Fantine's dull and tired eyes shuddered with frustration as she studied the poorly written piece of parchment. "Oh! Twenty francs a month!" But she prevailed. In her mind, Cosette was taken care, eating her fill every day and living her childhood days away with her two newfound sisters. This was not so. The little beauty's life resembled her mother's in a way; bruised, strenuous, and forgotten. "Cosette is doing wonderfully well," the Thenardiers had written in their last letter, filthy vultures they were. The need not care about the stranger cleaning their home; they had their two brats to love.
No one in their right mind would ever think Fantine loved her daughter. Or, no one who actually knew Fantine. After leaving Cosette, her beautiful and wonderful daughter, Fantine had led a life of misery and shame. She had planned to come back to her darling, but work had failed her. A passerby would have exclaimed, "Oh here! A child abandoned by a desperate mother, how good of the humble Thenardiers to save the ugly creature!"
Fantine drew a breath of foul air, feeling the uncomfortable humidity in the sweltering heat. The next month would be the same, scraping by to have her child live a life she could have had. She then reached for the only money she had left: twenty francs, hidden next to her heart, her bosom, for the only human she ever cared about enough to starve herself out of her only life.