Let us go back, for that is one of the privileges of the narrator, and place ourselves once again in the year 1815, a little prior to the period when the matters related in the first part of this book begin. If it had not rained on the night between the 17th and 18th June, 1815, the future of Europe would have been changed; a few drops of rain more or less made Napoleon oscillate. In order to make Waterloo the end of Austerlitz, Providence only required a little rain, and a cloud crossing the sky at a season when rain was not expected was sufficient to overthrow an empire. The battle of Waterloo could not begin till half-past eleven, and that gave Blücher time to come up. Why? Because the ground was moist and it was necessary for it to become firmer, that the artillery might manœuvre. Napoleon was an artillery officer, and always showed himself one; all his battle plans are made for projectiles. Making artillery converge on a given point was his key to victory. He treated the strategy of the opposing general as a citadel, and breached it; he crushed the weak point under grape-shot, and he began and ended his battles with artillery. Driving in squares, pulverizing regiments, breaking lines, destroying and dispersing masses,—all this must be done by striking, striking, striking incessantly, and he confided the task to artillery. It was a formidable method, and, allied to genius, rendered this gloomy pugilist of war invincible for fifteen years.
On June 18, 1815, he counted the more on his artillery, because he held the numerical superiority. Wellington had only one hundred and fifty-nine guns, while Napoleon had two hundred and forty. Had the earth been dry and the artillery able to move, the action would have begun at six A.M. It would have been won and over by two P.M., three hours before the Prussians changed the fortune of the day. How much blame was there on Napoleon's side for the loss of this battle? Is the shipwreck imputable to the pilot? Was the evident physical decline of Napoleon at that period complicated by a certain internal diminution? Had twenty years of war worn out the blade as well as the scabbard, the soul as well as the body? Was the veteran being awkwardly displayed in the captain? In a word, was the genius, as many historians of reputation have believed, eclipsed? Was he becoming frenzied, in order to conceal his own weakening from himself? Was he beginning to oscillate and veer with the wind? Was he becoming unconscious of danger, which is a serious thing in a general? In that class of great material men who may be called the giants of action, is there an age when genius becomes short-sighted? Old age has no power over ideal genius; with the Dantes and the Michael Angelos old age is growth, but is it declension for the Hannibals and the Buonapartes? Had Napoleon lost the direct sense of victory? Had he reached a point where he no longer saw the reef, guessed the snare, and could not discern the crumbling edge of the abyss? Could he not scent catastrophes? Had the man who formerly knew all the roads to victory, and pointed to them with a sovereign finger, from his flashing car, now a mania for leading his tumultuous team of legions to the precipices? Was he attacked at the age of forty-six by a supreme madness? Was the Titanic charioteer of destiny now only a Phaëton?
We do not believe it.
His plan of action, it is allowed by all, was a masterpiece. Go straight at the centre of the allied line, make a hole through the enemy, cut him in two, drive the British half over Halle, and the Prussians over Tingres, carry Mont St. Jean, seize Brussels, drive the German into the Rhine and the Englishman into the sea. All this was contained for Napoleon in this battle; afterwards he would see.
We need hardly say that we do not pretend to tell the story of Waterloo here; one of the generating scenes of the drama we are recounting is connected with this battle; but the story of Waterloo has been already told, and magisterially discussed, from one point of view by Napoleon, from another by a galaxy of historians. For our part, we leave the historians to contend; we are only a distant witness, a passer-by along the plain, a seeker bending over the earth made of human flesh, and perhaps taking appearances for realities; we possess neither the military practice nor the strategic competency that authorizes a system; in our opinion, a chain of accidents governed both captains at Waterloo; and when destiny, that mysterious accused, enters on the scene, we judge like the people, that artless judge.
Toward the close of October, in the same year, 1823, the inhabitants of Toulon saw a vessel enter their port which had sustained some damage in a heavy storm. It was the "Orion," which at a later date was employed at Brest as a training school, but now formed part of the Mediterranean fleet. This vessel, battered as it was, for the sea had ill-treated it, produced an effect on entering the roads. It displayed some flag which obtained it the regulation salute of eleven guns, to which it replied round for round,—a total of two-and-twenty rounds. It has been calculated that in salvos, royal and military politeness, exchanges of courtesy signals, formalities of roads and citadels, sunrise and sunset saluted every day by all the fortresses and vessels of war, opening and closing gates, etc., the civilized world fired every twenty-four hours, and in all parts of the globe, one hundred and fifty thousand useless rounds. At six francs the round, this makes 900,000 francs a day. Three hundred millions a year expended in smoke. During this time poor people are dying of starvation.
The year 1823 was what the Restoration called "the epoch of the Spanish war." This war contained many events in one, and many singularities. It was a great family affair for the House of Bourbon; the French branch succoring and protecting the Madrid branch, that is to say, proving its majority; an apparent return to national traditions, complicated by servitude and subjection to the northern cabinets. The Duc d'Angoulême, surnamed by the liberal papers the "hero of Andujar," repressing in a triumphal attitude, which what somewhat spoiled by his peaceful looks, the old and very real terrorism of the Holy Office, which was contending with the chimerical terrorism of the liberals; the sans culottes resuscitated to the great alarm of dowagers, under the name of Descamisados; monarchy offering an obstacle to the progress which it termed anarchy; the theories of '89 suddenly interrupted in their sap; a European check given to the French idea which was making its voyage round the world by the side of the Generalissimo son of France; the Prince de Carignan, afterwards Charles Albert, enrolling himself as a volunteer with the red wool epaulettes of a grenadier in this crusade of the kings against the peoples; the soldiers of the empire taking the field again, after eight years rest, aged, sad, and wearing the white cockade; the tricolor waved in a foreign country by an heroic handful of Frenchmen, as the white flag had been at Coblentz thirty years previously; monks mingled with the French troopers; the spirit of liberty and novelty set right by bayonets; principles checkmated by artillery; France undoing by her arms what she had done by her mind; the enemy's leaders sold; the soldiers hesitating; towns besieged by millions; no military perils, and yet possible explosions, as in every mine which is surprised and invaded; disgrace for a few persons, and glory for none,—such was this war, brought about by princes who descended from Louis XIV., and conducted by generals who issued from Napoleon. It had the sad fate of recalling neither the great war nor the great policy.
