Page 311 - les-miserables

CHAPTER IX

MADAME VICTURNIEN’S

SUCCESS

So the monk’s widow was good for something.
But M. Madeleine had heard nothing of all this. Life is
full of just such combinations of events. M. Madeleine was
in the habit of almost never entering the women’s work-
room.
At the head of this room he had placed an elderly spin-
ster, whom the priest had provided for him, and he had
full confidence in this superintendent,—a truly respectable
person, firm, equitable, upright, full of the charity which
consists in giving, but not having in the same degree that
charity which consists in understanding and in forgiving.
M. Madeleine relied wholly on her. The best men are of-
ten obliged to delegate their authority. It was with this full
power, and the conviction that she was doing right, that the
superintendent had instituted the suit, judged, condemned,
and executed Fantine.
As regards the fifty francs, she had given them from a
fund which M. Madeleine had intrusted to her for charita-

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