1.F.8.1. IN WHAT MIRROR M. MADELEINE CONTEMPLATES HIS HAIR
THE day had begun to dawn. Fantine had passed a sleepless
and feverish night, filled with happy visions; at daybreak
she fell asleep. Sister Simplice, who had been watching with
her, availed herself of this slumber to go and prepare a new
potion of chinchona. The worthy sister had been in the laboratory
of the infirmary but a few moments, bending over her
drugs and phials, and scrutinizing things very closely, on account
of the dimness which the half-light of dawn spreads
over all objects. Suddenly she raised her head and uttered a
faint shriek. M. Madeleine stood before her; he had just entered
silently.
"Is it you, Mr. Mayor?" she exclaimed.
He replied in a low voice: —
"How is that poor woman?"
"Not so bad just now; but we have been very uneasy."
She explained to him what had passed: that Fantine had
been very ill the day before, and that she was better now,
because she thought that the mayor had gone to Montfermeil
to get her child. The sister dared not question the mayor; but
she perceived plainly from his air that he had not come from
there.
"All that is good," said he; "you were right not to undeceive
her."
"Yes," responded the sister; "but now, Mr. Mayor, she will
see you and will not see her child. What shall we say to her?"
He reflected for a moment.
"God will inspire us," said he.
"But we cannot tell a lie," murmured the sister, half aloud.
It was broad daylight in the room. The light fell full on
M. Madeleine's face. The sister chanced to raise her eyes to it.
"Good God, sir!" she exclaimed; "what has happened to
you? Your hair is perfectly white!"
"White!" said he.
Sister Simplice had no mirror. She rummaged in a drawer,
and pulled out the little glass which the doctor of the infirmary
used to see whether a patient was dead and whether he no
longer breathed. M. Madeleine took the mirror, looked at his
hair, and said: —
"Well!"
He uttered the word indifferently, and as though his mind
were on something else.
The sister felt chilled by something strange of which she
caught a glimpse in all this.
He inquired: —
"Can I see her?"
"Is not Monsieur le Maire going to have her child brought
back to her?" said the sister, hardly venturing to put the
question.
"Of course; but it will take two or three days at least."
"If she were not to see Monsieur le Maire until that time,"
went on the sister, timidly, "she would not know that Monsieur
le Maire had returned, and it would be easy to inspire her with
patience; and when the child arrived, she would naturally
think Monsieur le Maire had just come with the child. We
should not have to enact a lie."
M. Madeleine seemed to reflect for a few moments; then he
said with his calm gravity: —
"No, sister, I must see her. I may, perhaps, be in haste."
The nun did not appear to notice this word "perhaps,"
which communicated an obscure and singular sense to the
words of the mayor's speech. She replied, lowering her eyes
and her voice respectfully: —
"In that case, she is asleep; but Monsieur le Maire may
enter."
He made some remarks about a door which shut badly, and
the noise of which might awaken the sick woman; then he
entered Fantine's chamber, approached the bed and drew aside
the curtains. She was asleep. Her breath issued from her
breast with that tragic sound which is peculiar to those maladies,
and which breaks the hearts of mothers when they are
watching through the night beside their sleeping child who is
condemned to death. But this painful respiration hardly
troubled a sort of ineffable serenity which overspread her
countenance, and which transfigured her in her sleep. Her
pallor had become whiteness; her cheeks were crimson; her
long golden lashes, the only beauty of her youth and her virginity
which remained to her, palpitated, though they remained
closed and drooping. Her whole person was trembling
with an indescribable unfolding of wings, all ready to open
wide and bear her away, which could be felt as they rustled,
though they could not be seen. To see her thus, one would
never have dreamed that she was an invalid whose life was
almost despaired of. She resembled rather something on the
point of soaring away than something on the point of dying.
The branch trembles when a hand approaches it to pluck a
flower, and seems to both withdraw and to offer itself at one
and the same time. The human body has something of this
tremor when the instant arrives in which the mysterious
fingers of Death are about to pluck the soul.
M. Madeleine remained for some time motionless beside that
bed, gazing in turn upon the sick woman and the crucifix, as
he had done two months before, on the day when he had come
for the first time to see her in that asylum. They were both
still there in the same attitude — she sleeping, he praying; only
now, after the lapse of two months, her hair was gray and his
was white.
The sister had not entered with him. He stood beside the
bed, with his finger on his lips, as though there were some one
in the chamber whom he must enjoin to silence.
She opened her eyes, saw him, and said quietly, with a
smile: —
"And Cosette?"