Some engagements were serious. The passage of the Trocadero, for instance, was a brilliant military achievement; but on the whole, we repeat, the trumpets of that war have a cracked sound, the whole affair was suspicious, and history agrees with France in the difficulty of accepting this false triumph. It seemed evident that certain Spanish officers ordered to resist, yielded too easily, and the idea of corruption was evolved from the victory; it seemed as if generals rather than battles had been gained, and the victorious soldier returned home humiliated. It was, in truth, a diminishing war, and the words "Bank of France" could be read in the folds of the flag. The soldiers of the war of 1808, on whom the ruins of Saragossa fell so formidably, frowned in 1823 at the easy opening of citadel gates, and began regretting Palafox. It is the humor of France to prefer a Rostopchin before her rather than a Ballesteros. From a more serious point of view, on which it is right to dwell here, this war, which offended the military spirit in France, humiliated the democratic spirit. It was undertaken on behalf of serfdom; in this campaign the object of the French soldier, who was the son of democracy, was to bow others under the yoke. This was a hideous mistake, for France has the mission of arousing the soul of nations, and not stifling it. Since 1792 all the revolutions of Europe have been the French Revolution, and liberty radiates from France. He must be blind who does not recognize this. It was Bonaparte who said so.
The war of 1823, an attempt upon the generous Spanish nation, was therefore at the same time an attack on the French Revolution. It was France that committed this monstrous act of violence; for, with the exception of wars of liberation, all that armies do they do by force, as the words "passive obedience" indicate. An army is a strange masterpiece of combination, in which strength results from an enormous amount of impotence. In this way can we explain war carried on by humanity against humanity, in spite of humanity. The war of 1823 was fatal to the Bourbons; they regarded it as a triumph, for they did not see what danger there is in killing an idea by a countersign. In their simplicity they committed the mistake of introducing into this establishment the immense weakness of a crime as an element of strength; the spirit of ambuscading entered into their policy, and 1830 germinated in 1823. The Spanish campaign became in their councils an argument for oppression, and the government by right divine. France, having re-established el rey neto in Spain, could establish the absolute king at home. They fell into the formidable error of taking the obedience of the soldier for the consent of the nation, and such a confidence is the destruction of thrones. Men must go to sleep neither in the shadow of a machineel-tree nor in that of an army.
Let us now return to the "Orion." During the operations of the army commanded by the Prince generalissimo a squadron cruised in the Mediterranean, to which, as we said, the "Orion" belonged, and was driven into Toulon roads to repair damages. The presence of a man-of-war in a port has something about it which attracts and occupies the mob. It is grand, and the multitude love anything that is grand. A vessel of the line is one of the most magnificent encounters which the genius of man has with the might of nature; it is composed simultaneously of what is the heaviest and lightest of things, because it has to deal with three forms of substance at once,—the solid, the liquid, and the fluid, and must contend against all three. It has cloven iron claws to seize the granite of the sea-bed, and more wings and antennæ than the two-winged insect to hold the wind. Its breath issues from its one hundred and twenty guns as through enormous bugles, and haughtily replies to the thunder. Ocean tries to lead it astray in the frightful similitude of its waves; but the vessel has its soul in its compass, which advises it and always shows it the north, and on dark nights its lanterns take the place of the stars. Hence it has tackle and canvas to oppose the wind, wood to oppose water, iron, copper, and lead to oppose the rocks, light to oppose darkness, and a needle to oppose immensity. If we wish to form an idea of all the gigantic proportions whose ensemble constitute a vessel of the line, we need only enter one of the covered building-docks at Toulon or Brest. The vessels in construction are there under glass, so to speak. That colossal beam is a yard; that huge column of wood of enormous length lying on the ground is the main-mast. Measuring from its root in the keel to its truck in the clouds it is three hundred and sixty feet in length, and is three feet in diameter at its base. The navy of our fathers employed hemp cables, but ours has chains; the simple pile of chain cable for a hundred-gun vessel is four feet high and twenty feet in width. And then, again, in building such a vessel three thousand loads of wood are used; it is a floating forest. And it must not be left out of sight that we are here describing a man-of-war of forty years ago, a simple sailing-vessel; steam, then in its infancy, has since added new miracles to the prodigy which is called a vessel of war. At the present day, for instance, the screw man-of-war is a surprising machine, impelled by a surface of canvas containing three thousand square yards, and a boiler of two thousand five hundred horse power. Without alluding to these new marvels, the old vessel of Christopher Columbus and De Ruyter is one of the great masterpieces of man; it is inexhaustible in strength as infinity is in width; it garners the wind in its sails, it is exact in the immense diffusion of the waves; it floats, and it reigns.
And yet the hour arrives when a gust breaks like a straw this yard, fifty feet in length; when the wind bends like a reed this mast, four hundred feet in height; when this anchor, weighing thousands of pounds, twists in the throat of the waves like a fisherman's hook in the mouth of a pike; when these monstrous cannon utter plaintive and useless groans, which the wind carries away into emptiness and night, and when all this power and majesty are swallowed up by a superior power and majesty. Whenever an immense force is displayed in attacking immense weakness, it causes men to reflect. Hence at seaports curious persons throng around these marvellous machines of war and navigation, without exactly explaining the reason to themselves. Every day, then, from morning till night, the quays and piers of Toulon were covered with numbers of idlers, whose business it was to look at the "Orion." This vessel had long been in a sickly state. During previous voyages barnacles had collected on her hull to such an extent that she lost half her speed; she had been taken into dry dock the year previous to scrape off these barnacles, and then put to sea again. But this scraping had injured the bolts, and when off the Balearic Isles, she sprang a leak, and took in water, as vessels were not coppered in those days. A violent equinoctial gale supervened, which injured her larboard bows and destroyed the fore-chains. In consequence of this damage the "Orion" put into Toulon, and anchored near the arsenal for repairs. The hull was uninjured, but a few planks had been unnailed here and there to let air in, as is usually the case.
