Done.
I picked up the paper, waved it around to make the ink dry quicker and folded it into three. Now to send a man to the hospital with the news and another one to escort the petticoat to a cell. I took another look at the woman wheezing on the floor in the corner. Even though she was sitting flush against the wall, her head was swaying slightly, as if she were about to lose consciousness. I recognized the look. No, one man wouldn't do, I thought.
I signed for Amiot to approach, handed him the report and said:
"Take three men and conduct this creature to jail."
Or carry her there, whichever presents the occasion.
The woman suddenly started and came alive, fixing a stare on Amiot stuffing the paper into his trouser pocket. Her eyes were wide and oily, as if she'd been indulging in opium as well as alcohol. Her dress was all-but falling off her shoulders, but she didn't even move to make herself decent. Disgust momentarily overcame whatever pity I had for her. She could keep herself proper at least as a common courtesy. The last thing I need now is one of my lieutenants getting randy. I need that even less than a consumptive whore in my cells. At least she has an excuse for being consumptive, whereas there's no excuse for bad taste.
"You are to have six months of it," I told her as dryly as I could manage. And added silently, However much of it you manage to survive.
"Six months! six months of prison!" she exclaimed. "Six months in which to earn seven sous a day! But what will become of Cosette? My daughter! my daughter! But I still owe the Thenardiers over a hundred francs; do you know that, Monsieur Inspector?"
At the instant when she pronounced the word Cosette, I was seized with a powerful feeling of deja vu. Wait a minute, I thought. Am I going to have to go through all this again? Right then I was dead certain that this exact scene had played out earlier – earlier in the month, earlier in the year, earlier in my lifetime - not once but multiple times, and that each time it had ended the same way. The thought made me furious.
"You should have considered that before attacking people, you worthless hag," I said. "You're lucky I bothered with the arrest at all and didn't just break your neck on the spot."
Wait. What?
The fog was back, and it had brought reinforcements. Something akin to civil war was breaking out in my head. Within the space of a couple of seconds, my brain had split up into warring camps: emotion would not communicate with reason, reason refused to traffic with logic, logic divorced from language, and language once again abandoned its post altogether. While I tried to make sense of what was happening, emotion charged ahead, secured control, and severed all lines of communication to the other sectors.
I became awash in all-consuming and utterly absurd delight at seeing the detained woman in such distress.
The reasonable parts of my brain recognized that I was not the real author of this feeling, but they could neither subdue it nor relate this fact to the rest of my consciousness. I was locked in my all-consuming emotion like a paralytic is locked in his recalcitrant body.
"Child! Don't be talking to me about your child! As if having a bastard made one exempt from obeying the law! You are twice a whore for spreading your legs for the first-comer! Well, so be it! an example will be made here to the rest of your disgraceful kind! Your days of being mollycoddled by soft-hearted officials are over: when you disturb public order, you get prison time, and that's that!"
My God, what is this nonsense I'm talking!
"And let this be a lesson to the rest of your despicable kind: yes, I am bound by law to let you ply your vile trade, but by God, when I catch a hold of you for something, expect no pity! No, I will not cast the first stone, but give me half a chance and I will throw the book at you, and then you'll wish I threw stones instead!"
Unable to listen to myself any longer, I pressed my teeth together with enough force to chip the enamel. At that moment I suddenly realized that my mouth had been shut ever since I told her she was to serve six months. I had not said a word this whole time.
Oblivious to the maelstrom of confusion raging inside my skull, the woman - Fantine, she was called Fantine, I remembered - started weeping and crawled towards my desk on her knees. The sight of her dragging her knees on the floor made my stomach lurch, and the insane, disgusting triumph coursing through me instantly metamorphosed into white-hot fury. My veins circulated it like poison. It dissolved my bones like acid. It flowed between my teeth like heaved up bile. Even my skin itched and burned with it.
Onward, she crawled, wiping the floor with her torn silk dress, which was now little more than a sopping filthy rag. Her clasped hands reached out pleadingly towards me; her eyes overflowed with tears. Frozen and furious, I watched her and understood with horror that if she would come close enough to me to touch my clothes, I might just kick her in the head.
Abruptly, the world swirled around me. I managed to stay upright only because the axis of its rotation went precisely through the top of my head. The vise that had been pressing against my temples all morning was all-but crushing my skull. The flame of the candle on the table turned crimson and danced off into a black void. I felt myself losing consciousness and desperately held onto the back of my chair.
And then, as suddenly as it began, it was over. Whatever it was that had grabbed onto me earlier had unclenched its talons. I almost staggered forward with relief as I was set free. This must be how a villager feels, I thought, after losing a tug of war with an ox during a country fair: the body is grateful beyond words for the loss of horrible strain, but the mind is already registering that you are laying face down in a fetid puddle, that your mouth is full of muck, and that everyone in the village is looking at you and laughing themselves to pieces.
In my case, the puddle was metaphorical but no less deep for it. I found myself standing at my desk and clutching the back of my chair so hard that the muscles of my left arm were cramping up all the way to my shoulder. My ears were ringing; my heart thrashed in my chest like a bird; beads of slimy sweat tickled the sides of my face.
Amiot and Rocher were frowning to each other and signing towards me with scared, rounded eyes. The woman was now kneeling at my feet – I had no memories of her getting there – grasping at my coat and looking up into my face. Her eyes were no longer lifeless and glazed over, but sharp and anxious: the eyes of a mother. She must have sensed that something had just gone wrong in our little scene. For a couple of seconds we looked into each other's eyes as I desperately tried to recall who she was and why I was sentencing her to six months in prison.
The flood of violent emotions had washed my brain clean of every memory of this even now transpiring event. How long was I gone? I wondered. I could vaguely recall watching her crawl towards me and speak. I remembered none of the words, only the image of her lips moving and the tear streaks on her red, puffy face. What did she say to me? Did I say anything back? Judging by their faces, I had been silent the whole time. Was it then my turn to deliver lines?
They waited: three men and one woman. Four pairs of eyes watching me.
"Come!" I said, mentally cringing at my painfully overdone aplomb. "I have heard you out. Have you entirely finished?"
Speak now, girl, or forever hold your peace. I missed your monologue.
No, nothing but hunched over shoulders and downcast eyes. I took the third second of silence to be my cue.
"You will get six months. Now march! The Eternal Father in person could do nothing more."
"Mercy," she murmured as she sank even lower to the floor.
Unable to watch her any more, I turned my back. There will be no mercy, mademoiselle. I am not equipped to dispense it, and neither is the Eternal Father, I would bet. Else how could he tolerate such things as prostitution and invent such things as epilepsy?