Why?
For no reason. A pure passion for seeing, knowing, and penetrating into things. A pure itch for talking.
And often these secrets once known, these mysteries made public, these enigmas illuminated by the light of day, bring on catastrophies, duels, failures, the ruin of families, and broken lives, to the great joy of those who have "found out everything," without any interest in the matter, and by pure instinct.
A sad thing.
Certain persons are malicious solely through a necessity 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 combustibles; 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; perhaps, 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 without 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 Madame 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 quavering voice, a whimsical mind. This old dame had once been young--astonishing fact!
In her youth, in '93, she had married a monk who had fled from his cloister in a red cap, and passed from the Bernardines to the Jacobins. She was dry, rough, peevish, sharp, captious, almost venomous; all this in memory of her monk, whose widow she was, and who had ruled over her masterfully and bent her to his will. She was a nettle in which the rustle of the cassock was visible. At the Restoration she had turned bigot, and that with so much energy that the priests had forgiven her her monk.
She had a small property, which she bequeathed with much ostentation to a religious community. She was in high favor at the episcopal palace of Arras.
So this Madame Victurnien went to Montfermeil, and returned with the remark, "I have seen the child."
All this took time.