One morning the crowd witnessed an accident. The crew were engaged in bending the sails, and the top-man, who had charge of the starboard tack of the main-top-sail, lost his balance. He was seen to totter, the crowd on the arsenal quay uttered a cry, his head dragged him downwards, and he turned round the yard, with his hands stretched down to the water; but he caught hold of the foot-rope as he passed it, first with one hand then with the other, and remained hanging from it. The sea was below him at a dizzy depth, and the shock of his fall had given the foot-rope a violent swinging movement. The man swung at the end of the rope like a stone in a sling. To go to his assistance would be running a frightful risk, and not one of the sailors, all coast fishermen lately called in for duty, dared to venture it. Still the unhappy top-man was growing tired: his agony could not be seen in his face, but his exhaustion could be distinguished in all his limbs, and his arms were awfully dragged. Any effort he made to raise himself only caused the foot-rope to oscillate the more, and he did not cry out, for fear of exhausting his strength. The minute was close at hand when he must let go the rope, and every now and then all heads were turned away not to see it happen. There are moments in which a rope, a pole, the branch of a tree, is life itself, and it is a fearful thing to see a living being let go of it and fall like ripe fruit. All at once a man could be seen climbing up the shrouds with the agility of a tiger-cat. As he was dressed in red, this man was a convict; as he wore a green cap, he was a convict for life. On reaching the top a puff of wind blew away his cap and displayed a white head; hence he was not a young man.
A convict, employed on board with a gang, had in fact at once run up to the officer of the watch, and in the midst of the trouble and confusion, while all the sailors trembled and recoiled, asked permission to risk his life in saving the top-man. At a nod of assent from the officer he broke with one blow of a hammer the chain riveted to his ankle, took up a rope, and darted up the shrouds. No one noticed at the moment with what ease this chain was broken; and the fact was not remembered till afterwards. In a second he was upon the yard, where he stood for a little while as if looking round him. These seconds, during which the wind swung the top-man at the end of a thread, seemed ages to the persons who were looking at him. At length the convict raised his eyes to heaven and advanced a step. The crowd breathed again, as they saw him run along the yard. On reaching the end he fastened to it the rope he had brought with him, let it hang down, and then began going down it hand over hand. This produced a feeling of indescribable agony, for instead of one man hanging over the gulf, there were now two. He resembled a spider going to seize a fly; but in this case the spider brought life and not death. Ten thousand eyes were fixed on the group: not a cry, not a word could be heard; every mouth held its breath, as if afraid of increasing in the slightest degree the wind that shook the two wretched men. The convict, in the interim, had managed to get close to the sailor, and it was high time, for a minute later the man, exhausted and desperate, would have let himself drop into the sea. The convict fastened him securely with the rope to which he clung with one hand, while he worked with the other. At length he was seen to climb back to the yard and haul the sailor up: he supported him there for a moment to let him regain his strength, then took him in his arms and carried him along the yard to the cap, and thence to the top, where he left him with his comrades. The crowd applauded him, and several old sergeants of the chain-gang had tears in their eyes: women embraced each other on the quay, and every voice could be heard shouting with a species of frenzy,—"Pardon for that man!"
The convict, however, began going down again immediately to rejoin his gang. In order to do so more rapidly he slid down a rope and ran along a lower yard. All eyes followed him, and at one moment the spectators felt afraid, for they fancied they could see him hesitate and totter, either through fatigue or dizziness; all at once the crowd uttered a terrible cry,—the convict had fallen into the sea. The fall was a dangerous one, for the frigate "Algésiras" was anchored near the "Orion," and the poor galley-slave had fallen between the two ships, and might be sucked under one of them. Four men hastily got into a boat, and the crowd encouraged them, for all felt anxious again. The man did not come to the surface again, and disappeared in the sea without making a ripple, just as if he had fallen into a barrel of oil. They dragged for him, but in vain; they continued the search till nightfall, but his body was not even found. The next day the Toulon paper printed the following lines: "Nov. 17, 1823.—Yesterday a convict, one of a gang on board the "Orion," fell into the sea and was drowned, as he was returning from assisting a sailor. His body has not been found, and is supposed to be entangled among the piles at arsenal point. The man was imprisoned as No. 9430, and his name the Jean Valjean."
Four new travellers arrived. Cosette was sorrowfully reflecting; for though only eight years of age she had already suffered so much that she thought with the mournful air of an old woman. Her eye-lid was blackened by a blow which the woman had given her, which made Madame say now and then, "How ugly she is with her black eye!" Cosette was thinking then that it was late, very late; that she had been suddenly obliged to fill the jugs and bottles in the rooms of the travellers who had just arrived, and that there was no water in the cistern. What reassured her most was the fact that but little water was drunk at the "Sergeant of Waterloo." There was no lack of thirsty souls, but it was that sort of thirst which applies more readily to the wine-jar than to the water-bottle. Any one who asked for a glass of water among the glasses of wine would have appeared a savage to all these men. At one moment, however, the child trembled; her mistress raised the cover of a stew-pan bubbling on a stove, then took a glass and hurried to the cistern. The child had turned, and was watching all the movements. A thin stream of water ran from the tap and filled the glass. "Hilloh!" she add, "there is no water," Then she was silent for a moment, during which the child did not breathe.
"Well," Madame Thénardier continued, as she examined the half-filled glass, "this will be enough."
Cosette returned to her work, but for more than a quarter of an hour she felt her heart beating in her chest. She counted the minutes that passed thus, and wished that it were next morning. From time to time one of the topers looked out into the street and said, "It's as black as pitch," or "A man would have to be a cat to go into the street at this hour without a lantern," and Cosette shivered. All at once one of the pedlers lodging at the inn came in and said in a harsh voice,—
"My horse has had no water."
"Oh yes, it has," said Madame Thénardier.
"I tell you it has not, mother," the pedler went on.
Cosette had crept out from under the table.
"Oh yes, sir," she said, "your horse drank a bucketful, and I gave it the water and talked to it."
This was not true.
"There's a girl no bigger than one's fist who tells a lie as big as a house," the pedler exclaimed. "I tell you it has not had any water, you little devil; it has a way of breathing which I know well when it has not drunk."
Cosette persisted, and added in a voice rendered hoarse by agony, and which was scarce audible,—
"Oh, indeed, the horse drank a lot."
"Enough of this," the pedler said savagely; "give my horse water."
Cosette went back under the table.
"Well, that is but fair," said Madame; "if the brute has not drunk it ought to drink." Then she looked around her. "Why, where is the little devil?"
She stooped down, and discovered Cosette hidden at the other end of the table, almost under the feet of the topers.
"Come out of that!" her mistress shouted.
