Page 334 - les-miserables

one could prevent her, and gazing intently at him, with a
bewildered air, she cried:—
‘Ah! so it is you who are M. le Maire!’
Then she burst into a laugh, and spit in his face.
M. Madeleine wiped his face, and said:—
‘Inspector Javert, set this woman at liberty.’
Javert felt that he was on the verge of going mad. He
experienced at that moment, blow upon blow and almost si-
multaneously, the most violent emotions which he had ever
undergone in all his life. To see a woman of the town spit in
the mayor’s face was a thing so monstrous that, in his most
daring flights of fancy, he would have regarded it as a sac-
rilege to believe it possible. On the other hand, at the very
bottom of his thought, he made a hideous comparison as to
what this woman was, and as to what this mayor might be;
and then he, with horror, caught a glimpse of I know not
what simple explanation of this prodigious attack. But when
he beheld that mayor, that magistrate, calmly wipe his face
and say, ‘Set this woman at liberty,’ he underwent a sort of
intoxication of amazement; thought and word failed him
equally; the sum total of possible astonishment had been
exceeded in his case. He remained mute.
The words had produced no less strange an effect on
Fantine. She raised her bare arm, and clung to the damp-
er of the stove, like a person who is reeling. Nevertheless,
she glanced about her, and began to speak in a low voice, as
though talking to herself:—
‘At liberty! I am to be allowed to go! I am not to go to
prison for six months! Who said that? It is not possible that

334 Les Miserables