"Inspector Javert, set this woman at liberty."
Javert felt that he was on the verge of going mad.
He experienced at that moment, blow upon blow and almost simultaneously, the most violent emotions which he had ever undergone in all his life. To see a woman of the town spit in the mayor's face was a thing so monstrous that, in his most daring flights of fancy, he would have regarded it as a sacrilege to believe it possible. On the other hand, at the very bottom of his thought, he made a hideous comparison as to what this woman was, and as to what this mayor might be; and then he, with horror, caught a glimpse of I know not what simple explanation of this prodigious attack. But when he beheld that mayor, that magistrate, calmly wipe his face and say, "Set this woman at liberty," he underwent a sort of intoxication of amazement; thought and word failed him equally; the sum total of possible astonishment had been exceeded in his case. He remained mute.
The words had produced no less strange an effect on Fantine. She raised her bare arm, and clung to the damper of the stove, like a person who is reeling.
Nevertheless, she glanced about her, and began to speak in a low voice, as though talking to herself:--
"At liberty!
I am to be allowed to go!
I am not to go to prison for six months!
Who said that?
It is not possible that any one could have said that.
I did not hear aright.
It cannot have been that monster of a mayor!
Was it you, my good Monsieur Javert, who said that I was to be set free?
Oh, see here!
I will tell you about it, and you will let me go.
That monster of a mayor, that old blackguard of a mayor, is the cause of all.
Just imagine, Monsieur Javert, he turned me out! all because of a pack of rascally women, who gossip in the workroom.
If that is not a horror, what is?
To dismiss a poor girl who is doing her work honestly! Then I could no longer earn enough, and all this misery followed. In the first place, there is one improvement which these gentlemen of the police ought to make, and that is, to prevent prison contractors from wronging poor people.
I will explain it to you, you see: