






It was into this house that Jean Valjean had, as Fauchelevent expressed
it, “fallen from the sky.”


He had scaled the wall of the garden which formed the angle of the Rue
Polonceau. That hymn of the angels which he had heard in the middle of
the night, was the nuns chanting matins; that hall, of which he had
caught a glimpse in the gloom, was the chapel. That phantom which he
had seen stretched on the ground was the sister who was making
reparation; that bell, the sound of which had so strangely surprised
him, was the gardener’s bell attached to the knee of Father
Fauchelevent.

Cosette once put to bed, Jean Valjean and Fauchelevent had, as we have
already seen, supped on a glass of wine and a bit of cheese before a
good, crackling fire; then, the only bed in the hut being occupied by
Cosette, each threw himself on a truss of straw.

Before he shut his eyes, Jean Valjean said: “I must remain here
henceforth.” This remark trotted through Fauchelevent’s head all night
long.

To tell the truth, neither of them slept.

Jean Valjean, feeling that he was discovered and that Javert was on his
scent, understood that he and Cosette were lost if they returned to
Paris. Then the new storm which had just burst upon him had stranded
him in this cloister. Jean Valjean had, henceforth, but one thought,—to
remain there. Now, for an unfortunate man in his position, this convent
was both the safest and the most dangerous of places; the most
dangerous, because, as no men might enter there, if he were discovered,
it was a flagrant offence, and Jean Valjean would find but one step
intervening between the convent and prison; the safest, because, if he
could manage to get himself accepted there and remain there, who would
ever seek him in such a place? To dwell in an impossible place was
safety.

On his side, Fauchelevent was cudgelling his brains. He began by
declaring to himself that he understood nothing of the matter. How had
M. Madeleine got there, when the walls were what they were? Cloister
walls are not to be stepped over. How did he get there with a child?
One cannot scale a perpendicular wall with a child in one’s arms. Who
was that child? Where did they both come from? Since Fauchelevent had
lived in the convent, he had heard nothing of M. sur M., and he knew
nothing of what had taken place there. Father Madeleine had an air
which discouraged questions; and besides, Fauchelevent said to himself:
“One does not question a saint.” M. Madeleine had preserved all his
prestige in Fauchelevent’s eyes. Only, from some words which Jean
Valjean had let fall, the gardener thought he could draw the inference
that M. Madeleine had probably become bankrupt through the hard times,
and that he was pursued by his creditors; or that he had compromised
himself in some political affair, and was in hiding; which last did not
displease Fauchelevent, who, like many of our peasants of the North,
had an old fund of Bonapartism about him. While in hiding, M. Madeleine
had selected the convent as a refuge, and it was quite simple that he
should wish to remain there. But the inexplicable point, to which
Fauchelevent returned constantly and over which he wearied his brain,
was that M. Madeleine should be there, and that he should have that
little girl with him. Fauchelevent saw them, touched them, spoke to
them, and still did not believe it possible. The incomprehensible had
just made its entrance into Fauchelevent’s hut. Fauchelevent groped
about amid conjectures, and could see nothing clearly but this: “M.
Madeleine saved my life.” This certainty alone was sufficient and
decided his course. He said to himself: “It is my turn now.” He added
in his conscience: “M. Madeleine did not stop to deliberate when it was
a question of thrusting himself under the cart for the purpose of
dragging me out.” He made up his mind to save M. Madeleine.

Nevertheless, he put many questions to himself and made himself divers
replies: “After what he did for me, would I save him if he were a
thief? Just the same. If he were an assassin, would I save him? Just
the same. Since he is a saint, shall I save him? Just the same.”


But what a problem it was to manage to have him remain in the convent!
Fauchelevent did not recoil in the face of this almost chimerical
undertaking; this poor peasant of Picardy without any other ladder than
his self-devotion, his good will, and a little of that old rustic
cunning, on this occasion enlisted in the service of a generous
enterprise, undertook to scale the difficulties of the cloister, and
the steep escarpments of the rule of Saint-Benoît. Father Fauchelevent
was an old man who had been an egoist all his life, and who, towards
the end of his days, halt, infirm, with no interest left to him in the
world, found it sweet to be grateful, and perceiving a generous action
to be performed, flung himself upon it like a man, who at the moment
when he is dying, should find close to his hand a glass of good wine
which he had never tasted, and should swallow it with avidity. We may
add, that the air which he had breathed for many years in this convent
had destroyed all personality in him, and had ended by rendering a good
action of some kind absolutely necessary to him.

So he took his resolve: to devote himself to M. Madeleine.

We have just called him a _poor peasant of Picardy_. That description
is just, but incomplete. At the point of this story which we have now
reached, a little of Father Fauchelevent’s physiology becomes useful.
He was a peasant, but he had been a notary, which added trickery to his
cunning, and penetration to his ingenuousness. Having, through various
causes, failed in his business, he had descended to the calling of a
carter and a laborer. But, in spite of oaths and lashings, which horses
seem to require, something of the notary had lingered in him. He had
some natural wit; he talked good grammar; he conversed, which is a rare
thing in a village; and the other peasants said of him: “He talks
almost like a gentleman with a hat.” Fauchelevent belonged, in fact, to
that species, which the impertinent and flippant vocabulary of the last
century qualified as _demi-bourgeois, demi-lout_, and which the
metaphors showered by the château upon the thatched cottage ticketed in
the pigeon-hole of the plebeian: _rather rustic, rather citified;
pepper and salt_. Fauchelevent, though sorely tried and harshly used by
fate, worn out, a sort of poor, threadbare old soul, was, nevertheless,
an impulsive man, and extremely spontaneous in his actions; a precious
quality which prevents one from ever being wicked. His defects and his
vices, for he had some, were all superficial; in short, his physiognomy
was of the kind which succeeds with an observer. His aged face had none
of those disagreeable wrinkles at the top of the forehead, which
signify malice or stupidity.

At daybreak, Father Fauchelevent opened his eyes, after having done an
enormous deal of thinking, and beheld M. Madeleine seated on his truss
of straw, and watching Cosette’s slumbers. Fauchelevent sat up and
said:—

“Now that you are here, how are you going to contrive to enter?”


This remark summed up the situation and aroused Jean Valjean from his
reverie.

The two men took counsel together.

“In the first place,” said Fauchelevent, “you will begin by not setting
foot outside of this chamber, either you or the child. One step in the
garden and we are done for.”


“That is true.”


“Monsieur Madeleine,” resumed Fauchelevent, “you have arrived at a very
auspicious moment, I mean to say a very inauspicious moment; one of the
ladies is very ill. This will prevent them from looking much in our
direction. It seems that she is dying. The prayers of the forty hours
are being said. The whole community is in confusion. That occupies
them. The one who is on the point of departure is a saint. In fact, we
are all saints here; all the difference between them and me is that
they say ‘our cell,’ and that I say ‘my cabin.’ The prayers for the
dying are to be said, and then the prayers for the dead. We shall be at
peace here for to-day; but I will not answer for to-morrow.”


“Still,” observed Jean Valjean, “this cottage is in the niche of the
wall, it is hidden by a sort of ruin, there are trees, it is not
visible from the convent.”


“And I add that the nuns never come near it.”


“Well?” said Jean Valjean.

The interrogation mark which accentuated this “well” signified: “it
seems to me that one may remain concealed here?” It was to this
interrogation point that Fauchelevent responded:—

“There are the little girls.”


“What little girls?” asked Jean Valjean.

Just as Fauchelevent opened his mouth to explain the words which he had
uttered, a bell emitted one stroke.

“The nun is dead,” said he. “There is the knell.”


And he made a sign to Jean Valjean to listen.

The bell struck a second time.

“It is the knell, Monsieur Madeleine. The bell will continue to strike
once a minute for twenty-four hours, until the body is taken from the
church.—You see, they play. At recreation hours it suffices to have a
ball roll aside, to send them all hither, in spite of prohibitions, to
hunt and rummage for it all about here. Those cherubs are devils.”


“Who?” asked Jean Valjean.

“The little girls. You would be very quickly discovered. They would
shriek: ‘Oh! a man!’ There is no danger to-day. There will be no
recreation hour. The day will be entirely devoted to prayers. You hear
the bell. As I told you, a stroke each minute. It is the death knell.”


“I understand, Father Fauchelevent. There are pupils.”


And Jean Valjean thought to himself:—

“Here is Cosette’s education already provided.”


Fauchelevent exclaimed:—

“Pardine! There are little girls indeed! And they would bawl around
you! And they would rush off! To be a man here is to have the plague.
You see how they fasten a bell to my paw as though I were a wild
beast.”


Jean Valjean fell into more and more profound thought.—“This convent
would be our salvation,” he murmured.

Then he raised his voice:—

“Yes, the difficulty is to remain here.”


“No,” said Fauchelevent, “the difficulty is to get out.”


Jean Valjean felt the blood rush back to his heart.

“To get out!”


“Yes, Monsieur Madeleine. In order to return here it is first necessary
to get out.”


And after waiting until another stroke of the knell had sounded,
Fauchelevent went on:—

“You must not be found here in this fashion. Whence come you? For me,
you fall from heaven, because I know you; but the nuns require one to
enter by the door.”


All at once they heard a rather complicated pealing from another bell.

“Ah!” said Fauchelevent, “they are ringing up the vocal mothers. They
are going to the chapter. They always hold a chapter when any one dies.
She died at daybreak. People generally do die at daybreak. But cannot
you get out by the way in which you entered? Come, I do not ask for the
sake of questioning you, but how did you get in?”


Jean Valjean turned pale; the very thought of descending again into
that terrible street made him shudder. You make your way out of a
forest filled with tigers, and once out of it, imagine a friendly
counsel that shall advise you to return thither! Jean Valjean pictured
to himself the whole police force still engaged in swarming in that
quarter, agents on the watch, sentinels everywhere, frightful fists
extended towards his collar, Javert at the corner of the intersection
of the streets perhaps.

“Impossible!” said he. “Father Fauchelevent, say that I fell from the
sky.”


“But I believe it, I believe it,” retorted Fauchelevent. “You have no
need to tell me that. The good God must have taken you in his hand for
the purpose of getting a good look at you close to, and then dropped
you. Only, he meant to place you in a man’s convent; he made a mistake.
Come, there goes another peal, that is to order the porter to go and
inform the municipality that the dead-doctor is to come here and view a
corpse. All that is the ceremony of dying. These good ladies are not at
all fond of that visit. A doctor is a man who does not believe in
anything. He lifts the veil. Sometimes he lifts something else too. How
quickly they have had the doctor summoned this time! What is the
matter? Your little one is still asleep. What is her name?”


“Cosette.”


“She is your daughter? You are her grandfather, that is?”


“Yes.”


“It will be easy enough for her to get out of here. I have my service
door which opens on the courtyard. I knock. The porter opens; I have my
vintage basket on my back, the child is in it, I go out. Father
Fauchelevent goes out with his basket—that is perfectly natural. You
will tell the child to keep very quiet. She will be under the cover. I
will leave her for whatever time is required with a good old friend, a
fruit-seller whom I know in the Rue Chemin-Vert, who is deaf, and who
has a little bed. I will shout in the fruit-seller’s ear, that she is a
niece of mine, and that she is to keep her for me until to-morrow. Then
the little one will re-enter with you; for I will contrive to have you
re-enter. It must be done. But how will you manage to get out?”


Jean Valjean shook his head.

