O Fantine, know this:I, Tholomyes, I am all illusion; but she does not even hear me, that blond maid of Chimeras! as for the rest, everything about her is freshness, suavity, youth, sweet morning light.
O Fantine, maid worthy of being called Marguerite or Pearl, you are a woman from the beauteous Orient.
Ladies, a second piece of advice:do not marry; marriage is a graft; it takes well or ill; avoid that risk.
But bah! what am I saying?
I am wasting my words.Girls are incurable on the subject of marriage, and all that we wise men can say will not prevent the waistcoat-makers and the shoe-stitchers from dreaming of husbands studded with diamonds.Well, so be it; but, my beauties, remember this, you eat too much sugar.You have but one fault, O woman, and that is nibbling sugar.O nibbling sex, your pretty little white teeth adore sugar.Now, heed me well, sugar is a salt.
All salts are withering.Sugar is the most desiccating of all salts; it sucks the liquids of the blood through the veins; hence the coagulation, and then the solidification of the blood; hence tubercles in the lungs, hence death.That is why diabetes borders on consumption.