Cosette came out of the hole in which she had hidden herself, and the landlady continued,—
"Miss What's-your-name, give the horse water."
"There is no water, Madame," Cosette said faintly.
Her mistress threw the street door wide open.
"Well, go and fetch some."
Cosette hung her head, and fetched an empty bucket standing in a corner near the chimney; it was larger than herself, and she could have sat down in it comfortably. Madame Thénardier returned to her stove and tasted the contents of a stew-pan with a wooden spoon, while growling,—
"There's plenty at the spring. I believe it would have been better to sift the onions."
Then she rummaged in a drawer which contained halfpence, pepper, and shalots.
"Here, Miss Toad," she added, "as you come back, you will fetch a loaf from the baker's. Here's a fifteen-sous piece."
Cosette had a small pocket in her apron, in which she placed the coin; then she stood motionless, bucket in hand, and with the door open before her. She seemed to be waiting for some one to come to her help.
"Be off!" her mistress shouted.
Cosette went out and shut the door after her.
The next morning at daybreak Jean Valjean was again standing by Cosette's bedside; he was motionless and waiting for her to awake: something new was entering his soul. Jean Valjean had never loved anything. For twenty-five years he had been alone in the world, and had never been father, lover, husband, or friend. At the galleys he was wicked, gloomy, chaste, ignorant, and ferocious,—the heart of the old convict was full of virginities. His sister and his sister's children had only left in him a vague and distant reminiscence, which in the end entirely faded away: he had made every effort to find them again, and, not being able to do so, forgot them,—human nature is thus constituted. The other tender emotions of his youth, if he had any, had fallen into an abyss. When he saw Cosette, when he carried her off, he felt his heart stirred: all the passion and affection there was in him was aroused and rushed toward this child. He went up to the bed on which she slept, and he trembled with joy: he felt pangs like a mother, and knew not what it was; for the great and strange emotion of a heart which is preparing to love is a very obscure and sweet thing. Poor old heart still young! But as he was fifty-five years of age and Cosette eight, all the love he might have felt during life was melted into a species of ineffable glow. This was the second white apparition he met: the Bishop had caused the dawn of virtue to rise on his horizon, and Cosette now produced that of love.
The first days passed in this bedazzlement. On her side Cosette became unconsciously different, poor little creature! She was so little when her mother left her that she did not remember; and like all children, who resemble the young vine-twigs that cling to everything, she tried to love, and had not succeeded. All had repulsed her,—the Thénardiers, their children, and other children; she had loved the dog which died, and after that nothing and nobody would have anything to do with her. It is a sad thing to say, but at the age of eight she had a cold heart. It was not her fault, it was not that she lacked the faculty of loving; but it was, alas! the possibility. Hence, from the first day, all that felt and thought within her began to love the good man; and she experienced what she had never known before,—a feeling of expansion. The man no longer even produced the effect upon her of being old or poor; she found Jean Valjean handsome, in the same way as she found the garret pretty. Such are the effects of dawn, childhood, youth, and joy. The novelty of earth and life have something to do in it, and nothing is so charming as the coloring reflection of happiness upon an attic; in this way we have all a blue garret in our past. Nature had placed a profound interval, of fifty years, between Jean Valjean and Cosette; but destiny filled up this separation. Destiny suddenly united, and affianced with its irresistible power, these two uprooted existences so different in age, so similar in sorrow; and the one, in fact, was the complement of the other. Cosette's instinct sought a father, in the same way as Jean Valjean's sought a child, and to meet was to find each other. At the mysterious moment when their two hands clasped they were welded together; and when their two souls saw each other they recognized that each was necessary to the other, and joined in a close embrace. Taking the words in their most comprehensive and absolute meaning, we may say that, separated from everything by the walls of the tombs, Jean Valjean was the widower as Cosette was the orphan, and this situation caused Jean Valjean to become in a celestial manner Cosette's father. And, in truth, the mysterious impression produced upon Cosette in the Chelles wood by Jean Valjean's hand grasping hers in the darkness was not an illusion but a reality.
Jean Valjean had selected his asylum well, and in a security which might appear perfect. The room he occupied with Cosette was the one whose window looked out on the boulevard, and as it was the only one of the sort in the house, he had not to fear the curiosity of neighbors, either in front or on his side. The ground-floor of No. 50-52, a sort of rickety pentice, was employed as a tool-house by nursery-gardeners, and had no communication with the first floor. The latter, as we have said, contained several rooms, and a few garrets, one of which alone was occupied by the old woman who looked after Jean Valjean. It was this old woman who was known as the chief lodger, and who in reality performed the duties of porter, that let him the room on Christmas day. He had represented himself as an annuitant ruined by the Spanish bonds, who meant to live there with his little daughter. He paid six months' rent in advance, and requested the old woman to furnish the room in the way we have seen; and it was this woman who lit the stove and prepared everything on the evening of their arrival. Weeks passed away, and these two beings led a happy life in this wretched garret. With the dawn Cosette began laughing, chattering, and singing; for children, like the birds, have their matin song. Sometimes it happened that Jean Valjean took her little red chilblained hand and kissed it; the poor child, accustomed to be beaten, did not know what this meant, and went away quite ashamed. At times she became serious, and looked at her little black frock. Cosette was no longer dressed in rags, but in mourning; she had left wretchedness, and was entering life. Jean Valjean set to work teaching her to read. Occasionally he thought that it was with the idea of doing evil that he learned to read at the galleys, and this idea had turned to teaching a child to read. Then the old galley-slave smiled the pensive smile of the angels. He felt in it a premeditation of heaven, and he lost himself in a reverie, for good thoughts have their depths as well as wicked. Teaching Cosette to read, and letting her play, almost constituted Jean Valjean's entire life; and then, he spoke to her about her mother, and made her play. She called him "father," and knew him by no other name. He spent hours in watching her dress and undress her doll, and listening to her prattle. From this moment life appeared to him full of interest; men seemed to him good and just; he no longer reproached any one in his thoughts, and perceived no reason why he should not live to a great age, now that this child loved him. He saw a future illumined by Cosette, as by a delicious light; and as the best men are not exempt from a selfish thought, he said to himself at times joyfully that she would be ugly.
