Mayor Madeleine had Fantine carried to the infirmary attached to his own house and left her in the care of the sisters. That night she was delirious with fever. When she woke the next afternoon, the mayor was standing by her bed, looking up at the crucifix on the wall.
He had spent the night and the morning finding out her story. He wrote to the Thénardiers, sending three hundred francs to pay the hundred and twenty she owed them, and told them to bring the child to Montreuil at once.
Thénardier’s eyes lit up. He told his wife they must not let go of the child; she was about to become a milk cow. Then he sent back a bill of five hundred and some francs, with a doctor’s and an apothecary’s receipts attached. In fact they were the receipts from when Éponine and Azelma had been ill; he had only changed the name. That night Javert also wrote a letter to the prefecture of police in Paris and posted it himself the next morning, and those who knew about the scene at the post guessed it was his resignation.