Fantine

“ There are many such virtues down here, and one day they will be up above, for this life has a morrow.
At the beginning Fantine had been so ashamed that she did not dare go out. When she was in the streets, she perceived that people turned round to look at her and pointed to her. Every one stared at her, and no one bowed to her; the cold bitter contempt of the passers-by passed through her flesh and her mind like an east wind. In small towns an unhappy girl seems to be naked beneath the sarcasm and curiosity of all. In Paris, at least no one knows you, and that obscurity is a garment. ”

“ And in this community of Paradise, the girls, singing, talking, dancing, chasing butterflies, picking bind-weed, wetting their stockings in the tall grass, fresh, madcap, not bad, all received kisses from all the men, every now and then, save Fantine, enveloped in her vague resistance, dreamy and shy, and who was in love. "You always look strange," Favourite said to her. ”

“ O Fantine, be aware of this fact: I, Tholomyès, am an illusion—why, the fair girl of chimeræ is not even listening to me! All about her is freshness, suavity, youth, and sweet morning brightness. O Fantine, girl worthy to be called Margaret or Pearl, you are a woman of the fairest East. Ladies, here is a second piece of advice; do not marry, for marriage is a risk, and you had better shun it. But nonsense! I am wasting my words! girls are incurable about wedlock; and all that we sages may say will not prevent waistcoat-makers and shoebinders from dreaming of husbands loaded with diamonds. ”

“ Fantine was beautiful, without being exactly conscious of it. Those rare dreamers, the mysterious priests of the beautiful, who silently confront everything with perfection, would have seen in this little work-girl the ancient sacred euphony, through the transparency of Parisian grace! This girl had blood in her, and had those two descriptions of beauty which are the style and the rhythm. The style is the form of the ideal; the rhythm is its movement. ”

“ Love talk and table talk are equally indescribable, for the first is a cloud, the second smoke. Fantine and Dahlia were humming a tune, Tholomyès was drinking, Zéphine laughing, Fantine smiling, Listolier was blowing a penny trumpet bought at St. Cloud, Favourite was looking tenderly at Blachevelle and saying,—
"Blachevelle, I adore you." ”

“ On his face and in his attitude there was only an indescribable pity. After a few minutes passed in this reverie, he stooped over Fantine and spoke to her in a low voice. What did he say to her? What could this outcast man say to this dead woman? No one on earth heard the words, but did that dead woman hear them? There are touching illusions, which are perhaps sublime realities. ”

“ It is a sad thing. Some persons are wicked solely through a desire to talk, and this conversation, which is gossip in the drawing-room, scandal in the ante-room, is like those chimneys which consume wood rapidly; they require a great deal of combustible, and this combustible is their neighbor.
Fantine was observed then, and besides, more than one girl was jealous of her light hair and white teeth. ”

“ The wicked have a black happiness. Excessive labor fatigued Fantine, and the little dry cough she had grew worse. She sometimes said to her neighbor, "Marguerite, just feel how hot my hands are!" Still, in the morning, when she passed an old broken comb through her glorious hair, which shone like floss silk, she had a minute of happy coquettishness. ”

“ Fantine's native place had changed.
M. Madeline—an angel, and inventor of jetwork—had been teaching the villagers how to make spurious jet.
This is a progressive age. Those Americans,—children of the West,—they make nutmegs out of wood.
I, myself, have seen hams made of pine, in the wigwams of those children of the forest.
But civilization has acquired deception too. Society is made up of deception. Even the best French society. ”

“ I reckon, though, I’ll get more from Madame Fantine than I will from Peter.”
Jack’s excitement lessened. A quizzical light came into his eyes. Rogers’s liking for Fantine was no secret to him. “Maybe you will,” he conceded. “Fantine is very kind hearted. It’s a great pity”—meditatively—“that she talks so much.”
A faint color tinged the old hunter’s leathery cheeks. “Who? Her?” he mumbled. “She—she—Well? What in thunder do you expect a woman to do? Ain’t a woman got a tongue? Why shouldn’t she use it. What I hate is to hear men talking so much. ”

