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.”