Fantine threw her looking-glass out of the window; she had long before left her cell on the second floor for a garret under the roof,--one of those tenements in which the ceiling forms an angle with the floor, and you knock your head at every step. The poor man can only go to the end of his room, as to the end of his destiny, by stooping more and more. She had no bed left; she had only a rag she called a blanket, a mattress on the ground, and a bottomless chair; a little rose-tree she had had withered away, forgotten in a corner. In another corner she had a pail to hold water, which froze in winter, and in which the different levels of the water remained marked for a long time by rings of ice. She had lost her shame, and now lost her coquetry; the last sign was, that she went out with dirty caps. Either through want of time or carelessness, she no longer mended her linen, and as the heels of her stockings wore out, she tucked them into her shoes. She mended her worn-out gown with rags of calico, which tore away at the slightest movement. The people to whom she owed money made "scenes," and allowed her no rest; she met them in the street, she met them again on the stairs. Her eyes were very bright, and she felt a settled pain at the top of her left shoulder-blade, while she coughed frequently. She deeply hated Father Madeleine, and sewed for seventeen hours a day; but a speculator hired all the female prisoners, and reduced the prices of the free workmen to nine sous a day. Seventeen hours' work for nine sous! Her creditors were more pitiless than ever, and the broker, who had got back nearly all her furniture, incessantly said to her, "When are you going to pay me, you cheat?" What did they want of her, good Heavens! She felt herself tracked, and something of the wild beast was aroused in her. About the same time Thénardier wrote to her, that he had decidedly waited too patiently, and that unless he received one hundred francs at once, he would turn poor Cosette, who had scarce recovered, out of doors into the cold, and she must do what she could or die. "One hundred francs!" Fantine thought; "but where is the trade in which I can earn one hundred sous a day? Well! I will sell all that is left!" And the unfortunate girl went on the streets. CHAPTER XL CHRISTUS NOS LIBERAVIT. What is this story of Fantine? It is society buying a slave. Of whom? Of misery, of hunger, of cold, of loneliness, of desertion, of destitution. Cursed bargain! A soul for a morsel of bread. Misery offers its wares, and society accepts. The holy law of Jesus Christ governs our civilization, but it does not yet pervade it. They say that slavery has disappeared from European civilization. That's a mistake. It still exists; but it weighs now only on woman, and its name is prostitution. It weighs on woman; that is, on grace, on helplessness, on beauty, on motherhood. This is not one of the least reproaches upon man.