Marius has already left and registered for five years as a hitchhiker on a ship bound for the Indian Ocean. In several letters to his father Cesar, he hardly mentioned Fanny. When she found out she was pregnant, she would consider her choices: suicide, raising the child alone, waiting for Marius, or marrying the elderly businessman Onore Panis who sought her help. These choices are emotional: raising an illegitimate child, believing that Marius will eventually come back, believing that he will want to marry her, saving her mother from shame, fooling Panis, and giving her child a name. In the dramatic scene of Fanny's honesty, she talks to her mother, followed by Panis, Cesar, and later Marius, and she makes a choice.