Page 306 - les-miserables

CHAPTER VIII

MADAME VICTURNIEN

EXPENDS THIRTY

FRANCS ON MORALITY

When Fantine saw that she was making her living, she
felt joyful for a moment. To live honestly by her own labor,
what mercy from heaven! The taste for work had really re-
turned to her. She bought a looking-glass, took pleasure in
surveying in it her youth, her beautiful hair, her fine teeth;
she forgot many things; she thought only of Cosette and of
the possible future, and was almost happy. She hired a little
room and furnished on credit on the strength of her future
work—a lingering trace of her improvident ways. As she
was not able to say that she was married she took good care,
as we have seen, not to mention her little girl.
At first, as the reader has seen, she paid the Thenardiers
promptly. As she only knew how to sign her name, she was
obliged to write through a public letter-writer.
She wrote often, and this was noticed. It began to be said
in an undertone, in the women’s workroom, that Fantine

306 Les Miserables