neck, prominent shoulder-blades, frail limbs, a clayey skin, and her golden hair was growing out sprinkled with gray. Alas! how illness improvises old-age!

At midday the physician returned, gave some directions, inquired whether the mayor had made his appearance at the infirmary, and shook his head.

M. Madeleine usually came to see the invalid at three o’clock. As exactness is kindness, he was exact.

About half-past two, Fantine began to be restless. In the course of twenty minutes, she asked the nun more than ten times, “What time is it, sister?”

Three o’clock struck. At the third stroke, Fantine sat up in bed; she who could, in general, hardly turn over, joined her yellow, fleshless hands in a sort of convulsive clasp, and the nun heard her utter one of those profound sighs which seem to throw off dejection. Then Fantine turned and looked at the door.

No one entered; the door did not open.

She remained thus for a quarter of an hour, her eyes riveted on the door, motionless and apparently holding her breath. The sister dared not speak to her. The clock struck a quarter past three. Fantine fell back on her pillow.

She said nothing, but began to plait the sheets once more.

Half an hour passed, then an hour, no one came; every time the clock struck, Fantine started up and looked towards the door, then fell back again.

Her thought was clearly perceptible, but she uttered no name, she made no complaint, she blamed no one. But she coughed in a melancholy way. One would have said that something dark was descending upon her. She was livid and her lips were blue. She smiled now and then.

Five o’clock struck. Then the sister heard her say, very low and gently, “He is wrong not to come today, since I am going away tomorrow.”

Sister Simplice herself was surprised at M. Madeleine’s delay.

In the meantime, Fantine was staring at the tester of her bed. She seemed to be endeavoring to recall something. All at once she began to sing in a voice as feeble as a breath. The nun listened. This is what Fantine was singing:⁠—

Lovely things we will buy
As we stroll the faubourgs through.
Roses are pink, cornflowers are blue,
I love my love, cornflowers are blue.

Yestere’en the Virgin Mary came near my stove, in a broidered mantle clad, and said to me, ‘Here, hide ’neath my veil the child whom you one day begged from me. Haste to the city, buy linen, buy a needle, buy thread.’

Lovely things we will buy
As we stroll the faubourgs through.

Dear Holy Virgin, beside my stove I have set a cradle with ribbons decked. God may give me his loveliest star; I prefer the child thou hast granted me. ‘Madame, what shall I do with this linen fine?’⁠—‘Make of it clothes for thy newborn babe.’

Roses are pink and cornflowers are blue,
I love my love, and cornflowers are blue.

‘Wash this linen.’⁠—‘Where?’⁠—‘In the stream. Make of it, soiling not, spoiling not, a petticoat fair with its bodice fine, which I will embroider and fill with flowers.’⁠—‘Madame, the child is no longer here; what is to be done?’⁠—‘Then make of it a winding-sheet in which to bury me.’

Lovely things we will buy
As we stroll the faubourgs through,
Roses are pink, cornflowers are blue,
I love my love, cornflowers are blue.

This song was an old cradle romance with which she had, in former days, lulled her little Cosette to sleep, and which had never recurred to her mind in all the five years during which she had been parted from her child. She sang it in so sad a voice, and to so sweet an air, that it was enough to make anyone, even a nun, weep. The sister, accustomed as she was to austerities, felt a tear spring to her eyes.

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 portress 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 interrogating, 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?”

Her voice was so abrupt and hoarse that the two women thought they heard the voice of a man; they wheeled round in affright.

“Answer me!” cried Fantine.

The servant stammered:⁠—

“The portress told me that he could not come today.”

“Be calm, my child,” said the sister; “lie down again.”

Fantine, without changing her attitude, continued in a loud voice, and with an accent that was both imperious and heartrending:⁠—

“He cannot come? Why not? You know the reason. You are whispering it to each other there. I want to know it.”

The servant-maid hastened to say in the nun’s ear, “Say that he is busy with the city council.”

Sister Simplice blushed faintly,