428 Les Miserables
Half an hour passed, then an hour, no one came; every
time the clock struck, Fantine started up and looked to-
wards 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 to-day, since I am
going away to-morrow.’
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, corn-flowers are blue,
I love my love, corn-flowers 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