Les Misérables by Victor Hugo (early reader books txt) 📕
Read free book «Les Misérables by Victor Hugo (early reader books txt) 📕» - read online or download for free at americanlibrarybooks.com
- Author: Victor Hugo
Read book online «Les Misérables by Victor Hugo (early reader books txt) 📕». Author - Victor Hugo
Fantine was still motionless and seemed absorbed in her own thoughts.
The servant informed Sister Simplice in a very low tone, that the mayor had set out that morning before six o’clock, in a little tilbury harnessed to a white horse, cold as the weather was; that he had gone alone, without even a driver; that no one knew what road he had taken; that people said he had been seen to turn into the road to Arras; that others asserted that they had met him on the road to Paris. That when he went away he had been very gentle, as usual, and that he had merely told the portress not to expect him that night.
While the two women were whispering together, with their backs turned to Fantine’s bed, the sister interrogating, the servant conjecturing, Fantine, with the feverish vivacity of certain organic maladies, which unite the free movements of health with the frightful emaciation of death, had raised herself to her knees in bed, with her shrivelled hands resting on the bolster, and her head thrust through the opening of the curtains, and was listening. All at once she cried:—
“You are speaking of M. Madeleine! Why are you talking so low? What is he doing? Why does he not come?”
Her voice was so abrupt and hoarse that the two women thought they heard the voice of a man; they wheeled round in affright.
“Answer me!” cried Fantine.
The servant stammered:—
“The portress told me that he could not come to-day.”
“Be calm, my child,” said the sister; “lie down again.”
Fantine, without changing her attitude, continued in a loud voice, and with an accent that was both imperious and heart-rending:—
“He cannot come? Why not? You know the reason. You are whispering it to each other there. I want to know it.”
The servant-maid hastened to say in the nun’s ear, “Say that he is busy with the city council.”
Sister Simplice blushed faintly, for it was a lie that the maid had proposed to her.
On the other hand, it seemed to her that the mere communication of the truth to the invalid would, without doubt, deal her a terrible blow, and that this was a serious matter in Fantine’s present state. Her flush did not last long; the sister raised her calm, sad eyes to Fantine, and said, “Monsieur le Maire has gone away.”
Fantine raised herself and crouched on her heels in the bed: her eyes sparkled; indescribable joy beamed from that melancholy face.
“Gone!” she cried; “he has gone to get Cosette.”
Then she raised her arms to heaven, and her white face became ineffable; her lips moved; she was praying in a low voice.
When her prayer was finished, “Sister,” she said, “I am willing to lie down again; I will do anything you wish; I was naughty just now; I beg your pardon for having spoken so loud; it is very wrong to talk loudly; I know that well, my good sister, but, you see, I am very happy: the good God is good; M. Madeleine is good; just think! he has gone to Montfermeil to get my little Cosette.”
She lay down again, with the nun’s assistance, helped the nun to arrange her pillow, and kissed the little silver cross which she wore on her neck, and which Sister Simplice had given her.
“My child,” said the sister, “try to rest now, and do not talk any more.”
Fantine took the sister’s hand in her moist hands, and the latter was pained to feel that perspiration.
“He set out this morning for Paris; in fact, he need not even go through Paris; Montfermeil is a little to the left as you come thence. Do you remember how he said to me yesterday, when I spoke to him of Cosette, Soon, soon? He wants to give me a surprise, you know! he made me sign a letter so that she could be taken from the Thénardiers; they cannot say anything, can they? they will give back Cosette, for they have been paid; the authorities will not allow them to keep the child since they have received their pay. Do not make signs to me that I must not talk, sister! I am extremely happy; I am doing well; I am not ill at all any more; I am going to see Cosette again; I am even quite hungry; it is nearly five years since I saw her last; you cannot imagine how much attached one gets to children, and then, she will be so pretty; you will see! If you only knew what pretty little rosy fingers she had! In the first place, she will have very beautiful hands; she had ridiculous hands when she was only a year old; like this! she must be a big girl now; she is seven years old; she is quite a young lady; I call her Cosette, but her name is really Euphrasie. Stop! this morning I was looking at the dust on the chimney-piece, and I had a sort of idea come across me, like that, that I should see Cosette again soon. Mon Dieu! how wrong it is not to see one’s children for years! One ought to reflect that life is not eternal. Oh, how good M. le Maire is to go! it is very cold! it is true; he had on his cloak, at least? he will be here to-morrow, will he not? to-morrow will be a festival day; to-morrow morning, sister, you must remind me to put on my little cap that has lace on it. What a place that Montfermeil is! I took that journey on foot once; it was very long for me, but the diligences go very quickly! he will be here to-morrow with Cosette: how far is it from here to Montfermeil?”
The sister, who had no idea of distances, replied, “Oh, I think that he will be here to-morrow.”
“To-morrow! to-morrow!” said Fantine, “I shall see Cosette to-morrow! you see, good sister of the good God, that I am no longer ill; I am mad; I could dance if any one wished it.”
A person who had seen her a quarter of an hour previously would not have understood the change; she was all rosy now; she spoke in a lively and natural voice; her whole face was one smile; now and then she talked, she laughed softly; the joy of a mother is almost infantile.
“Well,” resumed the nun, “now that you are happy, mind me, and do not talk any more.”
Fantine laid her head on her pillow and said in a low voice: “Yes, lie down again; be good, for you are going to have your child; Sister Simplice is right; every one here is right.”
And then, without stirring, without even moving her head, she began to stare all about her with wide-open eyes and a joyous air, and she said nothing more.
The sister drew the curtains together again, hoping that she would fall into a doze. Between seven and eight o’clock the doctor came; not hearing any sound, he thought Fantine was asleep, entered softly, and approached the bed on tiptoe; he opened the curtains a little, and, by the light of the taper, he saw Fantine’s big eyes gazing at him.
She said to him, “She will be allowed to sleep beside me in a little bed, will she not, sir?”
The doctor thought that she was delirious. She added:—
“See! there is just room.”
The doctor took Sister Simplice aside, and she explained matters to him; that M. Madeleine was absent for a day or two, and that in their doubt they had not thought it well to undeceive the invalid, who believed that the mayor had gone to Montfermeil; that it was possible, after all, that her guess was correct: the doctor approved.
He returned to Fantine’s bed, and she went on:—
“You see, when she wakes up in the morning, I shall be able to say good morning to her, poor kitten, and when I cannot sleep at night, I can hear her asleep; her little gentle breathing will do me good.”
“Give me your hand,” said the doctor.
She stretched out her arm, and exclaimed with a laugh:—
“Ah, hold! in truth, you did not know it; I am cured; Cosette will arrive to-morrow.”
The doctor was surprised; she was better; the pressure on her chest had decreased; her pulse had regained its strength; a sort of life had suddenly supervened and reanimated this poor, worn-out creature.
“Doctor,” she went on, “did the sister tell you that M. le Maire has gone to get that mite of a child?”
The doctor recommended silence, and that all painful emotions should be avoided; he prescribed an infusion of pure chinchona, and, in case the fever should increase again during the night, a calming potion. As he took his departure, he said to the sister:—
“She is doing better; if good luck willed that the mayor should actually arrive to-morrow with the child, who knows? there are crises so astounding; great joy has been known to arrest maladies; I know well that this is an organic disease, and in an advanced state, but all those things are such mysteries: we may be able to save her.”
It was nearly eight o’clock in the evening when the cart, which we left on the road, entered the porte-cochère of the Hotel de la Poste in Arras; the man whom we have been following up to this moment alighted from it, responded with an abstracted air to the attentions of the people of the inn, sent back the extra horse, and with his own hands led the little white horse to the stable; then he opened the door of a billiard-room which was situated on the ground floor, sat down there, and leaned his elbows on a table; he had taken fourteen hours for the journey which he had counted on making in six; he did himself the justice to acknowledge that it was not his fault, but at bottom, he was not sorry.
The landlady of the hotel entered.
“Does Monsieur wish a bed? Does Monsieur require supper?”
He made a sign of the head in the negative.
“The stableman says that Monsieur’s horse is extremely fatigued.”
Here he broke his silence.
“Will not the horse be in a condition to set out again to-morrow morning?”
“Oh, Monsieur! he must rest for two days at least.”
He inquired:—
“Is not the posting-station located here?”
“Yes, sir.”
The hostess conducted him to the office; he showed his passport, and inquired whether there was any way of returning that same night to M. sur M. by the mail-wagon; the seat beside the post-boy chanced to be vacant; he engaged it and paid for it. “Monsieur,” said the clerk, “do not fail to be here ready to start at precisely one o’clock in the morning.”
This done, he left the hotel and began to wander about the town.
He was not acquainted with Arras; the streets were dark, and he walked on at random; but he seemed bent upon not asking the way of the passers-by. He crossed the little river Crinchon, and found himself in a labyrinth of narrow alleys where he lost his way. A citizen was passing along with a lantern. After some hesitation, he decided to apply to this man, not without having first glanced behind and in front of him, as though he feared lest some one should hear the question which he was about to put.
“Monsieur,” said he, “where is the court-house, if you please.”
“You do not belong in town, sir?” replied the bourgeois, who was an oldish man; “well, follow me. I happen to be going in the direction of the court-house, that is to say, in the direction of the hotel of the prefecture; for the court-house is undergoing repairs just at this moment, and the courts are holding their sittings provisionally in the prefecture.”
“Is it there that the Assizes are held?” he asked.
“Certainly, sir; you see, the prefecture of to-day was the bishop’s palace before the Revolution. M. de Conzié, who was bishop in ’82, built a grand hall there. It is in this grand hall that the court is held.”
On the way, the bourgeois said to him:—
“If Monsieur desires to witness a case, it is rather late. The sittings generally close at six o’clock.”
When they arrived on the grand square, however, the man pointed out to him four long windows all lighted up, in the front of a vast and gloomy building.
“Upon my word, sir, you are in luck; you have arrived in season. Do you see those four windows? That is the Court of Assizes. There is light there, so they are not through. The matter must have been greatly protracted, and they are holding an evening session. Do you take an interest in this affair?
Comments (0)