Having found work at Monsieur Madeleine’s factory, Fantine was glad she could live honestly by her own work. She bought a mirror and looked at her youth, her lovely hair and her white teeth in it, and thought only of Cosette and the future. Since she could not say she was married, she never mentioned her daughter.
She could not write, so she paid a public letter-writer to send the Thénardiers frequent letters. The women in the workshop noticed. They whispered that she posted a letter to the same address twice a month without fail, and the address came out of the letter-writer’s mouth when he was drunk: Monsieur Thénardier, innkeeper, Montfermeil.
A widow of fifty-six named Madame Victurnien spent thirty-five francs of her own money going to Montfermeil and came back saying she had seen the child with her own eyes. One morning, when Fantine had been at the factory a little over a year, the forewoman of the women’s workshop handed her fifty francs. They came from the mayor, she said; Fantine was no longer needed in the workshop, and the mayor wished her to leave town.