom, the other restored her to the light. In this struggle, which she gazed at through the exaggeration of terror, the two men seemed to her giants, – one spoke like a demon, the other like her good angel. The angel had vanquished the demon, and the thing which made her shudder from head to foot was that this angel, this liberator, was the very man whom she abhorred, the Mayor whom she had so long regarded as the cause of all her woes; and at the very moment when she had insulted him in such a hideous way, he saved her. Could she be mistaken? Must she change her whole soul? She did not know, but she trembled; she listened wildly, she looked on with terror, and at every word that M. Madeleine said, she felt the darkness of hatred fade away in her heart, and something glowing and ineffable spring up in its place, which was composed of joy, confidence, and love. When Javert had left the room, M. Madeleine turned to her, and said in a slow voice, like a serious man who is making an effort to restrain his tears, —
"I have heard your story. I knew nothing about what you have said, but I believe, I feel, that it is true. I was even ignorant that you had left the factory, but why did you not apply to me? This is what I will do for you; I will pay your debts and send for your child, or you can go to it. You can live here, in Paris, or wherever you please, and I will provide for your child and yourself. I will give you all the money you require, and you will become respectable again in becoming happy; and I will say more than that: if all be as you say, and I do not doubt it, you have never ceased to be virtuous and holy in the sight of God! Poor woman!"
This was more than poor Fantine could endure. To have her Cosette! to leave this infamous life! to live free, rich, happy, and respectable with Cosette! to see all these realities of Paradise suddenly burst into flower, in the midst of her wretchedness! She looked as if stunned at the person who was speaking, and could only sob two or three times: "Oh, oh, oh!" Her legs gave way, she fell on her knees before M. Madeleine, and before he could prevent it, he felt her seize his hand and press her lips to it.
Then she fainted.