After all it was a ruse of the Thenardiers to obtain money. Cosette was not ill.
Fantine threw her mirror out of the window.
She had long since quitted her cell on the second floor for an attic with only a latch to fasten it, next the roof; one of those attics whose extremity forms an angle with the floor, and knocks you on the head every instant. The poor occupant can reach the end of his chamber as he can the end of his destiny, only by bending over more and more.
She had no longer a bed; a rag which she called her coverlet, a mattress on the floor, and a seatless chair still remained. A little rosebush which she had, had dried up, forgotten, in one corner. In the other corner was a butter-pot to hold water, which froze in winter, and in which the various levels of the water remained long marked by these circles of ice.
She had lost her shame; she lost her coquetry.
A final sign.
She went out, with dirty caps. Whether from lack of time or from indifference, she no longer mended her linen.
As the heels wore out, she dragged her stockings down into her shoes.
This was evident from the perpendicular wrinkles. She patched her bodice, which was old and worn out, with scraps of calico which tore at the slightest movement.
The people to whom she was indebted made "scenes" and gave her no peace. She found them in the street, she found them again on her staircase. She passed many a night weeping and thinking.
Her eyes were very bright, and she felt a steady pain in her shoulder towards the top of the left shoulder-blade. She coughed a great deal. She deeply hated Father Madeleine, but made no complaint.
She sewed seventeen hours a day; but a contractor for the work of prisons, who made the prisoners work at a discount, suddenly made prices fall, which reduced the daily earnings of working-women to nine sous. Seventeen hours of toil, and nine sous a day!
Her creditors were more pitiless than ever.
The second-hand dealer, who had taken back nearly all his furniture, 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 developed 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.