“No one must see me, the whole point lies there, Father Fauchelevent.
Find some means of getting me out in a basket, under cover, like
Cosette.”


Fauchelevent scratched the lobe of his ear with the middle finger of
his left hand, a sign of serious embarrassment.

A third peal created a diversion.

“That is the dead-doctor taking his departure,” said Fauchelevent. “He
has taken a look and said: ‘She is dead, that is well.’ When the doctor
has signed the passport for paradise, the undertaker’s company sends a
coffin. If it is a mother, the mothers lay her out; if she is a sister,
the sisters lay her out. After which, I nail her up. That forms a part
of my gardener’s duty. A gardener is a bit of a grave-digger. She is
placed in a lower hall of the church which communicates with the
street, and into which no man may enter save the doctor of the dead. I
don’t count the undertaker’s men and myself as men. It is in that hall
that I nail up the coffin. The undertaker’s men come and get it, and
whip up, coachman! that’s the way one goes to heaven. They fetch a box
with nothing in it, they take it away again with something in it.
That’s what a burial is like. _De profundis_.”


A horizontal ray of sunshine lightly touched the face of the sleeping
Cosette, who lay with her mouth vaguely open, and had the air of an
angel drinking in the light. Jean Valjean had fallen to gazing at her.
He was no longer listening to Fauchelevent.

That one is not listened to is no reason for preserving silence. The
good old gardener went on tranquilly with his babble:—

“The grave is dug in the Vaugirard cemetery. They declare that they are
going to suppress that Vaugirard cemetery. It is an ancient cemetery
which is outside the regulations, which has no uniform, and which is
going to retire. It is a shame, for it is convenient. I have a friend
there, Father Mestienne, the grave-digger. The nuns here possess one
privilege, it is to be taken to that cemetery at nightfall. There is a
special permission from the Prefecture on their behalf. But how many
events have happened since yesterday! Mother Crucifixion is dead, and
Father Madeleine—”


“Is buried,” said Jean Valjean, smiling sadly.

Fauchelevent caught the word.

“Goodness! if you were here for good, it would be a real burial.”


A fourth peal burst out. Fauchelevent hastily detached the belled
knee-cap from its nail and buckled it on his knee again.

“This time it is for me. The Mother Prioress wants me. Good, now I am
pricking myself on the tongue of my buckle. Monsieur Madeleine, don’t
stir from here, and wait for me. Something new has come up. If you are
hungry, there is wine, bread and cheese.”


And he hastened out of the hut, crying: “Coming! coming!”


Jean Valjean watched him hurrying across the garden as fast as his
crooked leg would permit, casting a sidelong glance by the way on his
melon patch.

Less than ten minutes later, Father Fauchelevent, whose bell put the
nuns in his road to flight, tapped gently at a door, and a gentle voice
replied: _“Forever! Forever!” _ that is to say: _“Enter.” _

The door was the one leading to the parlor reserved for seeing the
gardener on business. This parlor adjoined the chapter hall. The
prioress, seated on the only chair in the parlor, was waiting for
Fauchelevent.






It is the peculiarity of certain persons and certain professions,
notably priests and nuns, to wear a grave and agitated air on critical
occasions. At the moment when Fauchelevent entered, this double form of
preoccupation was imprinted on the countenance of the prioress, who was
that wise and charming Mademoiselle de Blemeur, Mother Innocente, who
was ordinarily cheerful.

The gardener made a timid bow, and remained at the door of the cell.
The prioress, who was telling her beads, raised her eyes and said:—

“Ah! it is you, Father Fauvent.”


This abbreviation had been adopted in the convent.

Fauchelevent bowed again.

“Father Fauvent, I have sent for you.”


“Here I am, reverend Mother.”


“I have something to say to you.”


“And so have I,” said Fauchelevent with a boldness which caused him
inward terror, “I have something to say to the very reverend Mother.”


The prioress stared at him.

“Ah! you have a communication to make to me.”


“A request.”


“Very well, speak.”


Goodman Fauchelevent, the ex-notary, belonged to the category of
peasants who have assurance. A certain clever ignorance constitutes a
force; you do not distrust it, and you are caught by it. Fauchelevent
had been a success during the something more than two years which he
had passed in the convent. Always solitary and busied about his
gardening, he had nothing else to do than to indulge his curiosity. As
he was at a distance from all those veiled women passing to and fro, he
saw before him only an agitation of shadows. By dint of attention and
sharpness he had succeeded in clothing all those phantoms with flesh,
and those corpses were alive for him. He was like a deaf man whose
sight grows keener, and like a blind man whose hearing becomes more
acute. He had applied himself to riddling out the significance of the
different peals, and he had succeeded, so that this taciturn and
enigmatical cloister possessed no secrets for him; the sphinx babbled
all her secrets in his ear. Fauchelevent knew all and concealed all;
that constituted his art. The whole convent thought him stupid. A great
merit in religion. The vocal mothers made much of Fauchelevent. He was
a curious mute. He inspired confidence. Moreover, he was regular, and
never went out except for well-demonstrated requirements of the orchard
and vegetable garden. This discretion of conduct had inured to his
credit. Nonetheless, he had set two men to chattering: the porter, in
the convent, and he knew the singularities of their parlor, and the
grave-digger, at the cemetery, and he was acquainted with the
peculiarities of their sepulture; in this way, he possessed a double
light on the subject of these nuns, one as to their life, the other as
to their death. But he did not abuse his knowledge. The congregation
thought a great deal of him. Old, lame, blind to everything, probably a
little deaf into the bargain,—what qualities! They would have found it
difficult to replace him.

The goodman, with the assurance of a person who feels that he is
appreciated, entered into a rather diffuse and very deep rustic
harangue to the reverend prioress. He talked a long time about his age,
his infirmities, the surcharge of years counting double for him
henceforth, of the increasing demands of his work, of the great size of
the garden, of nights which must be passed, like the last, for
instance, when he had been obliged to put straw mats over the melon
beds, because of the moon, and he wound up as follows: “That he had a
brother”—(the prioress made a movement),—“a brother no longer young”—(a
second movement on the part of the prioress, but one expressive of
reassurance),—“that, if he might be permitted, this brother would come
and live with him and help him, that he was an excellent gardener, that
the community would receive from him good service, better than his own;
that, otherwise, if his brother were not admitted, as he, the elder,
felt that his health was broken and that he was insufficient for the
work, he should be obliged, greatly to his regret, to go away; and that
his brother had a little daughter whom he would bring with him, who
might be reared for God in the house, and who might, who knows, become
a nun some day.”


When he had finished speaking, the prioress stayed the slipping of her
rosary between her fingers, and said to him:—

“Could you procure a stout iron bar between now and this evening?”


“For what purpose?”


“To serve as a lever.”


“Yes, reverend Mother,” replied Fauchelevent.

The prioress, without adding a word, rose and entered the adjoining
room, which was the hall of the chapter, and where the vocal mothers
were probably assembled. Fauchelevent was left alone.






About a quarter of an hour elapsed. The prioress returned and seated
herself once more on her chair.

The two interlocutors seemed preoccupied. We will present a
stenographic report of the dialogue which then ensued, to the best of
our ability.

“Father Fauvent!”


“Reverend Mother!”


“Do you know the chapel?”


“I have a little cage there, where I hear the mass and the offices.”


“And you have been in the choir in pursuance of your duties?”


“Two or three times.”


“There is a stone to be raised.”


“Heavy?”


“The slab of the pavement which is at the side of the altar.”


“The slab which closes the vault?”


“Yes.”


“It would be a good thing to have two men for it.”


“Mother Ascension, who is as strong as a man, will help you.”


“A woman is never a man.”


“We have only a woman here to help you. Each one does what he can.
Because Dom Mabillon gives four hundred and seventeen epistles of Saint
Bernard, while Merlonus Horstius only gives three hundred and
sixty-seven, I do not despise Merlonus Horstius.”


“Neither do I.”


“Merit consists in working according to one’s strength. A cloister is
not a dock-yard.”


“And a woman is not a man. But my brother is the strong one, though!”


“And can you get a lever?”


“That is the only sort of key that fits that sort of door.”


“There is a ring in the stone.”


“I will put the lever through it.”


“And the stone is so arranged that it swings on a pivot.”


“That is good, reverend Mother. I will open the vault.”


“And the four Mother Precentors will help you.”


“And when the vault is open?”


“It must be closed again.”


“Will that be all?”


“No.”


“Give me your orders, very reverend Mother.”


“Fauvent, we have confidence in you.”


“I am here to do anything you wish.”


“And to hold your peace about everything!”


“Yes, reverend Mother.”


“When the vault is open—”


“I will close it again.”


“But before that—”


“What, reverend Mother?”


“Something must be lowered into it.”


A silence ensued. The prioress, after a pout of the under lip which
resembled hesitation, broke it.

“Father Fauvent!”


“Reverend Mother!”


“You know that a mother died this morning?”


“No.”


“Did you not hear the bell?”


“Nothing can be heard at the bottom of the garden.”


“Really?”


“I can hardly distinguish my own signal.”


“She died at daybreak.”


“And then, the wind did not blow in my direction this morning.”


“It was Mother Crucifixion. A blessed woman.”


The prioress paused, moved her lips, as though in mental prayer, and
resumed:—

“Three years ago, Madame de Béthune, a Jansenist, turned orthodox,
merely from having seen Mother Crucifixion at prayer.”


“Ah! yes, now I hear the knell, reverend Mother.”


“The mothers have taken her to the dead-room, which opens on the
church.”


“I know.”


“No other man than you can or must enter that chamber. See to that. A
fine sight it would be, to see a man enter the dead-room!”


“More often!”


“Hey?”


“More often!”


“What do you say?”


“I say more often.”


“More often than what?”


“Reverend Mother, I did not say more often than what, I said more
often.”


“I don’t understand you. Why do you say more often?”


“In order to speak like you, reverend Mother.”


“But I did not say ‘more often.’”


At that moment, nine o’clock struck.

“At nine o’clock in the morning and at all hours, praised and adored be
the most Holy Sacrament of the altar,” said the prioress.

“Amen,” said Fauchelevent.

The clock struck opportunely. It cut “more often” short. It is
probable, that had it not been for this, the prioress and Fauchelevent
would never have unravelled that skein.

Fauchelevent mopped his forehead.

The prioress indulged in another little inward murmur, probably sacred,
then raised her voice:—

“In her lifetime, Mother Crucifixion made converts; after her death,
she will perform miracles.”


“She will!” replied Father Fauchelevent, falling into step, and
striving not to flinch again.

“Father Fauvent, the community has been blessed in Mother Crucifixion.
No doubt, it is not granted to every one to die, like Cardinal de
Bérulle, while saying the holy mass, and to breathe forth their souls
to God, while pronouncing these words: _Hanc igitur oblationem_. But
without attaining to such happiness, Mother Crucifixion’s death was
very precious. She retained her consciousness to the very last moment.
She spoke to us, then she spoke to the angels. She gave us her last
commands. If you had a little more faith, and if you could have been in
her cell, she would have cured your leg merely by touching it. She
smiled. We felt that she was regaining her life in God. There was
something of paradise in that death.”


Fauchelevent thought that it was an orison which she was finishing.

“Amen,” said he.

“Father Fauvent, what the dead wish must be done.”


The prioress took off several beads of her chaplet. Fauchelevent held
his peace.

She went on:—

“I have consulted upon this point many ecclesiastics laboring in Our
Lord, who occupy themselves in the exercises of the clerical life, and
who bear wonderful fruit.”


“Reverend Mother, you can hear the knell much better here than in the
garden.”


“Besides, she is more than a dead woman, she is a saint.”


“Like yourself, reverend Mother.”


“She slept in her coffin for twenty years, by express permission of our
Holy Father, Pius VII.—”


“The one who crowned the Emp—Buonaparte.”


For a clever man like Fauchelevent, this allusion was an awkward one.
Fortunately, the prioress, completely absorbed in her own thoughts, did
not hear it. She continued:—

“Father Fauvent?”


“Reverend Mother?”


“Saint Didorus, Archbishop of Cappadocia, desired that this single word
might be inscribed on his tomb: _Acarus_, which signifies, a worm of
the earth; this was done. Is this true?”


“Yes, reverend Mother.”


“The blessed Mezzocane, Abbot of Aquila, wished to be buried beneath
the gallows; this was done.”


“That is true.”


“Saint Terentius, Bishop of Port, where the mouth of the Tiber empties
into the sea, requested that on his tomb might be engraved the sign
which was placed on the graves of parricides, in the hope that
passers-by would spit on his tomb. This was done. The dead must be
obeyed.”


“So be it.”


“The body of Bernard Guidonis, born in France near Roche-Abeille, was,
as he had ordered, and in spite of the king of Castile, borne to the
church of the Dominicans in Limoges, although Bernard Guidonis was
Bishop of Tuy in Spain. Can the contrary be affirmed?”


“For that matter, no, reverend Mother.”


“The fact is attested by Plantavit de la Fosse.”


Several beads of the chaplet were told off, still in silence. The
prioress resumed:—

“Father Fauvent, Mother Crucifixion will be interred in the coffin in
which she has slept for the last twenty years.”


“That is just.”


“It is a continuation of her slumber.”


“So I shall have to nail up that coffin?”


“Yes.”


“And we are to reject the undertaker’s coffin?”


“Precisely.”


“I am at the orders of the very reverend community.”


“The four Mother Precentors will assist you.”


“In nailing up the coffin? I do not need them.”


“No. In lowering the coffin.”


“Where?”


“Into the vault.”


“What vault?”


“Under the altar.”


Fauchelevent started.

“The vault under the altar?”


“Under the altar.”


“But—”


“You will have an iron bar.”


“Yes, but—”


“You will raise the stone with the bar by means of the ring.”


“But—”


“The dead must be obeyed. To be buried in the vault under the altar of
the chapel, not to go to profane earth; to remain there in death where
she prayed while living; such was the last wish of Mother Crucifixion.
She asked it of us; that is to say, commanded us.”


“But it is forbidden.”


“Forbidden by men, enjoined by God.”


“What if it became known?”


“We have confidence in you.”


“Oh! I am a stone in your walls.”


“The chapter assembled. The vocal mothers, whom I have just consulted
again, and who are now deliberating, have decided that Mother
Crucifixion shall be buried, according to her wish, in her own coffin,
under our altar. Think, Father Fauvent, if she were to work miracles
here! What a glory of God for the community! And miracles issue from
tombs.”


“But, reverend Mother, if the agent of the sanitary commission—”


“Saint Benoît II., in the matter of sepulture, resisted Constantine
Pogonatus.”


“But the commissary of police—”


“Chonodemaire, one of the seven German kings who entered among the
Gauls under the Empire of Constantius, expressly recognized the right
of nuns to be buried in religion, that is to say, beneath the altar.”


“But the inspector from the Prefecture—”


“The world is nothing in the presence of the cross. Martin, the
eleventh general of the Carthusians, gave to his order this device:
_Stat crux dum volvitur orbis_.”


“Amen,” said Fauchelevent, who imperturbably extricated himself in this
manner from the dilemma, whenever he heard Latin.

Any audience suffices for a person who has held his peace too long. On
the day when the rhetorician Gymnastoras left his prison, bearing in
his body many dilemmas and numerous syllogisms which had struck in, he
halted in front of the first tree which he came to, harangued it and
made very great efforts to convince it. The prioress, who was usually
subjected to the barrier of silence, and whose reservoir was overfull,
rose and exclaimed with the loquacity of a dam which has broken away:—

“I have on my right Benoît and on my left Bernard. Who was Bernard? The
first abbot of Clairvaux. Fontaines in Burgundy is a country that is
blest because it gave him birth. His father was named Técelin, and his
mother Alèthe. He began at Cîteaux, to end in Clairvaux; he was
ordained abbot by the bishop of Châlon-sur-Saône, Guillaume de
Champeaux; he had seven hundred novices, and founded a hundred and
sixty monasteries; he overthrew Abeilard at the council of Sens in
1140, and Pierre de Bruys and Henry his disciple, and another sort of
erring spirits who were called the Apostolics; he confounded Arnauld de
Brescia, darted lightning at the monk Raoul, the murderer of the Jews,
dominated the council of Reims in 1148, caused the condemnation of
Gilbert de Poréa, Bishop of Poitiers, caused the condemnation of Éon de
l’Étoile, arranged the disputes of princes, enlightened King Louis the
Young, advised Pope Eugene III., regulated the Temple, preached the
crusade, performed two hundred and fifty miracles during his lifetime,
and as many as thirty-nine in one day. Who was Benoît? He was the
patriarch of Mont-Cassin; he was the second founder of the Sainteté
Claustrale, he was the Basil of the West. His order has produced forty
popes, two hundred cardinals, fifty patriarchs, sixteen hundred
archbishops, four thousand six hundred bishops, four emperors, twelve
empresses, forty-six kings, forty-one queens, three thousand six
hundred canonized saints, and has been in existence for fourteen
hundred years. On one side Saint Bernard, on the other the agent of the
sanitary department! On one side Saint Benoît, on the other the
inspector of public ways! The state, the road commissioners, the public
undertaker, regulations, the administration, what do we know of all
that? There is not a chance passer-by who would not be indignant to see
how we are treated. We have not even the right to give our dust to
Jesus Christ! Your sanitary department is a revolutionary invention.
God subordinated to the commissary of police; such is the age. Silence,
Fauvent!”


Fauchelevent was but ill at ease under this shower bath. The prioress
continued:—

“No one doubts the right of the monastery to sepulture. Only fanatics
and those in error deny it. We live in times of terrible confusion. We
do not know that which it is necessary to know, and we know that which
we should ignore. We are ignorant and impious. In this age there exist
people who do not distinguish between the very great Saint Bernard and
the Saint Bernard denominated of the poor Catholics, a certain good
ecclesiastic who lived in the thirteenth century. Others are so
blasphemous as to compare the scaffold of Louis XVI. to the cross of
Jesus Christ. Louis XVI. was merely a king. Let us beware of God! There
is no longer just nor unjust. The name of Voltaire is known, but not
the name of César de Bus. Nevertheless, César de Bus is a man of
blessed memory, and Voltaire one of unblessed memory. The last
arch-bishop, the Cardinal de Périgord, did not even know that Charles
de Gondren succeeded to Berulle, and François Bourgoin to Gondren, and
Jean-François Senault to Bourgoin, and Father Sainte-Marthe to
Jean-François Senault. The name of Father Coton is known, not because
he was one of the three who urged the foundation of the Oratorie, but
because he furnished Henri IV., the Huguenot king, with the material
for an oath. That which pleases people of the world in Saint François
de Sales, is that he cheated at play. And then, religion is attacked.
Why? Because there have been bad priests, because Sagittaire, Bishop of
Gap, was the brother of Salone, Bishop of Embrun, and because both of
them followed Mommol. What has that to do with the question? Does that
prevent Martin de Tours from being a saint, and giving half of his
cloak to a beggar? They persecute the saints. They shut their eyes to
the truth. Darkness is the rule. The most ferocious beasts are beasts
which are blind. No one thinks of hell as a reality. Oh! how wicked
people are! By order of the king signifies to-day, by order of the
revolution. One no longer knows what is due to the living or to the
dead. A holy death is prohibited. Burial is a civil matter. This is
horrible. Saint Leo II. wrote two special letters, one to Pierre
Notaire, the other to the king of the Visigoths, for the purpose of
combating and rejecting, in questions touching the dead, the authority
of the exarch and the supremacy of the Emperor. Gauthier, Bishop of
Châlons, held his own in this matter against Otho, Duke of Burgundy.
The ancient magistracy agreed with him. In former times we had voices
in the chapter, even on matters of the day. The Abbot of Cîteaux, the
general of the order, was councillor by right of birth to the
parliament of Burgundy. We do what we please with our dead. Is not the
body of Saint Benoît himself in France, in the abbey of Fleury, called
Saint Benoît-sur-Loire, although he died in Italy at Mont-Cassin, on
Saturday, the 21st of the month of March, of the year 543? All this is
incontestable. I abhor psalm-singers, I hate priors, I execrate
heretics, but I should detest yet more any one who should maintain the
contrary. One has only to read Arnoul Wion, Gabriel Bucelin, Trithemus,
Maurolics, and Dom Luc d’Achery.”


The prioress took breath, then turned to Fauchelevent.

“Is it settled, Father Fauvent?”


“It is settled, reverend Mother.”


“We may depend on you?”


“I will obey.”


“That is well.”


“I am entirely devoted to the convent.”


“That is understood. You will close the coffin. The sisters will carry
it to the chapel. The office for the dead will then be said. Then we
shall return to the cloister. Between eleven o’clock and midnight, you
will come with your iron bar. All will be done in the most profound
secrecy. There will be in the chapel only the four Mother Precentors,
Mother Ascension and yourself.”


“And the sister at the post?”


“She will not turn round.”


“But she will hear.”


“She will not listen. Besides, what the cloister knows the world learns
not.”


A pause ensued. The prioress went on:—

“You will remove your bell. It is not necessary that the sister at the
post should perceive your presence.”


“Reverend Mother?”


“What, Father Fauvent?”


“Has the doctor for the dead paid his visit?”


“He will pay it at four o’clock to-day. The peal which orders the
doctor for the dead to be summoned has already been rung. But you do
not understand any of the peals?”


“I pay no attention to any but my own.”


“That is well, Father Fauvent.”


“Reverend Mother, a lever at least six feet long will be required.”


“Where will you obtain it?”


“Where gratings are not lacking, iron bars are not lacking. I have my
heap of old iron at the bottom of the garden.”


“About three-quarters of an hour before midnight; do not forget.”


“Reverend Mother?”


“What?”


“If you were ever to have any other jobs of this sort, my brother is
the strong man for you. A perfect Turk!”


“You will do it as speedily as possible.”


“I cannot work very fast. I am infirm; that is why I require an
assistant. I limp.”


“To limp is no sin, and perhaps it is a blessing. The Emperor Henry
II., who combated Antipope Gregory and re-established Benoît VIII., has
two surnames, the Saint and the Lame.”


“Two surtouts are a good thing,” murmured Fauchelevent, who really was
a little hard of hearing.

“Now that I think of it, Father Fauvent, let us give a whole hour to
it. That is not too much. Be near the principal altar, with your iron
bar, at eleven o’clock. The office begins at midnight. Everything must
have been completed a good quarter of an hour before that.”


“I will do anything to prove my zeal towards the community. These are
my orders. I am to nail up the coffin. At eleven o’clock exactly, I am
to be in the chapel. The Mother Precentors will be there. Mother
Ascension will be there. Two men would be better. However, never mind!
I shall have my lever. We will open the vault, we will lower the
coffin, and we will close the vault again. After which, there will be
no trace of anything. The government will have no suspicion. Thus all
has been arranged, reverend Mother?”