Although it is only a personal opinion, we fancy that at the point which Jean Valjean had reached when he began to love Cosette, he required this fresh impulse to continue in the right path. He had just seen, under new aspects, the wickedness of men and the wretchedness of society; but the aspects were incomplete, and only fatally showed him one side of the truth,—the fate of woman comprised in Fantine, and public authority personified in Javert; he had returned to the galleys, but this time for acting justly; he had drunk the new cup of bitterness to the dregs; disgust and weariness seized upon him; the very recollection of the Bishop was approaching an eclipse, and though it would have perhaps reappeared afterwards luminous and triumphant, still this holy recollection was beginning to fade. Who knows whether Jean Valjean was not on the eve of growing discouraged and relapsing? But he loved and became strong again. Alas! he was no less tottering than Cosette; he protected her and she strengthened him; through him, she was able to advance in her life; through her, he could continue in the path of virtue. Oh unfathomable and divine mystery of the equilibrium of destiny!
After going three hundred yards he came to a spot where the road formed two forks, and Jean Valjean had before him, as it were, the two branches of a Y. Which should he choose? He did not hesitate, but took the right one, because the other ran towards the faubourg, that is to say, inhabited parts, while the right branch went in the direction of the country, or deserted parts. Still they did not walk very rapidly, for Cosette checked Jean Valjean's pace, and hence he began carrying her again, and Cosette laid her head on his shoulder and did not say a word. At times he looked back, while careful to keep on the dark side of the street. The first twice or thrice that he turned he saw nothing, the silence was profound, and he continued his walk with a little more confidence. All at once, on turning suddenly, he fancied that he saw something moving on the dark part of the street which he had just passed. He rushed forward rather than walked, hoping to find some side lane by which he could escape, and once again break his trail. He reached a wall, which, however, did not render further progress impossible, for it was a wall skirting a cross-lane, into which the street Jean Valjean had entered ran. Here he must make his mind up again whether to turn to the right or left. He looked to the right; the lane ran for some distance between buildings, which were barns or sheds, and then stopped. The end of the blind alley, a high white wall, was distinctly visible. He looked to the left; on this side the lane was open, and at a distance of about two hundred yards fell into a street, of which it was an affluent. On that side safety lay. At the moment when Jean Valjean turned to his left in order to reach this street, he saw at the angle formed by the street and the lane a species of black and motionless statue; it was evidently a man posted there to prevent him from passing. Jean Valjean fell back.
The part of Paris where Jean Valjean now was, situated between the Faubourg St. Antoine and la Rapée, was one of those which have been utterly transformed by those recent works which some call disfigurements, others beautifying. The fields, the timber-yards, and old buildings have been removed, and there are now brand-new wide streets, arenas, circuses, hippodromes, railway stations, and a prison, Mazas,—progress as we see with its corrective. Half a century back, in that popular language all made up of traditions which insists on calling the Institute "les Quatre Nations," and the Opéra Comique "Feydeau," the precise spot where Jean Valjean now stood was called "le Petit Picpus." The Porte St. Jacques, the Porte Paris, the Barrière des Sergents, the Porcherons, the Galiote, the Celestins, the Capucins, the Mail, the Bourbe, the tree of Cracow, Little Poland, and Little Picpus, are names of old Paris swimming on the surface of the new. The memory of the people floats on the flotsam of the past. Little Picpus, which by the way scarce existed, and was never more than the outline of a quarter, had almost the monastic look of a Spanish town. The streets were scarce paved, and hardly any houses lined them; excepting two or three streets, to which we are about to refer, all was wall and solitude. There was not a shop or a vehicle, scarce a candle lighted in the windows, and every light was put out by ten o'clock. The quarter consisted of gardens, convents, timber-yards, and kitchen-grounds, and there were a few low houses with walls as lofty as themselves. Such was the quarter in the last century; the Revolution fiercely assailed it, and the Republican board of works demolished and made gaps in it: rubbish was allowed to be shot there. Thirty years ago this quarter was disappearing under the erasure of new buildings, and now it is entirely obliterated.
Little Picpus, of which no modern map retains a trace, is very clearly indicated in the plan of 1727, published at Paris by Denis Thierry, Rue St. Jacques, opposite the Rue du Plâtre; and at Lyons by Jean Girin, Rue Mercière. Little Picpus had what we have just called a Y of streets formed by the Rue du Chemin Vert St. Antoine dividing into two branches, the left-hand one taking the name of the Petite Rue Picpus, and the right-hand that of Rue Polonceau. The two branches of the Y were joined at their summit by a sort of cross-bar called Rue Droit-mur. Any one who, coming from the Seine, reached the end of Rue Polonceau, had on his left Rue Droit-mur, turning sharply at a right angle, in front of him the wall of that street, and on his right a truncated prolongation of the Rue Droit-mur called the Cul-de-sac Genrot.
It was here that Jean Valjean was; as we said, on perceiving the black shadow standing on watch at the corner of the Rue Droit-mur and the Petite Rue Picpus, he fell back, for this phantom was doubtless watching for him. What was to be done? He had no time to retrograde, for what he had seen moving in the shadow a few moments previously in his rear was of course Javert and his squad. Javert was probably already at the beginning of the street at the end of which Jean Valjean was. Javert, according to appearances, was acquainted with this labyrinth, and had taken his precautions by sending one of his men to guard the outlet. These conjectures, which so closely resembled certainty, whirled suddenly in Jean Valjean's troubled brain like a handful of dust raised by an unexpected puff of wind. He examined the blind alley; that was barred. He examined the Rue Picpus, a sentry was there, and he saw his black shadow distinctly thrown on the white moonlit pavement. To advance was falling into this man's clutches; to fall back was throwing himself into Javert's arms. Jean Valjean felt himself caught in a net which was being slowly hauled in, and looked up to Heaven in despair.
Any one desirous of joining the community of Martin Verga must be at least two years a postulant, sometimes four, and four years a novice. It is rare for the final vows to be taken before the age of twenty-three or twenty-four years. The Bernardo-Benedictines of Martin Verga admit no widows into their order. In their cells they undergo many strange macerations, of which they are not allowed to speak. On the day when a novice professes, she is dressed in her best clothes, wears a wreath of white roses, has her hair curled, and then prostrates herself; a large black veil is spread over her, and the service for the dead is performed. Then the nuns divide into two files, one of which passes her, saying in a plaintive voice, "Our sister is dead," and the other answers triumphantly, "Living in Jesus Christ."
