Page 430 - les-miserables

The clock struck six. Fantine did not seem to hear it. She
no longer seemed to pay attention to anything about her.
Sister Simplice sent a serving-maid to inquire of the por-
tress of the factory, whether the mayor had returned, and if
he would not come to the infirmary soon. The girl returned
in a few minutes.
Fantine was still motionless and seemed absorbed in her
own thoughts.
The servant informed Sister Simplice in a very low tone,
that the mayor had set out that morning before six o’clock,
in a little tilbury harnessed to a white horse, cold as the
weather was; that he had gone alone, without even a driver;
that no one knew what road he had taken; that people said
he had been seen to turn into the road to Arras; that others
asserted that they had met him on the road to Paris. That
when he went away he had been very gentle, as usual, and
that he had merely told the portress not to expect him that
night.
While the two women were whispering together, with
their backs turned to Fantine’s bed, the sister interrogat-
ing, the servant conjecturing, Fantine, with the feverish
vivacity of certain organic maladies, which unite the free
movements of health with the frightful emaciation of death,
had raised herself to her knees in bed, with her shrivelled
hands resting on the bolster, and her head thrust through
the opening of the curtains, and was listening. All at once
she cried:—
‘You are speaking of M. Madeleine! Why are you talking
so low? What is he doing? Why does he not come?’

430 Les Miserables