“No!”


“What else remains?”


“The empty coffin remains.”


This produced a pause. Fauchelevent meditated. The prioress meditated.

“What is to be done with that coffin, Father Fauvent?”


“It will be given to the earth.”


“Empty?”


Another silence. Fauchelevent made, with his left hand, that sort of a
gesture which dismisses a troublesome subject.

“Reverend Mother, I am the one who is to nail up the coffin in the
basement of the church, and no one can enter there but myself, and I
will cover the coffin with the pall.”


“Yes, but the bearers, when they place it in the hearse and lower it
into the grave, will be sure to feel that there is nothing in it.”


“Ah! the de—!” exclaimed Fauchelevent.

The prioress began to make the sign of the cross, and looked fixedly at
the gardener. The _vil_ stuck fast in his throat.

He made haste to improvise an expedient to make her forget the oath.

“I will put earth in the coffin, reverend Mother. That will produce the
effect of a corpse.”


“You are right. Earth, that is the same thing as man. So you will
manage the empty coffin?”


“I will make that my special business.”


The prioress’s face, up to that moment troubled and clouded, grew
serene once more. She made the sign of a superior dismissing an
inferior to him. Fauchelevent went towards the door. As he was on the
point of passing out, the prioress raised her voice gently:—

“I am pleased with you, Father Fauvent; bring your brother to me
to-morrow, after the burial, and tell him to fetch his daughter.”





AUSTIN CASTILLEJO


The strides of a lame man are like the ogling glances of a one-eyed
man; they do not reach their goal very promptly. Moreover, Fauchelevent
was in a dilemma. He took nearly a quarter of an hour to return to his
cottage in the garden. Cosette had waked up. Jean Valjean had placed
her near the fire. At the moment when Fauchelevent entered, Jean
Valjean was pointing out to her the vintner’s basket on the wall, and
saying to her, “Listen attentively to me, my little Cosette. We must go
away from this house, but we shall return to it, and we shall be very
happy here. The good man who lives here is going to carry you off on
his back in that. You will wait for me at a lady’s house. I shall come
to fetch you. Obey, and say nothing, above all things, unless you want
Madame Thénardier to get you again!”


Cosette nodded gravely.

Jean Valjean turned round at the noise made by Fauchelevent opening the
door.

“Well?”


“Everything is arranged, and nothing is,” said Fauchelevent. “I have
permission to bring you in; but before bringing you in you must be got
out. That’s where the difficulty lies. It is easy enough with the
child.”


“You will carry her out?”


“And she will hold her tongue?”


“I answer for that.”


“But you, Father Madeleine?”


And, after a silence, fraught with anxiety, Fauchelevent exclaimed:—

“Why, get out as you came in!”


Jean Valjean, as in the first instance, contented himself with saying,
“Impossible.”


Fauchelevent grumbled, more to himself than to Jean Valjean:—

“There is another thing which bothers me. I have said that I would put
earth in it. When I come to think it over, the earth instead of the
corpse will not seem like the real thing, it won’t do, it will get
displaced, it will move about. The men will bear it. You understand,
Father Madeleine, the government will notice it.”


Jean Valjean stared him straight in the eye and thought that he was
raving.

Fauchelevent went on:—

“How the de—uce are you going to get out? It must all be done by
to-morrow morning. It is to-morrow that I am to bring you in. The
prioress expects you.”


Then he explained to Jean Valjean that this was his recompense for a
service which he, Fauchelevent, was to render to the community. That it
fell among his duties to take part in their burials, that he nailed up
the coffins and helped the grave-digger at the cemetery. That the nun
who had died that morning had requested to be buried in the coffin
which had served her for a bed, and interred in the vault under the
altar of the chapel. That the police regulations forbade this, but that
she was one of those dead to whom nothing is refused. That the prioress
and the vocal mothers intended to fulfil the wish of the deceased. That
it was so much the worse for the government. That he, Fauchelevent, was
to nail up the coffin in the cell, raise the stone in the chapel, and
lower the corpse into the vault. And that, by way of thanks, the
prioress was to admit his brother to the house as a gardener, and his
niece as a pupil. That his brother was M. Madeleine, and that his niece
was Cosette. That the prioress had told him to bring his brother on the
following evening, after the counterfeit interment in the cemetery. But
that he could not bring M. Madeleine in from the outside if M.
Madeleine was not outside. That that was the first problem. And then,
that there was another: the empty coffin.

“What is that empty coffin?” asked Jean Valjean.

Fauchelevent replied:—

“The coffin of the administration.”


“What coffin? What administration?”


“A nun dies. The municipal doctor comes and says, ‘A nun has died.’ The
government sends a coffin. The next day it sends a hearse and
undertaker’s men to get the coffin and carry it to the cemetery. The
undertaker’s men will come and lift the coffin; there will be nothing
in it.”


“Put something in it.”


“A corpse? I have none.”


“No.”


“What then?”


“A living person.”


“What person?”


“Me!” said Jean Valjean.

Fauchelevent, who was seated, sprang up as though a bomb had burst
under his chair.

“You!”


“Why not?”


Jean Valjean gave way to one of those rare smiles which lighted up his
face like a flash from heaven in the winter.

“You know, Fauchelevent, what you have said: ‘Mother Crucifixion is
dead.’ and I add: ‘and Father Madeleine is buried.’”


“Ah! good, you can laugh, you are not speaking seriously.”


“Very seriously, I must get out of this place.”


“Certainly.”


“l have told you to find a basket, and a cover for me also.”


“Well?”


“The basket will be of pine, and the cover a black cloth.”


“In the first place, it will be a white cloth. Nuns are buried in
white.”


“Let it be a white cloth, then.”


“You are not like other men, Father Madeleine.”


To behold such devices, which are nothing else than the savage and
daring inventions of the galleys, spring forth from the peaceable
things which surrounded him, and mingle with what he called the “petty
course of life in the convent,” caused Fauchelevent as much amazement
as a gull fishing in the gutter of the Rue Saint-Denis would inspire in
a passer-by.

Jean Valjean went on:—

“The problem is to get out of here without being seen. This offers the
means. But give me some information, in the first place. How is it
managed? Where is this coffin?”


“The empty one?”


“Yes.”


“Downstairs, in what is called the dead-room. It stands on two
trestles, under the pall.”


“How long is the coffin?”


“Six feet.”


“What is this dead-room?”


“It is a chamber on the ground floor which has a grated window opening
on the garden, which is closed on the outside by a shutter, and two
doors; one leads into the convent, the other into the church.”


“What church?”


“The church in the street, the church which any one can enter.”


“Have you the keys to those two doors?”


“No; I have the key to the door which communicates with the convent;
the porter has the key to the door which communicates with the church.”


“When does the porter open that door?”


“Only to allow the undertaker’s men to enter, when they come to get the
coffin. When the coffin has been taken out, the door is closed again.”


“Who nails up the coffin?”


“I do.”


“Who spreads the pall over it?”


“I do.”


“Are you alone?”


“Not another man, except the police doctor, can enter the dead-room.
That is even written on the wall.”


“Could you hide me in that room to-night when every one is asleep?”


“No. But I could hide you in a small, dark nook which opens on the
dead-room, where I keep my tools to use for burials, and of which I
have the key.”


“At what time will the hearse come for the coffin to-morrow?”


“About three o’clock in the afternoon. The burial will take place at
the Vaugirard cemetery a little before nightfall. It is not very near.”


“I will remain concealed in your tool-closet all night and all the
morning. And how about food? I shall be hungry.”


“I will bring you something.”


“You can come and nail me up in the coffin at two o’clock.”


Fauchelevent recoiled and cracked his finger-joints.

“But that is impossible!”


“Bah! Impossible to take a hammer and drive some nails in a plank?”


What seemed unprecedented to Fauchelevent was, we repeat, a simple
matter to Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean had been in worse straits than
this. Any man who has been a prisoner understands how to contract
himself to fit the diameter of the escape. The prisoner is subject to
flight as the sick man is subject to a crisis which saves or kills him.
An escape is a cure. What does not a man undergo for the sake of a
cure? To have himself nailed up in a case and carried off like a bale
of goods, to live for a long time in a box, to find air where there is
none, to economize his breath for hours, to know how to stifle without
dying—this was one of Jean Valjean’s gloomy talents.

Moreover, a coffin containing a living being,—that convict’s
expedient,—is also an imperial expedient. If we are to credit the monk
Austin Castillejo, this was the means employed by Charles the Fifth,
desirous of seeing the Plombes for the last time after his abdication.

He had her brought into and carried out of the monastery of Saint-Yuste
in this manner.

Fauchelevent, who had recovered himself a little, exclaimed:—

“But how will you manage to breathe?”


“I will breathe.”


“In that box! The mere thought of it suffocates me.”


“You surely must have a gimlet, you will make a few holes here and
there, around my mouth, and you will nail the top plank on loosely.”


“Good! And what if you should happen to cough or to sneeze?”


“A man who is making his escape does not cough or sneeze.”


And Jean Valjean added:—

“Father Fauchelevent, we must come to a decision: I must either be
caught here, or accept this escape through the hearse.”


Every one has noticed the taste which cats have for pausing and
lounging between the two leaves of a half-shut door. Who is there who
has not said to a cat, “Do come in!” There are men who, when an
incident stands half-open before them, have the same tendency to halt
in indecision between two resolutions, at the risk of getting crushed
through the abrupt closing of the adventure by fate. The over-prudent,
cats as they are, and because they are cats, sometimes incur more
danger than the audacious. Fauchelevent was of this hesitating nature.
But Jean Valjean’s coolness prevailed over him in spite of himself. He
grumbled:—

“Well, since there is no other means.”


Jean Valjean resumed:—

“The only thing which troubles me is what will take place at the
cemetery.”


“That is the very point that is not troublesome,” exclaimed
Fauchelevent. “If you are sure of coming out of the coffin all right, I
am sure of getting you out of the grave. The grave-digger is a
drunkard, and a friend of mine. He is Father Mestienne. An old fellow
of the old school. The grave-digger puts the corpses in the grave, and
I put the grave-digger in my pocket. I will tell you what will take
place. They will arrive a little before dusk, three-quarters of an hour
before the gates of the cemetery are closed. The hearse will drive
directly up to the grave. I shall follow; that is my business. I shall
have a hammer, a chisel, and some pincers in my pocket. The hearse
halts, the undertaker’s men knot a rope around your coffin and lower
you down. The priest says the prayers, makes the sign of the cross,
sprinkles the holy water, and takes his departure. I am left alone with
Father Mestienne. He is my friend, I tell you. One of two things will
happen, he will either be sober, or he will not be sober. If he is not
drunk, I shall say to him: ‘Come and drink a bout while the _Bon Coing_
[the Good Quince] is open.’ I carry him off, I get him drunk,—it does
not take long to make Father Mestienne drunk, he always has the
beginning of it about him,—I lay him under the table, I take his card,
so that I can get into the cemetery again, and I return without him.
Then you have no longer any one but me to deal with. If he is drunk, I
shall say to him: ‘Be off; I will do your work for you.’ Off he goes,
and I drag you out of the hole.”


Jean Valjean held out his hand, and Fauchelevent precipitated himself
upon it with the touching effusion of a peasant.

“That is settled, Father Fauchelevent. All will go well.”