At the period when this story is laid, there was a boarding-school attached to the convent, the pupils being young ladies of noble birth, and generally rich. Among them could be noticed Mlles. de Sainte Aulaire and de Bélissen, and an English girl bearing the illustrious Catholic name of Talbot. These young ladies, educated by the nuns between four walls, grew up with a horror of the world and of the century; one of them said to us one day, "Seeing the street pavement made me shudder from head to foot." They were dressed in blue, with a white cap, and a plated or gilt Holy Ghost on the chest. On certain high festivals, especially Saint Martha, they were allowed, as a high favor and supreme happiness, to dress themselves like nuns, and perform the offices and practices of Saint Benedict for the whole day. At first the nuns lent them their black robes, but this was deemed a profanity, and the prioress forbade it; so the novices alone were permitted to make such loans. It is remarkable that these representations, doubtless tolerated in the convent through a secret spirit of proselytism, and in order to give their children some foretaste of the sacred dress, were a real happiness and true recreation for the boarders; they were amused by them, for "it was a novelty and changed them,"—candid reasons of children, which do not succeed, however, in making us worldly-minded people understand the felicity of holding a holy-water brush in one's hand, and standing for hours before a lectern and singing quartettes. The pupils conformed to all the practices of the convent, though not to all the austerities. We know a young lady who, after returning to the world and being married for some years, could not break herself of hastily saying, each time that there was a rap at the door, "Forever!" like the nuns. The boarders only saw their parents in the parlor; their mothers themselves were not even allowed to kiss them. To show how far this severity was carried, a young lady was visited one day by her mother, accompanied by a little sister three years of age. The young lady cried, because she would have liked to kiss her sister but it was impossible. She implored at least permission for the child to pass her hand through the bars, so that she might kiss it; but it was refused almost as a scandal.
The monastic system, as it existed in Spain, and as it exists now at Thibet, is to civilization a sort of consumption. It stops life short. It depopulates, nothing more nor less,—claustration, castration. It has been the scourge of Europe. Add to this the violence so often done to conscience, the forced vocations, the feudal system resting upon the cloister, primogeniture pouring into the monastic system the overflow of the family, these cruelties of which we have just spoken, the in pace, the mouths sealed, the brains walled up, so many unhappy intellects thrown into the dungeon of eternal vows, the taking of the veil, the burying alive of souls. Add the individual sufferings to the national degradation, and whoever you may be, you feel yourself shudder before the frock and the veil, these two shrouds of human invention.
However, on some points, and in some places, in spite of philosophy, in spite of progress, the monastic spirit persists in the midst of the nineteenth century, and a strange reopening of the monastic sore astonishes at this moment the civilized world. The obstinacy which old institutions show in perpetuating themselves is like the stubbornness of rancid perfume demanding to be used on our hair, the pretension of spoiled fish clamoring to be eaten, the persecution of the child's garment demanding to clothe the man, and the tenderness of corpses coming back to embrace the living.
"Ingrates!" says the garment. "I have sheltered you in the bad weather. Why do you cast me off?" "I come from the deep sea," says the fish. "I was once the rose," says the perfume. "I have loved you," says the corpse. "I have civilized you," says the convent.
To this there is one answer: "Yes, in times past."
To dream of the indefinite prolongation of things that are dead, and the government of men by embalmment, to restore to life dogmas that are rotting away, to regild the shrines, to replaster the cloisters, to reconsecrate the reliquaries, to refurnish the superstitions, to galvanize the fanaticisms, to put new handles on the holy water sprinklers, to set up again monastic and military rule, to believe in the saving of society by the multiplication of parasites, to impose the past on the present,—this seems strange. There are, however, theorists for these theories. These theorists, sensible men in other respects, have a very simple expedient. They varnish the past with a coating which they call social order, divine right, morality, family, respect for ancestors, ancient authority, sacred tradition, legitimacy, religion; and they go about crying, "Here! take this, my good people." This logic was known to the ancients. The soothsayers used to practise it They rubbed with chalk a black heifer, and said, "She is white." Bos cretatus.
As for us, we respect the past here and there, and we spare it always, provided that it consents to stay dead. If it tries to come to life again, we attack it, and we try to kill it.
Superstitions, bigotries, hypocrisies, prejudices, these phantoms, though they are only phantoms, are tenacious of life; they have teeth and claws in their obscurity, and we must grapple with them body to body, and make war upon them, and war without truce; for it is the fate of humanity to be condemned to eternal combat with phantoms. The spectre is hard to take by the throat, and throw to earth.
A convent in France in the full noon of the nineteenth century is a college of owls blinking at the daylight. A cloister in the open act of asceticism, in the very midst of the city of '89, of 1830, and of 1848,—Rome blossoming in Paris,—is an anachronism. At any ordinary time, to lay an anachronism, and make it vanish, we need only to make it spell out the date. But we are not in ordinary times.
Let us fight.
Let us fight; but let us distinguish. The essence of truth consists in never exaggerating. What need has she of exaggerating? There are some things that must be destroyed, and there are some things that need only be lighted up and looked at. Kind and serious examination, what a power it is! Let us not use fire where light will answer even purpose.
Given the nineteenth century, then, we are opposed on general principles, and in all nations, in Asia as well as in Europe, in India as in Turkey, to cloistered asceticism. Convent means bog. Their putrescence is undisguisable, their stagnation is unhealthy, their fermentation breeds fever and wasting pestilence in nations, their increase becomes one of the plagues of Egypt. We cannot think without fright of those countries where fakirs, bonzes, santons, caloyers, marabouts, talapoins, and dervishes multiply like swarms of vermin.
This said, the question of religion still remains. This question has phases which are mysterious and almost fearful. Let us look at it steadily.
About a quarter of an hour passed ere the prioress came in again and sat down on her chair. The two speakers appeared preoccupied. We will do our best to record their conversation accurately.
"Father Fauvent?"
"Reverend Mother?"
"Do you know the chapel?"
"I have a little cage in it where I hear Mass and the offices."
"And have you gone into the choir for your work?"
"Two or three times."
"A stone will have to be lifted."
"What stone?"
"The one at the side of the altar."
"The stone that closes the vault?"
"Yes."
"That is a job where two men would be useful."
