308 Les Miserables
for talking. Their conversation, the chat of the drawing-
room, gossip of the anteroom, is like those chimneys which
consume wood rapidly; they need a great amount of com-
bustibles; and their combustibles are furnished by their
neighbors.
So Fantine was watched.
In addition, many a one was jealous of her golden hair
and of her white teeth.
It was remarked that in the workroom she often turned
aside, in the midst of the rest, to wipe away a tear. These
were the moments when she was thinking of her child; per-
haps, also, of the man whom she had loved.
Breaking the gloomy bonds of the past is a mournful
task.
It was observed that she wrote twice a month at least,
and that she paid the carriage on the letter. They managed
to obtain the address: Monsieur, Monsieur Thenardier,
inn-keeper at Montfermeil. The public writer, a good old
man who could not fill his stomach with red wine with-
out emptying his pocket of secrets, was made to talk in the
wine-shop. In short, it was discovered that Fantine had a
child. ‘She must be a pretty sort of a woman.’ An old gossip
was found, who made the trip to Montfermeil, talked to the
Thenardiers, and said on her return: ‘For my five and thirty
francs I have freed my mind. I have seen the child.’
The gossip who did this thing was a gorgon named Ma-
dame Victurnien, the guardian and door-keeper of every
one’s virtue. Madame Victurnien was fifty-six, and re-
enforced the mask of ugliness with the mask of age. A