“Provided nothing goes wrong,” thought Fauchelevent. “In that case, it
would be terrible.”







On the following day, as the sun was declining, the very rare
passers-by on the Boulevard du Maine pulled off their hats to an
old-fashioned hearse, ornamented with skulls, cross-bones, and tears.
This hearse contained a coffin covered with a white cloth over which
spread a large black cross, like a huge corpse with drooping arms. A
mourning-coach, in which could be seen a priest in his surplice, and a
choir boy in his red cap, followed. Two undertaker’s men in gray
uniforms trimmed with black walked on the right and the left of the
hearse. Behind it came an old man in the garments of a laborer, who
limped along. The procession was going in the direction of the
Vaugirard cemetery.

The handle of a hammer, the blade of a cold chisel, and the antennæ of
a pair of pincers were visible, protruding from the man’s pocket.

The Vaugirard cemetery formed an exception among the cemeteries of
Paris. It had its peculiar usages, just as it had its carriage entrance
and its house door, which old people in the quarter, who clung
tenaciously to ancient words, still called the _porte cavalière_ and
the _porte piétonne_.16 The Bernardines-Benedictines of the Rue
Petit-Picpus had obtained permission, as we have already stated, to be
buried there in a corner apart, and at night, the plot of land having
formerly belonged to their community. The grave-diggers being thus
bound to service in the evening in summer and at night in winter, in
this cemetery, they were subjected to a special discipline. The gates
of the Paris cemeteries closed, at that epoch, at sundown, and this
being a municipal regulation, the Vaugirard cemetery was bound by it
like the rest. The carriage gate and the house door were two contiguous
grated gates, adjoining a pavilion built by the architect Perronet, and
inhabited by the door-keeper of the cemetery. These gates, therefore,
swung inexorably on their hinges at the instant when the sun
disappeared behind the dome of the Invalides. If any grave-digger were
delayed after that moment in the cemetery, there was but one way for
him to get out—his grave-digger’s card furnished by the department of
public funerals. A sort of letter-box was constructed in the porter’s
window. The grave-digger dropped his card into this box, the porter
heard it fall, pulled the rope, and the small door opened. If the man
had not his card, he mentioned his name, the porter, who was sometimes
in bed and asleep, rose, came out and identified the man, and opened
the gate with his key; the grave-digger stepped out, but had to pay a
fine of fifteen francs.

This cemetery, with its peculiarities outside the regulations,
embarrassed the symmetry of the administration. It was suppressed a
little later than 1830. The cemetery of Mont-Parnasse, called the
Eastern cemetery, succeeded to it, and inherited that famous dram-shop
next to the Vaugirard cemetery, which was surmounted by a quince
painted on a board, and which formed an angle, one side on the
drinkers’ tables, and the other on the tombs, with this sign: _Au Bon
Coing_.

The Vaugirard cemetery was what may be called a faded cemetery. It was
falling into disuse. Dampness was invading it, the flowers were
deserting it. The bourgeois did not care much about being buried in the
Vaugirard; it hinted at poverty. Père-Lachaise if you please! to be
buried in Père-Lachaise is equivalent to having furniture of mahogany.
It is recognized as elegant. The Vaugirard cemetery was a venerable
enclosure, planted like an old-fashioned French garden. Straight
alleys, box, thuya-trees, holly, ancient tombs beneath aged
cypress-trees, and very tall grass. In the evening it was tragic there.
There were very lugubrious lines about it.

The sun had not yet set when the hearse with the white pall and the
black cross entered the avenue of the Vaugirard cemetery. The lame man
who followed it was no other than Fauchelevent.

The interment of Mother Crucifixion in the vault under the altar, the
exit of Cosette, the introduction of Jean Valjean to the dead-room,—all
had been executed without difficulty, and there had been no hitch.

Let us remark in passing, that the burial of Mother Crucifixion under
the altar of the convent is a perfectly venial offence in our sight. It
is one of the faults which resemble a duty. The nuns had committed it,
not only without difficulty, but even with the applause of their own
consciences. In the cloister, what is called the “government” is only
an intermeddling with authority, an interference which is always
questionable. In the first place, the rule; as for the code, we shall
see. Make as many laws as you please, men; but keep them for
yourselves. The tribute to Cæsar is never anything but the remnants of
the tribute to God. A prince is nothing in the presence of a principle.

Fauchelevent limped along behind the hearse in a very contented frame
of mind. His twin plots, the one with the nuns, the one for the
convent, the other against it, the other with M. Madeleine, had
succeeded, to all appearance. Jean Valjean’s composure was one of those
powerful tranquillities which are contagious. Fauchelevent no longer
felt doubtful as to his success.

What remained to be done was a mere nothing. Within the last two years,
he had made good Father Mestienne, a chubby-cheeked person, drunk at
least ten times. He played with Father Mestienne. He did what he liked
with him. He made him dance according to his whim. Mestienne’s head
adjusted itself to the cap of Fauchelevent’s will. Fauchelevent’s
confidence was perfect.

At the moment when the convoy entered the avenue leading to the
cemetery, Fauchelevent glanced cheerfully at the hearse, and said half
aloud, as he rubbed his big hands:—

“Here’s a fine farce!”


All at once the hearse halted; it had reached the gate. The permission
for interment must be exhibited. The undertaker’s man addressed himself
to the porter of the cemetery. During this colloquy, which always is
productive of a delay of from one to two minutes, some one, a stranger,
came and placed himself behind the hearse, beside Fauchelevent. He was
a sort of laboring man, who wore a waistcoat with large pockets and
carried a mattock under his arm.

Fauchelevent surveyed this stranger.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“The man replied:—

“The grave-digger.”


If a man could survive the blow of a cannon-ball full in the breast, he
would make the same face that Fauchelevent made.

“The grave-digger?”


“Yes.”


“You?”


“I.”


“Father Mestienne is the grave-digger.”


“He was.”


“What! He was?”


“He is dead.”


Fauchelevent had expected anything but this, that a grave-digger could
die. It is true, nevertheless, that grave-diggers do die themselves. By
dint of excavating graves for other people, one hollows out one’s own.

Fauchelevent stood there with his mouth wide open. He had hardly the
strength to stammer:—

“But it is not possible!”


“It is so.”


“But,” he persisted feebly, “Father Mestienne is the grave-digger.”


“After Napoleon, Louis XVIII. After Mestienne, Gribier. Peasant, my
name is Gribier.”


Fauchelevent, who was deadly pale, stared at this Gribier.

He was a tall, thin, livid, utterly funereal man. He had the air of an
unsuccessful doctor who had turned grave-digger.

Fauchelevent burst out laughing.

“Ah!” said he, “what queer things do happen! Father Mestienne is dead,
but long live little Father Lenoir! Do you know who little Father
Lenoir is? He is a jug of red wine. It is a jug of Surêne, morbigou! of
real Paris Surêne? Ah! So old Mestienne is dead! I am sorry for it; he
was a jolly fellow. But you are a jolly fellow, too. Are you not,
comrade? We’ll go and have a drink together presently.”


The man replied:—

“I have been a student. I passed my fourth examination. I never drink.”


The hearse had set out again, and was rolling up the grand alley of the
cemetery.

Fauchelevent had slackened his pace. He limped more out of anxiety than
from infirmity.

The grave-digger walked on in front of him.

Fauchelevent passed the unexpected Gribier once more in review.

He was one of those men who, though very young, have the air of age,
and who, though slender, are extremely strong.

“Comrade!” cried Fauchelevent.

The man turned round.

“I am the convent grave-digger.”


“My colleague,” said the man.

Fauchelevent, who was illiterate but very sharp, understood that he had
to deal with a formidable species of man, with a fine talker. He
muttered:

“So Father Mestienne is dead.”


The man replied:—

“Completely. The good God consulted his note-book which shows when the
time is up. It was Father Mestienne’s turn. Father Mestienne died.”


Fauchelevent repeated mechanically: “The good God—”


“The good God,” said the man authoritatively. “According to the
philosophers, the Eternal Father; according to the Jacobins, the
Supreme Being.”


“Shall we not make each other’s acquaintance?” stammered Fauchelevent.

“It is made. You are a peasant, I am a Parisian.”


“People do not know each other until they have drunk together. He who
empties his glass empties his heart. You must come and have a drink
with me. Such a thing cannot be refused.”


“Business first.”


Fauchelevent thought: “I am lost.”


They were only a few turns of the wheel distant from the small alley
leading to the nuns’ corner.

The grave-digger resumed:—

“Peasant, I have seven small children who must be fed. As they must
eat, I cannot drink.”


And he added, with the satisfaction of a serious man who is turning a
phrase well:—

“Their hunger is the enemy of my thirst.”


The hearse skirted a clump of cypress-trees, quitted the grand alley,
turned into a narrow one, entered the waste land, and plunged into a
thicket. This indicated the immediate proximity of the place of
sepulture. Fauchelevent slackened his pace, but he could not detain the
hearse. Fortunately, the soil, which was light and wet with the winter
rains, clogged the wheels and retarded its speed.

He approached the grave-digger.

“They have such a nice little Argenteuil wine,” murmured Fauchelevent.

“Villager,” retorted the man, “I ought not be a grave-digger. My father
was a porter at the Prytaneum [Town-Hall]. He destined me for
literature. But he had reverses. He had losses on ’change. I was
obliged to renounce the profession of author. But I am still a public
writer.”


“So you are not a grave-digger, then?” returned Fauchelevent, clutching
at this branch, feeble as it was.

“The one does not hinder the other. I cumulate.”


Fauchelevent did not understand this last word.

“Come have a drink,” said he.

Here a remark becomes necessary. Fauchelevent, whatever his anguish,
offered a drink, but he did not explain himself on one point; who was
to pay? Generally, Fauchelevent offered and Father Mestienne paid. An
offer of a drink was the evident result of the novel situation created
by the new grave-digger, and it was necessary to make this offer, but
the old gardener left the proverbial quarter of an hour named after
Rabelais in the dark, and that not unintentionally. As for himself,
Fauchelevent did not wish to pay, troubled as he was.

The grave-digger went on with a superior smile:—

“One must eat. I have accepted Father Mestienne’s reversion. One gets
to be a philosopher when one has nearly completed his classes. To the
labor of the hand I join the labor of the arm. I have my scrivener’s
stall in the market of the Rue de Sèvres. You know? the Umbrella
Market. All the cooks of the Red Cross apply to me. I scribble their
declarations of love to the raw soldiers. In the morning I write love
letters; in the evening I dig graves. Such is life, rustic.”


The hearse was still advancing. Fauchelevent, uneasy to the last
degree, was gazing about him on all sides. Great drops of perspiration
trickled down from his brow.

“But,” continued the grave-digger, “a man cannot serve two mistresses.
I must choose between the pen and the mattock. The mattock is ruining
my hand.”


The hearse halted.

The choir boy alighted from the mourning-coach, then the priest.

One of the small front wheels of the hearse had run up a little on a
pile of earth, beyond which an open grave was visible.

“What a farce this is!” repeated Fauchelevent in consternation.






Who was in the coffin? The reader knows. Jean Valjean.

Jean Valjean had arranged things so that he could exist there, and he
could almost breathe.

It is a strange thing to what a degree security of conscience confers
security of the rest. Every combination thought out by Jean Valjean had
been progressing, and progressing favorably, since the preceding day.
He, like Fauchelevent, counted on Father Mestienne. He had no doubt as
to the end. Never was there a more critical situation, never more
complete composure.

