Page 331 - les-miserables

‘Take three men and conduct this creature to jail.’
Then, turning to Fantine, ‘You are to have six months of
it.’ The unhappy woman shuddered.
‘Six months! six months of prison!’ she exclaimed. ‘Six
months in which to earn seven sous a day! But what will be-
come of Cosette? My daughter! my daughter! But I still owe
the Thenardiers over a hundred francs; do you know that,
Monsieur Inspector?’
She dragged herself across the damp floor, among the
muddy boots of all those men, without rising, with clasped
hands, and taking great strides on her knees.
‘Monsieur Javert,’ said she, ‘I beseech your mercy. I as-
sure you that I was not in the wrong. If you had seen the
beginning, you would have seen. I swear to you by the good
God that I was not to blame! That gentleman, the bourgeois,
whom I do not know, put snow in my back. Has any one
the right to put snow down our backs when we are walk-
ing along peaceably, and doing no harm to any one? I am
rather ill, as you see. And then, he had been saying imper-
tinent things to me for a long time: ‘You are ugly! you have
no teeth!’ I know well that I have no longer those teeth. I did
nothing; I said to myself, ‘The gentleman is amusing him-
self.’ I was honest with him; I did not speak to him. It was at
that moment that he put the snow down my back. Monsieur
Javert, good Monsieur Inspector! is there not some person
here who saw it and can tell you that this is quite true? Per-
haps I did wrong to get angry. You know that one is not
master of one’s self at the first moment. One gives way to vi-
vacity; and then, when some one puts something cold down

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