One day she received from the Thenardiers a letter couched in the following terms:
"Cosette is ill with a malady which is going the rounds of the neighborhood.
A miliary fever, they call it. Expensive drugs are required.
This is ruining us, and we can no longer pay for them.
If you do not send us forty francs before the week is out, the little one will be dead."
She burst out laughing, and said to her old neighbor:
"Ah! they are good!
Forty francs! the idea!
That makes two napoleons! Where do they think I am to get them?
These peasants are stupid, truly."
Nevertheless she went to a dormer window in the staircase and read the letter once more.
Then she descended the stairs and emerged, running and leaping and still laughing.
Some one met her and said to her, "What makes you so gay?"
She replied:
"A fine piece of stupidity that some country people have written to me.
They demand forty francs of me.
So much for you, you peasants!"
As she crossed the square, she saw a great many people collected around a carriage of eccentric shape, upon the top of which stood a man dressed in red, who was holding forth.
He was a quack dentist on his rounds, who was offering to the public full sets of teeth, opiates, powders and elixirs.
Fantine mingled in the group, and began to laugh with the rest at the harangue, which contained slang for the populace and jargon for respectable people.