The four planks of the coffin breathe out a kind of terrible peace. It
seemed as though something of the repose of the dead entered into Jean
Valjean’s tranquillity.

From the depths of that coffin he had been able to follow, and he had
followed, all the phases of the terrible drama which he was playing
with death.

Shortly after Fauchelevent had finished nailing on the upper plank,
Jean Valjean had felt himself carried out, then driven off. He knew,
from the diminution in the jolting, when they left the pavements and
reached the earth road. He had divined, from a dull noise, that they
were crossing the bridge of Austerlitz. At the first halt, he had
understood that they were entering the cemetery; at the second halt, he
said to himself:—

“Here is the grave.”


Suddenly, he felt hands seize the coffin, then a harsh grating against
the planks; he explained it to himself as the rope which was being
fastened round the casket in order to lower it into the cavity.

Then he experienced a giddiness.

The undertaker’s man and the grave-digger had probably allowed the
coffin to lose its balance, and had lowered the head before the foot.
He recovered himself fully when he felt himself horizontal and
motionless. He had just touched the bottom.

He had a certain sensation of cold.

A voice rose above him, glacial and solemn. He heard Latin words, which
he did not understand, pass over him, so slowly that he was able to
catch them one by one:—

_“Qui dormiunt in terræ pulvere, evigilabunt; alii in vitam æternam, et
alii in approbrium, ut videant semper.” _

A child’s voice said:—

_“De profundis.” _

The grave voice began again:—

_“Requiem æternam dona ei, Domine.” _

The child’s voice responded:—

_“Et lux perpetua luceat ei.” _

He heard something like the gentle patter of several drops of rain on
the plank which covered him. It was probably the holy water.

He thought: “This will be over soon now. Patience for a little while
longer. The priest will take his departure. Fauchelevent will take
Mestienne off to drink. I shall be left. Then Fauchelevent will return
alone, and I shall get out. That will be the work of a good hour.”


The grave voice resumed

_“Requiescat in pace.” _

And the child’s voice said:—

_“Amen.” _

Jean Valjean strained his ears, and heard something like retreating
footsteps.

“There, they are going now,” thought he. “I am alone.”


All at once, he heard over his head a sound which seemed to him to be a
clap of thunder.

It was a shovelful of earth falling on the coffin.

A second shovelful fell.

One of the holes through which he breathed had just been stopped up.

A third shovelful of earth fell.

Then a fourth.

There are things which are too strong for the strongest man. Jean
Valjean lost consciousness.




THE CARD


This is what had taken place above the coffin in which lay Jean
Valjean.

When the hearse had driven off, when the priest and the choir boy had
entered the carriage again and taken their departure, Fauchelevent, who
had not taken his eyes from the grave-digger, saw the latter bend over
and grasp his shovel, which was sticking upright in the heap of dirt.

Then Fauchelevent took a supreme resolve.

He placed himself between the grave and the grave-digger, crossed his
arms and said:—

“I am the one to pay!”


The grave-digger stared at him in amazement, and replied:—

“What’s that, peasant?”


Fauchelevent repeated:—

“I am the one who pays!”


“What?”


“For the wine.”


“What wine?”


“That Argenteuil wine.”


“Where is the Argenteuil?”


“At the _Bon Coing_.”


“Go to the devil!” said the grave-digger.

And he flung a shovelful of earth on the coffin.

The coffin gave back a hollow sound. Fauchelevent felt himself stagger
and on the point of falling headlong into the grave himself. He shouted
in a voice in which the strangling sound of the death rattle began to
mingle:—

“Comrade! Before the _Bon Coing_ is shut!”


The grave-digger took some more earth on his shovel. Fauchelevent
continued.

“I will pay.”


And he seized the man’s arm.

“Listen to me, comrade. I am the convent grave-digger, I have come to
help you. It is a business which can be performed at night. Let us
begin, then, by going for a drink.”


And as he spoke, and clung to this desperate insistence, this
melancholy reflection occurred to him: “And if he drinks, will he get
drunk?”


“Provincial,” said the man, “if you positively insist upon it, I
consent. We will drink. After work, never before.”


And he flourished his shovel briskly. Fauchelevent held him back.

“It is Argenteuil wine, at six.”


“Oh, come,” said the grave-digger, “you are a bell-ringer. Ding dong,
ding dong, that’s all you know how to say. Go hang yourself.”


And he threw in a second shovelful.

Fauchelevent had reached a point where he no longer knew what he was
saying.

“Come along and drink,” he cried, “since it is I who pays the bill.”


“When we have put the child to bed,” said the grave-digger.

He flung in a third shovelful.

Then he thrust his shovel into the earth and added:—

“It’s cold to-night, you see, and the corpse would shriek out after us
if we were to plant her there without a coverlet.”


At that moment, as he loaded his shovel, the grave-digger bent over,
and the pocket of his waistcoat gaped. Fauchelevent’s wild gaze fell
mechanically into that pocket, and there it stopped.

The sun was not yet hidden behind the horizon; there was still light
enough to enable him to distinguish something white at the bottom of
that yawning pocket.

The sum total of lightning that the eye of a Picard peasant can
contain, traversed Fauchelevent’s pupils. An idea had just occurred to
him.

He thrust his hand into the pocket from behind, without the
grave-digger, who was wholly absorbed in his shovelful of earth,
observing it, and pulled out the white object which lay at the bottom
of it.

The man sent a fourth shovelful tumbling into the grave.

Just as he turned round to get the fifth, Fauchelevent looked calmly at
him and said:—

“By the way, you new man, have you your card?”


The grave-digger paused.

“What card?”


“The sun is on the point of setting.”


“That’s good, it is going to put on its nightcap.”


“The gate of the cemetery will close immediately.”


“Well, what then?”


“Have you your card?”


“Ah! my card?” said the grave-digger.

And he fumbled in his pocket.

Having searched one pocket, he proceeded to search the other. He passed
on to his fobs, explored the first, returned to the second.

“Why, no,” said he, “I have not my card. I must have forgotten it.”


“Fifteen francs fine,” said Fauchelevent.

The grave-digger turned green. Green is the pallor of livid people.

“Ah! Jésus-mon-Dieu-bancroche-à-bas-la-lune!”17 he exclaimed. “Fifteen
francs fine!”


“Three pieces of a hundred sous,” said Fauchelevent.

The grave-digger dropped his shovel.

Fauchelevent’s turn had come.

“Ah, come now, conscript,” said Fauchelevent, “none of this despair.
There is no question of committing suicide and benefiting the grave.
Fifteen francs is fifteen francs, and besides, you may not be able to
pay it. I am an old hand, you are a new one. I know all the ropes and
the devices. I will give you some friendly advice. One thing is clear,
the sun is on the point of setting, it is touching the dome now, the
cemetery will be closed in five minutes more.”


“That is true,” replied the man.

“Five minutes more and you will not have time to fill the grave, it is
as hollow as the devil, this grave, and to reach the gate in season to
pass it before it is shut.”


“That is true.”


“In that case, a fine of fifteen francs.”


“Fifteen francs.”


“But you have time. Where do you live?”


“A couple of steps from the barrier, a quarter of an hour from here.
No. 87 Rue de Vaugirard.”


“You have just time to get out by taking to your heels at your best
speed.”


“That is exactly so.”


“Once outside the gate, you gallop home, you get your card, you return,
the cemetery porter admits you. As you have your card, there will be
nothing to pay. And you will bury your corpse. I’ll watch it for you in
the meantime, so that it shall not run away.”


“I am indebted to you for my life, peasant.”


“Decamp!” said Fauchelevent.

The grave-digger, overwhelmed with gratitude, shook his hand and set
off on a run.

When the man had disappeared in the thicket, Fauchelevent listened
until he heard his footsteps die away in the distance, then he leaned
over the grave, and said in a low tone:—

“Father Madeleine!”


There was no reply.

Fauchelevent was seized with a shudder. He tumbled rather than climbed
into the grave, flung himself on the head of the coffin and cried:—

“Are you there?”


Silence in the coffin.

Fauchelevent, hardly able to draw his breath for trembling, seized his
cold chisel and his hammer, and pried up the coffin lid.

Jean Valjean’s face appeared in the twilight; it was pale and his eyes
were closed.

Fauchelevent’s hair rose upright on his head, he sprang to his feet,
then fell back against the side of the grave, ready to swoon on the
coffin. He stared at Jean Valjean.

Jean Valjean lay there pallid and motionless.

Fauchelevent murmured in a voice as faint as a sigh:—

“He is dead!”


And, drawing himself up, and folding his arms with such violence that
his clenched fists came in contact with his shoulders, he cried:—

“And this is the way I save his life!”


Then the poor man fell to sobbing. He soliloquized the while, for it is
an error to suppose that the soliloquy is unnatural. Powerful emotion
often talks aloud.

“It is Father Mestienne’s fault. Why did that fool die? What need was
there for him to give up the ghost at the very moment when no one was
expecting it? It is he who has killed M. Madeleine. Father Madeleine!
He is in the coffin. It is quite handy. All is over. Now, is there any
sense in these things? Ah! my God! he is dead! Well! and his little
girl, what am I to do with her? What will the fruit-seller say? The
idea of its being possible for a man like that to die like this! When I
think how he put himself under that cart! Father Madeleine! Father
Madeleine! Pardine! He was suffocated, I said so. He wouldn’t believe
me. Well! Here’s a pretty trick to play! He is dead, that good man, the
very best man out of all the good God’s good folks! And his little
girl! Ah! In the first place, I won’t go back there myself. I shall
stay here. After having done such a thing as that! What’s the use of
being two old men, if we are two old fools! But, in the first place,
how did he manage to enter the convent? That was the beginning of it
all. One should not do such things. Father Madeleine! Father Madeleine!
Father Madeleine! Madeleine! Monsieur Madeleine! Monsieur le Maire! He
does not hear me. Now get out of this scrape if you can!”


And he tore his hair.

A grating sound became audible through the trees in the distance. It
was the cemetery gate closing.

Fauchelevent bent over Jean Valjean, and all at once he bounded back
and recoiled so far as the limits of a grave permit.

Jean Valjean’s eyes were open and gazing at him.

To see a corpse is alarming, to behold a resurrection is almost as much
so. Fauchelevent became like stone, pale, haggard, overwhelmed by all
these excesses of emotion, not knowing whether he had to do with a
living man or a dead one, and staring at Jean Valjean, who was gazing
at him.

[Illustration: The Resurrection]

“I fell asleep,” said Jean Valjean.

And he raised himself to a sitting posture.

Fauchelevent fell on his knees.

“Just, good Virgin! How you frightened me!”


Then he sprang to his feet and cried:—

“Thanks, Father Madeleine!”


Jean Valjean had merely fainted. The fresh air had revived him.

Joy is the ebb of terror. Fauchelevent found almost as much difficulty
in recovering himself as Jean Valjean had.

“So you are not dead! Oh! How wise you are! I called you so much that
you came back. When I saw your eyes shut, I said: ‘Good! there he is,
stifled,’ I should have gone raving mad, mad enough for a strait
jacket. They would have put me in Bicêtre. What do you suppose I should
have done if you had been dead? And your little girl? There’s that
fruit-seller,—she would never have understood it! The child is thrust
into your arms, and then—the grandfather is dead! What a story! good
saints of paradise, what a tale! Ah! you are alive, that’s the best of
it!”