"Mother Ascension, who is as strong as a man, will help you."
"A woman is never a man."
"We have only a woman to help you, and everybody does the best. Although Dom Mabillon gives four hundred and seventeen epistles of Saint Bernard, and Merlonus Horstius only gives three hundred and sixty-seven, I do not despise Merlonus Horstius."
"Nor I."
"The merit is to work according to your strength. A convent is not a work-yard."
"And a woman is not a man. My brother is a strong fellow!"
"And then, you will have a crowbar."
"It is the only sort of key that fits such locks."
"There is a ring in the stone."
"I will put the crowbar through it."
"And the stone works on hinges."
"All right, Reverend Mother, I will open the vault."
"And the four chanting mothers will help you."
"And when the vault is open?"
"You must shut it again."
"Is that all?"
"No."
"Give me your orders, most Reverend Mother."
"Fauvent, we place confidence in you."
"I am here to do everything."
"And to hold your tongue about everything."
"Yes, Reverend Mother."
"When the vault is opened—"
"I will shut it again."
"But, first—"
"What, Reverend Mother?"
"You must let down something into it."
There was a silence; and the prioress, after a pout of the lower lip, which looked like hesitation, continued,—
"Father Fauvent!"
"Reverend Mother?"
"You are aware that a mother died this morning."
"No."
"Did you not hear the bell?"
"Nothing can be heard at the end of the garden."
"Really now?"
"I can hardly distinguish my own ring."
"She died at daybreak."
"And besides, this morning the wind did not blow in my direction."
"It is Mother Crucifixion, a blessed saint."
The prioress was silent, moved her lips for a moment, as if in mental prayer, and went on,—
"Three years ago, through merely seeing Mother Crucifixion pray, a Jansenist, Madame de Béthune, became orthodox."
"Oh, yes, I hear the passing bell now, Reverend Mother."
"The mothers have carried her into the dead-room adjoining the church."
"I know."
"No other man but you can or ought to enter that room, so keep careful watch. It would be a fine thing to see another man enter the chamber of the dead."
"More often."
"Eh?"
"More often."
"What do you mean?"
"I say more often."
"More often than what?"
"Reverend Mother, I did not say 'more often than what,' but 'more often.'"
"I do not understand you; why do you say 'more often'?"
"To say the same as yourself, Reverend Mother."
"But I did not say 'more often.'"
"You did not say it, but I said it to say the same as you."
At this moment nine o'clock struck.
"At nine in the morning and every hour be the most Holy Sacrament of the altar blessed and adored!" said the prioress.
"Amen," said Fauchelevent.
The hour struck opportunely, for it cut short the "more often." It is probable that without it the prioress and Fauchelevent would never have got out of this tangle. Fauchelevent wiped his forehead; and the prioress gave another internal murmur, and then raised her voice.
"In her life-time Mother Crucifixion performed conversions, after her death she will perform miracles."
"She will do them," Fauchelevent said, determined not to give ground again.
"Father Fauvent, the community was blessed in Mother Crucifixion. Of course it is not granted to every one to die, like Cardinal de Bérulle, while reading the Holy Mass, and exhale his soul to God while uttering the words, Hanc igitur oblationem. But though she did not attain such happiness, Mother Crucifixion had a very blessed death. She retained her senses up to the last moment; she spoke to us, and then conversed with the angels. She gave us her last commands; if you had more faith, and if you had been in her cell, she would have cured your leg by touching it. She smiled, and we all felt that she was living again in God,—there was Paradise in such a death."
Fauchelevent fancied that it was the end of a prayer; "Amen," he said.
"Father Fauvent, what the dead wish must be carried out."
The prioress told a few beads. Fauchelevent held his tongue; then the lady continued,—
"I have consulted on this point several ecclesiastics, who labor in our Lord, who turn their attention to the exercise of clerical life, and reap an admirable harvest."
"Reverend Mother, the knell is heard better here than in the garden."
"Moreover, she is more than a dead woman, she is a saint."
"Like yourself, Reverend Mother."
"She slept in her coffin for more than twenty years, by express permission of our Holy Father Pius VII."
"The same who crowned the Emp—Bonaparte."
For a clever man like Fauchelevent the recollection was ill-timed. Luckily the prioress, who was deep in thought, did not hear him, and went on,—
"Father Fauvent?"
"Reverend Mother?"
"Saint Diodorus, Archbishop of Cappadocia, requested that only one word should be inscribed on his tombstone, Acarus, which means a worm, and it was done. Is that true?"
"Yes, Reverend Mother."
"The blessed Mezzocanes, Abbot of Aquila, wished to be buried under a gallows, and it was done."
"That is true."
"Saint Terentius, Bishop of Oporto, at the mouth of the Tiber on the sea, ordered that there should be engraved on his tombstone the symbol which was placed on the grave of parricides, in the hope that passers-by would spit on his tomb; and it was done, for the dead ought to be obeyed."
"So be it."
"The body of Bernard Guidonis, who was born in France, near Roche Abeille, was, as he ordered, and in defiance of the King of Castile, conveyed to the Church of the Dominicans of Limoges, although Bernard Guidonis was Bishop of Tuy in Spain. Can you say the contrary?"
"Certainly not, Reverend Mother."
"The fact is attested by Plantavit de la Fosse."
A few beads were told in silence, and then the prioress resumed,—
"Father Fauvent, Mother Crucifixion will be buried in the coffin in which she has slept for twenty years."
"That is but fair."
"It is a continuation of sleep."
"Then I shall have to nail her up in that coffin?"
"Yes."
"And we shall not employ the undertaker's coffin?"
"Exactly."
"I am at the orders of the most Reverend Community."
"The four singing mothers will help you."
"To nail up the coffin? I do not want them."
"No, to let it down."
"Where?"
"Into the vault."
"What vault?"
"Under the altar."
Fauchelevent started.
"The vault under the altar?"
"Yes."
"But—"
"You have an iron bar."
"Yes, still—"
"You will lift the stone by passing the bar through the ring."
"But—"
"We must obey the dead. It was the last wish of Mother Crucifixion to be buried in the vault under the chapel altar, not to be placed in profane soil, and to remain when dead at the place where she had prayed when alive. She asked this of us, indeed, ordered it."
"But it is forbidden."
"Forbidden by man, ordered by God."
"Suppose it oozed out?"
