Madame Victurnien Expends Thirty Francs on Morality — Les Misérables

When Fantine sees that she is making her living, she feels joyful for a moment. To live honestly by her own labour: what mercy from heaven. The taste for work returns. She buys a looking-glass and takes pleasure in her youth, her beautiful hair, her fine teeth. She thinks only of Cosette and of the possible future, and is almost happy. She hires a little room and furnishes it on credit. She cannot say that she is married, so she takes care not to mention her little girl. At first she pays the Thénardiers promptly. She can only sign her name, so she writes through a public letter-writer. She writes often. This is noticed. It begins to be said, in an undertone, in the women's workroom, that Fantine writes letters and that she has ways about her.

There is no one for spying on people's actions like those who are not concerned in them. Certain persons are malicious solely through a necessity for talking. Their chat is a chimney that consumes wood rapidly; the combustibles are furnished by their neighbours. So Fantine is watched. Many are jealous of her golden hair and of her white teeth. She turns aside, in the midst of the rest, to wipe away a tear. They obtain the address: Thénardier, inn-keeper at Montfermeil. The public writer, a good old man who cannot fill his stomach with red wine without emptying his pocket of secrets, is made to talk in the wine-shop. It is discovered that Fantine has a child. She must be a pretty sort of a woman. An old gossip makes the trip to Montfermeil, talks to the Thénardiers, and says on her return: For my five and thirty francs I have freed my mind. I have seen the child. The gossip is a gorgon named Madame Victurnien, guardian and door-keeper of every one's virtue, fifty-six, a nettle in which the rustle of the cassock is visible. In her youth she married a monk who fled his cloister in a red cap. At the Restoration she turned bigot with so much energy that the priests forgave her her monk.

All this takes time. Fantine has been at the factory for more than a year when, one morning, the superintendent of the workroom hands her fifty francs from the mayor, tells her that she is no longer employed, and requests her, in the mayor's name, to leave the neighbourhood. This is the very month when the Thénardiers, after demanding twelve francs instead of six, have just exacted fifteen instead of twelve. Fantine is overwhelmed. She cannot leave. She is in debt for her rent and furniture. Fifty francs will not cancel the debt. She stammers a few supplicating words. The superintendent orders her out on the instant. Overcome with shame, even more than with despair, she quits the shop. So her fault is now known to every one. She is advised to see the mayor. She does not dare. The mayor has given her fifty francs because he is good, and has dismissed her because he is just. She bows before the decision.