“ A dark change took place in Fantine's heart. When she found that she could no longer dress her hair, she began to hate all around her. She had long shared the universal veneration for Father Madeleine: but, through the constant iteration that he had discharged her and was the cause of her misfortune, she grew to hate him too, and worse than the rest. When she passed the factory she pretended to laugh and sing. An old workwoman who once saw her doing so, said, "That's a girl who will come to a bad end." ”

“ A sage and a philosopher are two persons; and what proves it is that, after making all reservations for these little irregular households, Favourite, Zéphine, and Dahlia were philosophic girls, and Fantine a prudent girl. Prudent, it will be said, and Tholomyès? Solomon would reply, that love forms part of wisdom. We confine ourselves to saying that Fantine's love was a first love, a single love, a faithful love. ”

“ Fantine----" he paused again, coughed, and added precipitately, "Really, my dear Drum, you are to be congratulated on such a son, and such a future wife! Inimitable, quite inimitable! You'll never feel the least dull in the long winter evenings. Ah, Mdlle. Fantine, mes compliments! I have not seen you for years; not since----" here once more he pulled himself up short, and Lord Drummuir, beguiled from wrath by his ever-ready sense of humour, burst in a loud guffaw.
"Look here, Johnnie," he cried, "hold your tongue and don't splay that old foot of yours about any more. ”

“ At the outset, as we have seen, she punctually paid the Thénardiers; and as she could only sign her name, she was compelled to write to them through the agency of a public writer. It was noticed that she wrote frequently. It was beginning to be whispered in the shop that Fantine "wrote letters," and was "carrying on."
No one spies the actions of persons so much as those whom they do not concern. Why does this gentleman never come till nightfall? Why does So-and-So never hang up his key on Thursdays? Why does he always take back streets? ”

“ Love is a fault; be it so; but Fantine was innocence floating on the surface of the fault. ”

“ In fact, a fit of coughing interrupted Fantine at nearly every word. She did not object; she feared lest she had injured the confidence she had wished to inspire, by some too impassioned entreaties, and she began talking of indifferent matters.
"Montfermeil is a rather pretty place, is it not? In summer, pleasure parties go there. Have those Thénardiers a good trade? Not many people pass through the village, and theirs is a sort of pot-house."
M. Madeleine still held her hand, and was looking at her anxiously ”

“ Fantine continued,—
"Look you, I cannot take the child with me to my town, for when a woman has a baby, it is a hard matter for her to get a situation. People are so foolish in our part. It was Heaven that made me pass in front of your inn ”

“ She felt like clay in the hands of the potter.
"Twaddle!" insisted Colonel Compton. "I can only think you were insane. The fact is, my dear Fanny, you're getting old and your ankles wouldn't stand the hacking about of a dancer's life. That is why we agreed on your becoming Lady Drummuir, and you ought to be very much obliged to the old man for letting you off so easily."
This, combined with the reiterated allusions to her age, was too much for patience. Fantine jumped up and stamped her foot in impotent anger.
"Easily?" she echoed. "Can't you see the malice of the man? ”

“ their majesty, peculiar to the human conscience, persists in horror; they are virtues which have but one vice, error. The pitiless honest joy of a fanatic, in the midst of his atrocity, retains a mournfully venerable radiance. Without suspecting it, Javert, in his formidable happiness, was worthy of pity, like every ignorant man who triumphs; ”

“ You are not angry with us, I know, but it was so indeed.”
“Why should I feel angry with you for feeling just what I do myself, only more intensely,” said Fanny. “Tis one of the greatest mysteries of life—the only mystery of life that I have yet faced—why a man who is as handsome as an archangel, and who possesses a voice that an archangel might envy, should so much as glance at an insignificant young woman like myself! ”

“ It was with Mr Crimble's eyes that I now scanned not only his phantom presence in Fanny's imagination, but my own, standing beside him—a "knick-knack" figure of fun, pygmied beneath the flappets of his clerical coat, like [Pg 180] a sun-beetle by a rook. The spectacle strengthened me without much affecting Fanny. She was no longer the absolute sultana of my being. I could think now, as well as adore.
How strange it is that when our minds are needled to a sharp focus mere "things" swarm so close. ”

