322 Les Miserables
second-hand dealer, who had taken back nearly all his fur-
niture, said to her incessantly, ‘When will you pay me, you
hussy?’ What did they want of her, good God! She felt that
she was being hunted, and something of the wild beast de-
veloped in her. About the same time, Thenardier wrote to
her that he had waited with decidedly too much amiability
and that he must have a hundred francs at once; otherwise
he would turn little Cosette out of doors, convalescent as
she was from her heavy illness, into the cold and the streets,
and that she might do what she liked with herself, and die if
she chose. ‘A hundred francs,’ thought Fantine. ‘But in what
trade can one earn a hundred sous a day?’
‘Come!’ said she, ‘let us sell what is left.’
The unfortunate girl became a woman of the town.