In What Mirror M. Madeleine Contemplates His Hair — Les Misérables

Day has begun to dawn. Fantine has passed a sleepless feverish night of happy visions, and at daybreak she has fallen asleep. Sister Simplice uses the slumber to mix a new potion of chinchona. She has been in the laboratory only a few moments, bending over drugs and phials in the half-light, when she raises her head and utters a faint shriek. The mayor stands before her. He has entered silently. How is that poor woman? Not so bad just now, but they have been very uneasy. Fantine was very ill yesterday. She is better because she thinks the mayor has gone to Montfermeil to get her child. The sister dares not question him. She sees from his air that he has not come from there. All that is good. You were right not to undeceive her. But now she will see you and will not see her child. What shall we say to her? He reflects. God will inspire us. The sister murmurs, half aloud, that they cannot tell a lie.

It is broad daylight. The light falls full on his face. Good God, what has happened to you? Your hair is perfectly white. White, he says. There is no mirror. She rummages in a drawer and pulls out the little glass the doctor uses to see whether a patient is dead. He takes it, looks at his hair, and says Well, indifferently, as though his mind were on something else. The sister feels chilled by something strange. Can he see her? Is he not going to have the child brought back? Of course, but it will take two or three days at least. If she did not see him until then, she would not know he had returned, and it would be easy to inspire her with patience. They would not have to enact a lie. He reflects, then says with calm gravity: No, sister, I must see her. I may, perhaps, be in haste. The nun does not appear to notice this perhaps, which gives an obscure sense to the speech.

He remarks that a door shuts badly and might awaken her, then enters, approaches the bed, and draws aside the curtains. She is asleep. Her breath issues with that tragic sound which breaks the hearts of mothers watching a condemned child. The painful respiration hardly troubles a serenity that transfigures her. Her pallor has become whiteness. Her cheeks are crimson. Her long golden lashes, the only beauty of her youth that remains, palpitate though they stay closed. Her whole person trembles with an unfolding of wings ready to open and bear her away. She resembles something on the point of soaring rather than something on the point of dying. He remains motionless, gazing in turn upon the sick woman and the crucifix, as he did two months before, the first day he came to this asylum. They are both still there in the same attitude, she sleeping, he praying. Only now her hair is grey and his is white. The sister has not entered with him. He stands beside the bed with his finger on his lips, as though someone in the chamber must be enjoined to silence. She opens her eyes, sees him, and says quietly, with a smile: And Cosette?