“I am cold,” said Jean Valjean.

This remark recalled Fauchelevent thoroughly to reality, and there was
pressing need of it. The souls of these two men were troubled even when
they had recovered themselves, although they did not realize it, and
there was about them something uncanny, which was the sinister
bewilderment inspired by the place.

“Let us get out of here quickly,” exclaimed Fauchelevent.

He fumbled in his pocket, and pulled out a gourd with which he had
provided himself.

“But first, take a drop,” said he.

The flask finished what the fresh air had begun, Jean Valjean swallowed
a mouthful of brandy, and regained full possession of his faculties.

He got out of the coffin, and helped Fauchelevent to nail on the lid
again.

Three minutes later they were out of the grave.

Moreover, Fauchelevent was perfectly composed. He took his time. The
cemetery was closed. The arrival of the grave-digger Gribier was not to
be apprehended. That “conscript” was at home busily engaged in looking
for his card, and at some difficulty in finding it in his lodgings,
since it was in Fauchelevent’s pocket. Without a card, he could not get
back into the cemetery.

Fauchelevent took the shovel, and Jean Valjean the pick-axe, and
together they buried the empty coffin.

When the grave was full, Fauchelevent said to Jean Valjean:—

“Let us go. I will keep the shovel; do you carry off the mattock.”


Night was falling.

Jean Valjean experienced some difficulty in moving and in walking. He
had stiffened himself in that coffin, and had become a little like a
corpse. The rigidity of death had seized upon him between those four
planks. He had, in a manner, to thaw out, from the tomb.

“You are benumbed,” said Fauchelevent. “It is a pity that I have a game
leg, for otherwise we might step out briskly.”


“Bah!” replied Jean Valjean, “four paces will put life into my legs
once more.”


They set off by the alleys through which the hearse had passed. On
arriving before the closed gate and the porter’s pavilion Fauchelevent,
who held the grave-digger’s card in his hand, dropped it into the box,
the porter pulled the rope, the gate opened, and they went out.

“How well everything is going!” said Fauchelevent; “what a capital idea
that was of yours, Father Madeleine!”


They passed the Vaugirard barrier in the simplest manner in the world.
In the neighborhood of the cemetery, a shovel and pick are equal to two
passports.

The Rue Vaugirard was deserted.

“Father Madeleine,” said Fauchelevent as they went along, and raising
his eyes to the houses, “Your eyes are better than mine. Show me No.
87.”


“Here it is,” said Jean Valjean.

“There is no one in the street,” said Fauchelevent. “Give me your
mattock and wait a couple of minutes for me.”


Fauchelevent entered No. 87, ascended to the very top, guided by the
instinct which always leads the poor man to the garret, and knocked in
the dark, at the door of an attic.

A voice replied: “Come in.”


It was Gribier’s voice.

Fauchelevent opened the door. The grave-digger’s dwelling was, like all
such wretched habitations, an unfurnished and encumbered garret. A
packing-case—a coffin, perhaps—took the place of a commode, a
butter-pot served for a drinking-fountain, a straw mattress served for
a bed, the floor served instead of tables and chairs. In a corner, on a
tattered fragment which had been a piece of an old carpet, a thin woman
and a number of children were piled in a heap. The whole of this
poverty-stricken interior bore traces of having been overturned. One
would have said that there had been an earthquake “for one.” The covers
were displaced, the rags scattered about, the jug broken, the mother
had been crying, the children had probably been beaten; traces of a
vigorous and ill-tempered search. It was plain that the grave-digger
had made a desperate search for his card, and had made everybody in the
garret, from the jug to his wife, responsible for its loss. He wore an
air of desperation.

But Fauchelevent was in too great a hurry to terminate this adventure
to take any notice of this sad side of his success.

He entered and said:—

“I have brought you back your shovel and pick.”


Gribier gazed at him in stupefaction.

“Is it you, peasant?”


“And to-morrow morning you will find your card with the porter of the
cemetery.”


And he laid the shovel and mattock on the floor.

“What is the meaning of this?” demanded Gribier.

“The meaning of it is, that you dropped your card out of your pocket,
that I found it on the ground after you were gone, that I have buried
the corpse, that I have filled the grave, that I have done your work,
that the porter will return your card to you, and that you will not
have to pay fifteen francs. There you have it, conscript.”


“Thanks, villager!” exclaimed Gribier, radiant. “The next time I will
pay for the drinks.”







An hour later, in the darkness of night, two men and a child presented
themselves at No. 62 Rue Petit-Picpus. The elder of the men lifted the
knocker and rapped.

They were Fauchelevent, Jean Valjean, and Cosette.

The two old men had gone to fetch Cosette from the fruiterer’s in the
Rue du Chemin-Vert, where Fauchelevent had deposited her on the
preceding day. Cosette had passed these twenty-four hours trembling
silently and understanding nothing. She trembled to such a degree that
she wept. She had neither eaten nor slept. The worthy fruit-seller had
plied her with a hundred questions, without obtaining any other reply
than a melancholy and unvarying gaze. Cosette had betrayed nothing of
what she had seen and heard during the last two days. She divined that
they were passing through a crisis. She was deeply conscious that it
was necessary to “be good.” Who has not experienced the sovereign power
of those two words, pronounced with a certain accent in the ear of a
terrified little being: _Say nothing! _ Fear is mute. Moreover, no one
guards a secret like a child.

But when, at the expiration of these lugubrious twenty-four hours, she
beheld Jean Valjean again, she gave vent to such a cry of joy, that any
thoughtful person who had chanced to hear that cry, would have guessed
that it issued from an abyss.

Fauchelevent belonged to the convent and knew the pass-words. All the
doors opened.

Thus was solved the double and alarming problem of how to get out and
how to get in.

The porter, who had received his instructions, opened the little
servant’s door which connected the courtyard with the garden, and which
could still be seen from the street twenty years ago, in the wall at
the bottom of the court, which faced the carriage entrance.

The porter admitted all three of them through this door, and from that
point they reached the inner, reserved parlor where Fauchelevent, on
the preceding day, had received his orders from the prioress.

The prioress, rosary in hand, was waiting for them. A vocal mother,
with her veil lowered, stood beside her.

A discreet candle lighted, one might almost say, made a show of
lighting the parlor.

The prioress passed Jean Valjean in review. There is nothing which
examines like a downcast eye.

Then she questioned him:—

“You are the brother?”


“Yes, reverend Mother,” replied Fauchelevent.

“What is your name?”


Fauchelevent replied:—

“Ultime Fauchelevent.”


He really had had a brother named Ultime, who was dead.

“Where do you come from?”


Fauchelevent replied:—

“From Picquigny, near Amiens.”


“What is your age?”


Fauchelevent replied:—

“Fifty.”


“What is your profession?”


Fauchelevent replied:—

“Gardener.”


“Are you a good Christian?”


Fauchelevent replied:—

“Every one is in the family.”


“Is this your little girl?”


Fauchelevent replied:—

“Yes, reverend Mother.”


“You are her father?”


Fauchelevent replied:—

“Her grandfather.”


The vocal mother said to the prioress in a low voice

“He answers well.”


Jean Valjean had not uttered a single word.

The prioress looked attentively at Cosette, and said half aloud to the
vocal mother:—

“She will grow up ugly.”


The two mothers consulted for a few moments in very low tones in the
corner of the parlor, then the prioress turned round and said:—

“Father Fauvent, you will get another knee-cap with a bell. Two will be
required now.”


On the following day, therefore, two bells were audible in the garden,
and the nuns could not resist the temptation to raise the corner of
their veils. At the extreme end of the garden, under the trees, two
men, Fauvent and another man, were visible as they dug side by side. An
enormous event. Their silence was broken to the extent of saying to
each other: “He is an assistant gardener.”


The vocal mothers added: “He is a brother of Father Fauvent.”


Jean Valjean was, in fact, regularly installed; he had his belled
knee-cap; henceforth he was official. His name was Ultime Fauchelevent.

The most powerful determining cause of his admission had been the
prioress’s observation upon Cosette: “She will grow up ugly.”


The prioress, that pronounced prognosticator, immediately took a fancy
to Cosette and gave her a place in the school as a charity pupil.

There is nothing that is not strictly logical about this.

It is in vain that mirrors are banished from the convent, women are
conscious of their faces; now, girls who are conscious of their beauty
do not easily become nuns; the vocation being voluntary in inverse
proportion to their good looks, more is to be hoped from the ugly than
from the pretty. Hence a lively taste for plain girls.

The whole of this adventure increased the importance of good, old
Fauchelevent; he won a triple success; in the eyes of Jean Valjean,
whom he had saved and sheltered; in those of grave-digger Gribier, who
said to himself: “He spared me that fine”; with the convent, which,
being enabled, thanks to him, to retain the coffin of Mother
Crucifixion under the altar, eluded Cæsar and satisfied God. There was
a coffin containing a body in the Petit-Picpus, and a coffin without a
body in the Vaugirard cemetery, public order had no doubt been deeply
disturbed thereby, but no one was aware of it.

As for the convent, its gratitude to Fauchelevent was very great.
Fauchelevent became the best of servitors and the most precious of
gardeners. Upon the occasion of the archbishop’s next visit, the
prioress recounted the affair to his Grace, making something of a
confession at the same time, and yet boasting of her deed. On leaving
the convent, the archbishop mentioned it with approval, and in a
whisper to M. de Latil, Monsieur’s confessor, afterwards Archbishop of
Reims and Cardinal. This admiration for Fauchelevent became widespread,
for it made its way to Rome. We have seen a note addressed by the then
reigning Pope, Leo XII., to one of his relatives, a Monsignor in the
Nuncio’s establishment in Paris, and bearing, like himself, the name of
Della Genga; it contained these lines: “It appears that there is in a
convent in Paris an excellent gardener, who is also a holy man, named
Fauvent.” Nothing of this triumph reached Fauchelevent in his hut; he
went on grafting, weeding, and covering up his melon beds, without in
the least suspecting his excellences and his sanctity. Neither did he
suspect his glory, any more than a Durham or Surrey bull whose portrait
is published in the _London Illustrated News_, with this inscription:
“Bull which carried off the prize at the Cattle Show.”







Cosette continued to hold her tongue in the convent.

It was quite natural that Cosette should think herself Jean Valjean’s
daughter. Moreover, as she knew nothing, she could say nothing, and
then, she would not have said anything in any case. As we have just
observed, nothing trains children to silence like unhappiness. Cosette
had suffered so much, that she feared everything, even to speak or to
breathe. A single word had so often brought down an avalanche upon her.
She had hardly begun to regain her confidence since she had been with
Jean Valjean. She speedily became accustomed to the convent. Only she
regretted Catherine, but she dared not say so. Once, however, she did
say to Jean Valjean: “Father, if I had known, I would have brought her
away with me.”


Cosette had been obliged, on becoming a scholar in the convent, to don
the garb of the pupils of the house. Jean Valjean succeeded in getting
them to restore to him the garments which she laid aside. This was the
same mourning suit which he had made her put on when she had quitted
the Thénardiers’ inn. It was not very threadbare even now. Jean Valjean
locked up these garments, plus the stockings and the shoes, with a
quantity of camphor and all the aromatics in which convents abound, in
a little valise which he found means of procuring. He set this valise
on a chair near his bed, and he always carried the key about his
person. “Father,” Cosette asked him one day, “what is there in that box
which smells so good?”


