n hour, no one came; every time the clock
struck, Fantine started up and looked towards the door, then fell back
again.

Her thought was clearly perceptible, but she uttered no name, she made
no complaint, she blamed no one. But she coughed in a melancholy way.
One would have said that something dark was descending upon her. She was
livid and her lips were blue. She smiled now and then.

Five o'clock struck. Then the sister heard her say, very low and gently,
"He is wrong not to come to-day, since I am going away to-morrow."

Sister Simplice herself was surprised at M. Madeleine's delay.

In the meantime, Fantine was staring at the tester of her bed. She
seemed to be endeavoring to recall something. All at once she began to
sing in a voice as feeble as a breath. The nun listened. This is what
Fantine was singing:--

"Lovely things we will buy
As we stroll the faubourgs through.
Roses are pink, corn-flowers are blue,
I love my love, corn-flowers are blue.

"Yestere'en the Virgin Mary came near my stove, in a broidered mantle
clad, and said to me, 'Here, hide 'neath my veil the child whom you
one day begged from me. Haste to the city, buy linen, buy a needle, buy
thread.'

"Lovely things we will buy
As we stroll the faubourgs through.

"Dear Holy Virgin, beside my stove I have set a cradle with ribbons
decked. God may give me his loveliest star; I prefer the child thou hast
granted me. 'Madame, what shall I do with this linen fine?'--'Make of it
clothes for thy new-born babe.'

"Roses are pink and corn-flowers are blue,
I love my love, and corn-flowers are blue.

"'Wash this linen.'--'Where?'--'In the stream. Make of it, soiling
not, spoiling not, a petticoat fair with its bodice fine, which I will
embroider and fill with flowers.'--'Madame, the child is no longer here;
what is to be done?'--'Then make of it a winding-sheet in which to bury
me.'

"Lovely things we will buy
As we stroll the faubourgs through,
Roses are pink, corn-flowers are blue,
I love my love, corn-flowers are blue."

This song was an old cradle romance with which she had, in former days,
lulled her little Cosette to sleep, and which had never recurred to her
mind in all the five years during which she had been parted from her
child. She sang it in so sad a voice, and to so sweet an air, that it