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Les Misérables - Madame Victurnien's Success

1. M. Myriel

2. M. Myriel becomes M. Welcome

3. A Hard Bishopric for a Good Bishop

4. Works corresponding to Words

5. Monseigneur Bienvenu made his Cassocks last too long

6. Who guarded his House for him

7. Cravatte

8. Philosophy after Drinking

9. The Brother as depicted by the Sister

10. The Bishop in the Presence of an Unknown Light

11. A Restriction

12. The Solitude of Monseigneur Welcome

13. What he believed

14. What he thought

15. The Evening of a Day of Walking

16. Prudence counselled to Wisdom

17. The Heroism of Passive Obedience

18. Details concerning the Cheese-Dairies of Pontarlier

19. Tranquillity

20. Jean Valjean

21. The Interior of Despair

22. Billows and Shadows

23. New Troubles

24. The Man aroused

25. What he does

26. The Bishop works

27. Little Gervais

28. The Year 1817

29. A Double Quartette

30. Four and Four

31. Tholomyes is so Merry that he sings a Spanish Ditty

32. At Bombardas

33. A Chapter in which they adore Each Other

34. The Wisdom of Tholomyes

35. The Death of a Horse

36. A Merry End to Mirth

37. One Mother meets Another Mother

38. First Sketch of Two Unprepossessing Figures

39. The Lark

40. The History of a Progress in Black Glass Trinkets

41. Madeleine

42. Sums deposited with Laffitte

43. M. Madeleine in Mourning

44. Vague Flashes on the Horizon

45. Father Fauchelevent

46. Fauchelevent becomes a Gardener in Paris

47. Madame Victurnien expends Thirty Francs on Morality

48. Madame Victurnien's Success

49. Result of the Success

50. Christus nos Liberavit

51. M. Bamatabois's Inactivity

52. The Solution of Some Questions connected with the Municipal Police

53. The Beginning of Repose

54. How Jean may become Champ

55. Sister Simplice

56. The Perspicacity of Master Scaufflaire

57. A Tempest in a Skull

58. Forms assumed by Suffering during Sleep

59. Hindrances

60. Sister Simplice put to the Proof

61. The Traveller on his Arrival takes Precautions for Departure

62. An Entrance by Favor

63. A Place where Convictions are in Process of Formation

64. The System of Denials

65. Champmathieu more and more Astonished

66. In what Mirror M. Madeleine contemplates his Hair

67. Fantine Happy

68. Javert Satisfied

69. Authority reasserts its Rights

70. A Suitable Tomb

71. What is met with on the Way from Nivelles

72. Hougomont

73. The Eighteenth of June, 1815

74. A

75. The Quid Obscurum of Battles

76. Four o'clock in the Afternoon

77. Napoleon in a Good Humor

78. The Emperor puts a Question to the Guide Lacoste

79. The Unexpected

80. The Plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean

81. A Bad Guide to Napoleon; a Good Guide to Bulow

82. The Guard

83. The Catastrophe

84. The Last Square

85. Cambronne

86. Quot Libras in Duce?

87. Is Waterloo to be considered Good?

88. A Recrudescence of Divine Right

89. The Battle-Field at Night

90. Number 24,601 becomes Number 9,430

91. In which the reader will peruse Two Verses which are of the Devil's Composition possibly

92. The Ankle-Chain must have undergone a Certain Preparatory Manipulation to be thus broken with a Blow from a Hammer

93. The Water Question at Montfermeil

94. Two Complete Portraits

95. Men must have Wine, and Horses must have Water

96. Entrance on the Scene of a Doll

97. The Little One All Alone

98. Which possibly proves Boulatruelle's Intelligence

99. Cosette Side by Side with the Stranger in the Dark

100. The Unpleasantness of receiving into One's House a Poor Man who may be a Rich Man

101. Thenardier at his Manoeuvres

102. He who seeks to better himself may render his Situation Worse

103. Number 9,430 reappears, and Cosette wins it in the Lottery

104. Master Gorbeau

105. A Nest for Owl and a Warbler

106. Two Misfortunes Make One Piece of Good Fortune

107. The Remarks of the Principal Tenant

108. A Five-Franc Piece Falls on the Ground and Produces a Tumult

109. The Zigzags of Strategy

110. It Is Lucky That the Pont D'Austerlitz Bears Carriages

111. To Wit, the Plan of Paris in 1727

112. The Gropings of Flight

113. Which Would be Impossible With Gas Lanterns

114. The Beginning of an Enigma

115. Continuation of the Enigma

116. The Enigma Becomes Doubly Mysterious

117. The Man with the Bell

118. Which Explains How Javert Got on the Scent

119. Number 62 Rue Petit-Picpus

120. The Obedience of Martin Verga

121. Austerities

122. Gayeties

123. Distractions

124. The Little Convent

125. Some Silhouettes of this Darkness

126. Post Corda Lapides

127. A Century under a Guimpe

128. Origin of the Perpetual Adoration

129. End of the Petit-Picpus

130. The Convent as an Abstract Idea

131. The Convent as an Historical Fact

132. On What Conditions One can respect the Past

133. The Convent from the Point of View of Principles

134. Prayer

135. The Absolute Goodness of Prayer

136. Precautions to be observed in Blame

137. Faith, Law

138. Which treats of the Manner of entering a Convent

139. Fauchelevent in the Presence of a Difficulty

140. Mother Innocente

141. In which Jean Valjean has quite the Air of having read Austin Castillejo

142. It is not Necessary to be Drunk in order to be Immortal

143. Between Four Planks

144. In which will be found the Origin of the Saying: Don't lose the Card

145. A Successful Interrogatory

146. Cloistered







So the monk's widow was good for something.