Father Fauchelevent received other recompense for his good action, in
addition to the glory which we just mentioned, and of which he knew
nothing; in the first place it made him happy; next, he had much less
work, since it was shared. Lastly, as he was very fond of snuff, he
found the presence of M. Madeleine an advantage, in that he used three
times as much as he had done previously, and that in an infinitely more
luxurious manner, seeing that M. Madeleine paid for it.

The nuns did not adopt the name of Ultime; they called Jean Valjean
_the other Fauvent_.

If these holy women had possessed anything of Javert’s glance, they
would eventually have noticed that when there was any errand to be done
outside in the behalf of the garden, it was always the elder
Fauchelevent, the old, the infirm, the lame man, who went, and never
the other; but whether it is that eyes constantly fixed on God know not
how to spy, or whether they were, by preference, occupied in keeping
watch on each other, they paid no heed to this.

Moreover, it was well for Jean Valjean that he kept close and did not
stir out. Javert watched the quarter for more than a month.

This convent was for Jean Valjean like an island surrounded by gulfs.
Henceforth, those four walls constituted his world. He saw enough of
the sky there to enable him to preserve his serenity, and Cosette
enough to remain happy.

A very sweet life began for him.

He inhabited the old hut at the end of the garden, in company with
Fauchelevent. This hovel, built of old rubbish, which was still in
existence in 1845, was composed, as the reader already knows, of three
chambers, all of which were utterly bare and had nothing beyond the
walls. The principal one had been given up, by force, for Jean Valjean
had opposed it in vain, to M. Madeleine, by Father Fauchelevent. The
walls of this chamber had for ornament, in addition to the two nails
whereon to hang the knee-cap and the basket, a Royalist bank-note of
’93, applied to the wall over the chimney-piece, and of which the
following is an exact facsimile:—

[Illustration: Royalist Bank-note]

This specimen of Vendean paper money had been nailed to the wall by the
preceding gardener, an old Chouan, who had died in the convent, and
whose place Fauchelevent had taken.

Jean Valjean worked in the garden every day and made himself very
useful. He had formerly been a pruner of trees, and he gladly found
himself a gardener once more. It will be remembered that he knew all
sorts of secrets and receipts for agriculture. He turned these to
advantage. Almost all the trees in the orchard were ungrafted, and
wild. He budded them and made them produce excellent fruit.

Cosette had permission to pass an hour with him every day. As the
sisters were melancholy and he was kind, the child made comparisons and
adored him. At the appointed hour she flew to the hut. When she entered
the lowly cabin, she filled it with paradise. Jean Valjean blossomed
out and felt his happiness increase with the happiness which he
afforded Cosette. The joy which we inspire has this charming property,
that, far from growing meagre, like all reflections, it returns to us
more radiant than ever. At recreation hours, Jean Valjean watched her
running and playing in the distance, and he distinguished her laugh
from that of the rest.

For Cosette laughed now.

Cosette’s face had even undergone a change, to a certain extent. The
gloom had disappeared from it. A smile is the same as sunshine; it
banishes winter from the human countenance.

Recreation over, when Cosette went into the house again, Jean Valjean
gazed at the windows of her class-room, and at night he rose to look at
the windows of her dormitory.

God has his own ways, moreover; the convent contributed, like Cosette,
to uphold and complete the Bishop’s work in Jean Valjean. It is certain
that virtue adjoins pride on one side. A bridge built by the devil
exists there. Jean Valjean had been, unconsciously, perhaps, tolerably
near that side and that bridge, when Providence cast his lot in the
convent of the Petit-Picpus; so long as he had compared himself only to
the Bishop, he had regarded himself as unworthy and had remained
humble; but for some time past he had been comparing himself to men in
general, and pride was beginning to spring up. Who knows? He might have
ended by returning very gradually to hatred.

The convent stopped him on that downward path.

This was the second place of captivity which he had seen. In his youth,
in what had been for him the beginning of his life, and later on, quite
recently again, he had beheld another,—a frightful place, a terrible
place, whose severities had always appeared to him the iniquity of
justice, and the crime of the law. Now, after the galleys, he saw the
cloister; and when he meditated how he had formed a part of the
galleys, and that he now, so to speak, was a spectator of the cloister,
he confronted the two in his own mind with anxiety.

Sometimes he crossed his arms and leaned on his hoe, and slowly
descended the endless spirals of reverie.

He recalled his former companions: how wretched they were; they rose at
dawn, and toiled until night; hardly were they permitted to sleep; they
lay on camp beds, where nothing was tolerated but mattresses two inches
thick, in rooms which were heated only in the very harshest months of
the year; they were clothed in frightful red blouses; they were
allowed, as a great favor, linen trousers in the hottest weather, and a
woollen carter’s blouse on their backs when it was very cold; they
drank no wine, and ate no meat, except when they went on “fatigue
duty.” They lived nameless, designated only by numbers, and converted,
after a manner, into ciphers themselves, with downcast eyes, with
lowered voices, with shorn heads, beneath the cudgel and in disgrace.

Then his mind reverted to the beings whom he had under his eyes.

These beings also lived with shorn heads, with downcast eyes, with
lowered voices, not in disgrace, but amid the scoffs of the world, not
with their backs bruised with the cudgel, but with their shoulders
lacerated with their discipline. Their names, also, had vanished from
among men; they no longer existed except under austere appellations.
They never ate meat and they never drank wine; they often remained
until evening without food; they were attired, not in a red blouse, but
in a black shroud, of woollen, which was heavy in summer and thin in
winter, without the power to add or subtract anything from it; without
having even, according to the season, the resource of the linen garment
or the woollen cloak; and for six months in the year they wore serge
chemises which gave them fever. They dwelt, not in rooms warmed only
during rigorous cold, but in cells where no fire was ever lighted; they
slept, not on mattresses two inches thick, but on straw. And finally,
they were not even allowed their sleep; every night, after a day of
toil, they were obliged, in the weariness of their first slumber, at
the moment when they were falling sound asleep and beginning to get
warm, to rouse themselves, to rise and to go and pray in an ice-cold
and gloomy chapel, with their knees on the stones.

On certain days each of these beings in turn had to remain for twelve
successive hours in a kneeling posture, or prostrate, with face upon
the pavement, and arms outstretched in the form of a cross.

The others were men; these were women.

What had those men done? They had stolen, violated, pillaged, murdered,
assassinated. They were bandits, counterfeiters, poisoners,
incendiaries, murderers, parricides. What had these women done? They
had done nothing whatever.

On the one hand, highway robbery, fraud, deceit, violence, sensuality,
homicide, all sorts of sacrilege, every variety of crime; on the other,
one thing only, innocence.

Perfect innocence, almost caught up into heaven in a mysterious
assumption, attached to the earth by virtue, already possessing
something of heaven through holiness.

On the one hand, confidences over crimes, which are exchanged in
whispers; on the other, the confession of faults made aloud. And what
crimes! And what faults!

On the one hand, miasms; on the other, an ineffable perfume. On the one
hand, a moral pest, guarded from sight, penned up under the range of
cannon, and literally devouring its plague-stricken victims; on the
other, the chaste flame of all souls on the same hearth. There,
darkness; here, the shadow; but a shadow filled with gleams of light,
and of gleams full of radiance.

Two strongholds of slavery; but in the first, deliverance possible, a
legal limit always in sight, and then, escape. In the second,
perpetuity; the sole hope, at the distant extremity of the future, that
faint light of liberty which men call death.

In the first, men are bound only with chains; in the other, chained by
faith.

What flowed from the first? An immense curse, the gnashing of teeth,
hatred, desperate viciousness, a cry of rage against human society, a
sarcasm against heaven.

What results flowed from the second? Blessings and love.

And in these two places, so similar yet so unlike, these two species of
beings who were so very unlike, were undergoing the same work,
expiation.

Jean Valjean understood thoroughly the expiation of the former; that
personal expiation, the expiation for one’s self. But he did not
understand that of these last, that of creatures without reproach and
without stain, and he trembled as he asked himself: The expiation of
what? What expiation?

A voice within his conscience replied: “The most divine of human
generosities, the expiation for others.”


Here all personal theory is withheld; we are only the narrator; we
place ourselves at Jean Valjean’s point of view, and we translate his
impressions.

Before his eyes he had the sublime summit of abnegation, the highest
possible pitch of virtue; the innocence which pardons men their faults,
and which expiates in their stead; servitude submitted to, torture
accepted, punishment claimed by souls which have not sinned, for the
sake of sparing it to souls which have fallen; the love of humanity
swallowed up in the love of God, but even there preserving its distinct
and mediatorial character; sweet and feeble beings possessing the
misery of those who are punished and the smile of those who are
recompensed.

And he remembered that he had dared to murmur!

Often, in the middle of the night, he rose to listen to the grateful
song of those innocent creatures weighed down with severities, and the
blood ran cold in his veins at the thought that those who were justly
chastised raised their voices heavenward only in blasphemy, and that
he, wretch that he was, had shaken his fist at God.

There was one striking thing which caused him to meditate deeply, like
a warning whisper from Providence itself: the scaling of that wall, the
passing of those barriers, the adventure accepted even at the risk of
death, the painful and difficult ascent, all those efforts even, which
he had made to escape from that other place of expiation, he had made
in order to gain entrance into this one. Was this a symbol of his
destiny? This house was a prison likewise and bore a melancholy
resemblance to that other one whence he had fled, and yet he had never
conceived an idea of anything similar.

Again he beheld gratings, bolts, iron bars—to guard whom? Angels.

These lofty walls which he had seen around tigers, he now beheld once
more around lambs.

This was a place of expiation, and not of punishment; and yet, it was
still more austere, more gloomy, and more pitiless than the other.

These virgins were even more heavily burdened than the convicts. A
cold, harsh wind, that wind which had chilled his youth, traversed the
barred and padlocked grating of the vultures; a still harsher and more
biting breeze blew in the cage of these doves.

Why?

When he thought on these things, all that was within him was lost in
amazement before this mystery of sublimity.

In these meditations, his pride vanished. He scrutinized his own heart
in all manner of ways; he felt his pettiness, and many a time he wept.
All that had entered into his life for the last six months had led him
back towards the Bishop’s holy injunctions; Cosette through love, the
convent through humility.

Sometimes at eventide, in the twilight, at an hour when the garden was
deserted, he could be seen on his knees in the middle of the walk which
skirted the chapel, in front of the window through which he had gazed
on the night of his arrival, and turned towards the spot where, as he
knew, the sister was making reparation, prostrated in prayer. Thus he
prayed as he knelt before the sister.

It seemed as though he dared not kneel directly before God.

Everything that surrounded him, that peaceful garden, those fragrant
flowers, those children who uttered joyous cries, those grave and
simple women, that silent cloister, slowly permeated him, and little by
little, his soul became compounded of silence like the cloister, of
perfume like the flowers, of simplicity like the women, of joy like the
children. And then he reflected that these had been two houses of God
which had received him in succession at two critical moments in his
life: the first, when all doors were closed and when human society
rejected him; the second, at a moment when human society had again set
out in pursuit of him, and when the galleys were again yawning; and
that, had it not been for the first, he should have relapsed into
crime, and had it not been for the second, into torment.

His whole heart melted in gratitude, and he loved more and more.

Many years passed in this manner; Cosette was growing up.

[THE END OF VOLUME II “COSETTE”]




MARIUS




[Illustration: Frontispiece Volume Three]

[Illustration: Titlepage Volume Three]




