"Yestere'en the Virgin Mary came near my stove, in a broidered mantle clad, and said to me, `Here, hide 'neath my veil the child whom you one day begged from me.
Haste to the city, buy linen, buy a needle, buy thread.'
"Lovely things we will buy
As we stroll the faubourgs through.
"Dear Holy Virgin, beside my stove I have set a cradle with ribbons decked.
God may give me his loveliest star; I prefer the child thou hast granted me.
`Madame, what shall I do with this linen fine?'--`Make of it clothes for thy new-born babe.'
"Roses are pink and corn-flowers are blue,
I love my love, and corn-flowers are blue.
"`Wash this linen.'--`Where?'--`In the stream.
Make of it, soiling not, spoiling not, a petticoat fair with its bodice fine, which I will embroider and fill with flowers.'--`Madame, the child is no longer here; what is to be done?'--`Then make of it a winding-sheet in which to bury me.'
"Lovely things we will buy
As we stroll the faubourgs through,
Roses are pink, corn-flowers are blue,
I love my love, corn-flowers are blue."
This song was an old cradle romance with which she had, in former days, lulled her little Cosette to sleep, and which had never recurred to her mind in all the five years during which she had been parted from her child.
She sang it in so sad a voice, and to so sweet an air, that it was enough to make any one, even a nun, weep.
The sister, accustomed as she was to austerities, felt a tear spring to her eyes.
The clock struck six.
Fantine did not seem to hear it.