1
IN WHAT MIRROR M. MADELEINE LOOKS AT HIS HAIR
DAY BEGAN to dawn. Fantine had had a feverish and sleepless night, yet full of happy visions; she fell asleep at daybreak. Sister Simplice, who had watched with her, took advantage of this slumber to go and prepare a new potion of quinine. The good sister had been for a few moments in the laboratory of the infirmary, bending over her vials and drugs, looking at them very closely on account of the mist which the dawn casts over all objects, when suddenly she turned her head, and uttered a faint cry. M. Madeleine stood before her. He had just come in silently.
“You, Monsieur the Mayor!” she exclaimed.
“How is the poor woman?” he answered in a low voice.
“Better just now. But we have been very anxious indeed.”
She explained what had happened, that Fantine had been very ill the night before, but was now better, because she believed that the mayor had gone to Montfermeil for her child. The sister dared not question the mayor, but she saw clearly from his manner that he had not come from that place.
“That is well,” said he. “You did right not to undeceive her.”
“Yes,” returned the sister, “but now, Monsieur the Mayor, when she sees you without her child, what shall we tell her?”
He reflected for a moment, then said.
“God will inspire us.”
“But, we cannot tell her a lie,” murmured the sister, in a smothered tone.
The broad daylight streamed into the room, and lighted up the face of M. Madeleine.
The sister happened to raise her eyes.
“O God, monsieur,” she exclaimed. “What has befallen you? Your hair is all white!”
“White!” said he.
Sister Simplice had no mirror; she rummaged in a case of instruments, and found a little glass which the physician of the infirmary used to discover whether the breath had left the body of a patient. M. Madeleine took the glass, looked at his hair in it, and said, “Well!”
He spoke the word with indifference, as if thinking of something else.
The sister felt chilled by an unknown something, of which she caught a glimpse in all this.
He asked: “Can I see her?”
“Will not Monsieur the Mayor bring back her child?” asked the sister, scarcely daring to venture a question.
“Certainly, but two or three days are necessary.”
“If she does not see Monsieur the Mayor here,” continued the sister timidly, “she will not know that he has returned; it will be easy for her to have patience, and when the child comes, she will think naturally that Monsieur the Mayor has just arrived with her. Then we will not have to tell her a falsehood.”
Monsieur Madeleine seemed to reflect for a few moments, then said with his calm gravity:
“No, my sister, I must see her. Perhaps I have not much time.”
The nun did not seem to notice this “perhaps,” which gave an obscure and singular significance to the words of Monsieur the Mayor. She answered, lowering her eyes and voice respectfully:
“In that case, she is asleep, but monsieur can go in.”
He made a few remarks about a door that shut with difficulty the noise of which might awaken the sick woman; then entered the chamber of Fantine, approached her bed, and opened the curtains. She was sleeping. Her breath came from her chest with that tragic sound which is peculiar to these diseases, and which rends the heart of unhappy mothers, watching the slumbers of their fated children. But this laboured respiration scarcely disturbed an ineffable serenity, which overshadowed her countenance, and transfigured her in her sleep. Her pallor had become whiteness, and her cheeks were glowing. Her long, fair eyelashes, the only beauty left to her of her maidenhood and youth, quivered as they lay closed upon her cheek. Her whole person trembled as if with the fluttering of wings which were felt, but could not be seen, and which seemed about to unfold and bear her away. To see her thus, no one could have believed that her life was despaired of. She looked more as if about to soar away than to die.
The stem, when the hand is stretched out to pluck the flower, quivers, and seems at once to shrink back, and present itself. The human body has something of this trepidation at the moment when the mysterious fingers of death are about to gather the soul.
Monsieur Madeleine remained for some time motionless near the bed, looking by turns at the patient and the crucifix, as he had done two months before, on the day when he came for the first time to see her in this asylum. They were still there, both in the same attitude, she sleeping, he praying; only now, after these two months had rolled away, her hair was grey and his was white.
The sister had not entered with him. He stood by the bed, with his finger on his lips, as if there were some one in the room to silence. She opened her eyes, saw him, and said tranquilly, with a smile:
“And Cosette?”