“ Fanny; no satire from you: you, who are not properly speaking even a tragic actress! But there is something about your profession sublimely picturesque in the midst of these noisy brawls. The storms of nations shake not the stage; you are wrapt in another life; the atmosphere of poetry girds you. You are like the fairies who lived among men, visible only at night, and playing their fantastic tricks amidst the surrounding passions—the sorrow, the crime, the avarice, the love, the wrath, the luxury, the famine, that belong to the grosser dwellers of the earth. You are to be envied, Fanny. ”

“ There is nothing in the plain refined features that cries out for recognition of a temperament astutely divined. They have the calm repose that indicates entire lack of self-consciousness, no quality is unduly insisted upon, there is neither sentimentality nor brutal realism in the handling, the sitter simply lives as naturally upon the canvas as we feel that she must have lived in the world. [Pg 116] It is for such sweet and logical truth-telling, such mild and strict interpretation, that we must pay our debt of appreciation to Fantin, the painter of ideal realities and of actual ideals. ”

“ There was once a philosopher called Plato, my dear. He poisoned Man's soul."
Flesh and spirit, Fanny must have been very tired. Her voice fluttered on like a ragged flag.
"But listen, listen!" I entreated her. "I haven't blamed you for that, Fanny. I swear it. I mean, you can't help not loving. I know that. But perhaps if only we had—— It's a dreadful thing to think of him sitting there alone—the vestry—and then looking up 'with a smile.' Oh, Fanny, with a smile! I dare hardly go into his mind—and the verger looking in. I think of him all day." ”

“ Good sense and good nature go hand in hand in plain grey taffeta, not down the primrose paths of life, but along the King's highway of every day, where they run no chance of jostling the simple foot-passengers or exciting the envy of any by the flaunting of feathers in their face. Good sense and good nature are best satisfied when they attract no attention, but pass on to obscurity, smiling at the struggle of others to be accounted persons of importance.”
“Then you have indeed made up your mind to marry Mr. Barlowe?” cried Esther.
Fanny laughed enigmatically. ”

“ But I was ever a prophet, Fanny, and I venture to tell you that you have so overloaded your heart and your wits with caution and fear of the world's opinion that when you take pen in hand once more you 'll find it clogged and heavy. 'T will move on stilts instead of the light heels that danced 'Evelina,' and the ungrateful world will say, 'There goes a woman that if she had shut her eyes on forms and opened them on nature had been the glory of her age.' You are too fearful of the world, Fanny. ”

“ And while memory lingers I'll fondly believe thee
A being with life and its best feelings warm;
And freely the wild song of gratitude weave thee,
Bless'd spirit! that bore me and mine from the storm.
CIV.
But where is Fanny? She has long been thrown
Where cheeks and roses wither—in the shade.
The age of chivalry, you know, is gone;
And although, as I once before have said,
I love a pretty face to adoration,
Yet, still, I must preserve my reputation,
CV.
As a true dandy of the modern schools. ”

“ For goodness sake, don’t talk,’ said Fanny; ‘I want to talk, myself. Edmund, we must not be alone any more. I must take such precautions as will prevent my being ever again reduced to the state of dreadful depression in which I am this evening.’
‘My dear,’ answered Mr Sparkler; ‘being as you are well known to be, a remarkably fine woman with no—’
‘Oh, good GRACIOUS!’ cried Fanny. ”

“ Fanny had her secrets and cherished them with a fearful joy, for she knew that any day might remove either or both of them, and then there would be nothing left for her in the household but to put her heart into her needlework. But one cannot do needlework without needles, and if she were to put her heart into her work, and if every needle had a point, the result would, she knew, be a good many prickings. ”

“ Was there some mysterious power that had so soon taught the man such methods to a woman’s heart, or was he not rather on guard and schooling himself for the rôle which was to be acted out to the end? But as the day was approaching its close, Fanny became tired and languid; a certain mistrust was creeping into her heart with the nearing darkness. It had grown sultry and close, and the view from the car window was no longer cheerful, as they whirled through forests, gloomy with trailing moss, or sped over an unfamiliar country whose features were strange and held no promise of a welcome for her. ”