But M. Madeleine had heard nothing of all this. Life is full
of just such combinations of events. M. Madeleine was in the habit
of almost never entering the women's workroom.

At the head of this room he had placed an elderly spinster,
whom the priest had provided for him, and he had full confidence
in this superintendent,--a truly respectable person, firm, equitable,
upright, full of the charity which consists in giving, but not having
in the same degree that charity which consists in understanding and
in forgiving. M. Madeleine relied wholly on her. The best men are
often obliged to delegate their authority. It was with this full power,
and the conviction that she was doing right, that the superintendent
had instituted the suit, judged, condemned, and executed Fantine.

As regards the fifty francs, she had given them from a fund
which M. Madeleine had intrusted to her for charitable purposes,
and for giving assistance to the workwomen, and of which she
rendered no account.

Fantine tried to obtain a situation as a servant in the neighborhood;
she went from house to house. No one would have her. She could
not leave town. The second-hand dealer, to whom she was in debt
for her furniture--and what furniture!--said to her, "If you leave,
I will have you arrested as a thief." The householder, whom she
owed for her rent, said to her, "You are young and pretty;
you can pay." She divided the fifty francs between the landlord
and the furniture-dealer, returned to the latter three-quarters
of his goods, kept only necessaries, and found herself without work,
without a trade, with nothing but her bed, and still about fifty
francs in debt.

She began to make coarse shirts for soldiers of the garrison,
and earned twelve sous a day. Her daughter cost her ten. It was
at this point that she began to pay the Thenardiers irregularly.

However, the old woman who lighted her candle for her when she
returned at night, taught her the art of living in misery.
Back of living on little, there is the living on nothing.
These are the two chambers; the first is dark, the second is black.

Fantine learned how to live without fire entirely in the winter;
how to give up a bird which eats a half a farthing's worth of
millet every two days; how to make a coverlet of one's petticoat,
and a petticoat of one's coverlet; how to save one's candle,
by taking one's meals by the light of the opposite window.
No one knows all that certain feeble creatures, who have grown old
in privation and honesty, can get out of a sou. It ends by being
a talent. Fantine acquired this sublime talent, and regained a
little courage.

At this epoch she said to a neighbor, "Bah! I say to myself, by only
sleeping five hours, and working all the rest of the time at my sewing,
I shall always manage to nearly earn my bread. And, then, when one
is sad, one eats less. Well, sufferings, uneasiness, a little
bread on one hand, trouble on the other,--all this will support me."

It would have been a great happiness to have her little girl with her
in this distress. She thought of having her come. But what then!
Make her share her own destitution! And then, she was in debt
to the Thenardiers! How could she pay them? And the journey!
How pay for that?

The old woman who had given her lessons in what may be called
the life of indigence, was a sainted spinster named Marguerite,
who was pious with a true piety, poor and charitable towards the poor,
and even towards the rich, knowing how to write just sufficiently
to sign herself Marguerite, and believing in God, which is science.

There are many such virtuous people in this lower world; some day
they will be in the world above. This life has a morrow.

At first, Fantine had been so ashamed that she had not dared to go out.

When she was in the street, she divined that people turned round
behind her, and pointed at her; every one stared at her and no one
greeted her; the cold and bitter scorn of the passers-by penetrated
her very flesh and soul like a north wind.

It seems as though an unfortunate woman were utterly bare beneath
the sarcasm and the curiosity of all in small towns. In Paris,
at least, no one knows you, and this obscurity is a garment.
Oh! how she would have liked to betake herself to Paris! Impossible!

She was obliged to accustom herself to disrepute, as she had accustomed
herself to indigence. Gradually she decided on her course.
At the expiration of two or three months she shook off her shame,
and began to go about as though there were nothing the matter.
"It is all the same to me," she said.

She went and came, bearing her head well up, with a bitter smile,
and was conscious that she was becoming brazen-faced.

Madame Victurnien sometimes saw her passing, from her window,
noticed the distress of "that creature" who, "thanks to her,"
had been "put back in her proper place," and congratulated herself.
The happiness of the evil-minded is black.

Excess of toil wore out Fantine, and the little dry cough which
troubled her increased. She sometimes said to her neighbor,
Marguerite, "Just feel how hot my hands are!"

Nevertheless, when she combed her beautiful hair in the morning
with an old broken comb, and it flowed about her like floss silk,
she experienced a moment of happy coquetry.




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