"We have confidence in you."
"Oh! I am a stone of your wall."
"The Chapter is assembled; the vocal mothers, whom I have just consulted once again, and who are deliberating, have decided that Mother Crucifixion should be interred according to her wish, under our altar. Only think. Father Fauvent, if miracles were to take place here! What a glory in God for the community! Miracles issue from tombs."
"But, Reverend Mother, supposing the Sanitary Commissioner—"
"Saint Benedict II., in a matter of burial, resisted Constantine Pogonatus."
"Still the Inspector—"
"Chonodemairus, one of the seven German kings who entered Gaul during the empire of Constantius, expressly recognized the right of monks to be buried in religion, that is to say, beneath the altar."
"But the Inspector of the Prefecture—"
"The world is as nothing in presence of the cross. Martin, eleventh general of the Carthusians, gave his order this device, Stat crux dam volvitur orbis."
"Amen!" Fauchelevent said, who imperturbably got out of the scrape in that way whenever he heard Latin.
Any audience suffices for a person who has been a long time silent. On the day when Gymnastoras, the rhetorician, left prison, with a great many dilemmas and syllogisms inside him, he stopped before the first tree he came to, harangued it, and made mighty efforts to convince it. The prioress, whose tongue was usually stopped by the dam of silence, and whose reservoir was over-full, rose and exclaimed with the loquacity of a raised sluice,—
"I have on my right hand Benedict, and on my left Bernard. Who is Bernard? The first abbot of Clairvaux. Fontaines in Burgundy is a blessed spot for having witnessed his birth. His father's name was Técelin, his mother's Alèthe; he began with Citeaux to end with Clairvaux; he was ordained abbot by William de Champeaux, Bishop of Châlons sur Saône; he had seven hundred novices, and founded one hundred and sixty monasteries; he over-threw Abeilard at the Council of Sens in 1140, and Pierre de Bruys and Henry his disciple, as well as an errant sect called the Apostolicals; he confounded Arnold of Brescia, crushed the monk Raoul, the Jew-killer, led the Council of Reims in 1148, condemned Gilbert de la Porée, Bishop of Poitiers, and Éon de l'Étoile, settled the disputes of the princes, enlightened King Louis the young, advised Pope Eugene III., regulated the temple, preached the Crusade, and performed two hundred and fifty miracles in his life, and as many as thirty-seven in one day. Who is Benedict? He is the patriarch of Monte Cassino; he is the second founder of the claustral Holiness, the Basil of the West. His order has produced fourteen popes, two hundred cardinals, fifty patriarchs, one thousand six hundred archbishops, four thousand six hundred bishops, four emperors, twelve empresses, forty-six kings, forty-one queens, three thousand six hundred canonized saints, and still exists after one thousand four hundred years. On one side Saint Bernard, on the other the Sanitary Inspector! On one side Saint Benedict, on the other the Inspector of the streets! What do we know about the State, the regulations, the administration, and the public undertaker? Any witnesses would be indignant at the way in which we are treated; we have not even the right to give our dust to Christ! Your salubrity is a revolutionary invention. God subordinate to a Police Inspector, such is the age! Silence, Fauvent!"
Fauchelevent did not feel very comfortable under this douche, but the prioress continued,—
"The right of the monasteries to sepulture is indubitable, and it can only be denied by fanatics and schismatics. We live in times of terrible confusion; people do not know what they should, and know what they should not. Men are crass and impious; and there are people at the present day who cannot distinguish between the most mighty Saint Bernard and that Bernard called of the poor Catholics, a certain worthy ecclesiastic who lived in the thirteenth century. Others are so blasphemous as to compare the scaffold of Louis XVI. with the cross of our Saviour. Louis XVI. was only a king. There are no just or unjust persons left; the name of Voltaire is known and that of Cæsar de Bus unknown,—but Cæsar de Bus is blessed, while Voltaire is condemned. The last archbishop, Cardinal de Périgord, did not even know that Charles de Gondrin succeeded Bérullus, and François Bourgoin Gondrin, and Jean François Senault Bourgoin, and Father de Sainte Marthe Jean François Senault. The name of Father Coton is known, not because he was one of the three who urged the foundation of the Oratory, but because he supplied the Huguenot King Henri IV. with material for an oath. What makes people of the world like Saint Francis de Sales, is that he cheated at play. And then religion is attacked, and why? Because there have been bad priests; because Sagittarius, Bishop of Gap, was brother of Salonces, Bishop of Embrun, and both followed Mommolus. Of what consequence is all this? Does it prevent Martin of Tours from being a saint, and having given one half of his cloak to a poor man? The saints are persecuted, and people close their eyes against the truth. They are accustomed to the darkness, and the most ferocious beasts are blind beasts. No one thinks of hell seriously; oh, the wicked people! 'By the king's order' means at the present day by order of the revolution. People forget what they owe, either to the living or the dead. We are forbidden to die in holiness; burial is a civil matter, and this is horrible. Saint Leon II. wrote two letters expressly,—one to Peter Notarius, the other to the King of the Visigoths, to combat and reject, in questions that affect the dead, the authority of the exarchus and the supremacy of the Emperor. Gauthier, Bishop of Châlons, opposed Otho, Duke of Burgundy, in this matter. The old magistrates coincided, and we formerly had a voice in the Chapter itself upon temporal affairs. The Abbot of Citeaux, general of the order, was councillor by right of birth in the Parliament of Burgundy. We do what we like with our dead. Is not the body of Saint Benedict himself in France at the Abbey of Fleury, called Saint Benedict, in the Loire, although he died at Monte Cassino in Italy, on Saturday, March 21, 543? All this is incontestable. I abhor the psallants, I hate the priors, I execrate heretics, but I should detest even worse any one who opposed my views in this matter. It is only necessary to read Arnoul Wion, Gabriel Bucelinus, Trithème, Maurolicus, and Dom Luc d'Achery."
The prioress breathed, and then turned to Fauchelevent. "Father Fauvent, is it settled?"
"It is, Reverend Mother."
"Can we reckon on you?"
"I will obey."
"Very good."
"I am entirely devoted to the convent."
"You will close the coffin, and the sisters will carry it into the chapel. The office for the dead will be read, and then we shall return to the cloisters. Between eleven and twelve you will come with your iron bar, and everything will be performed with the utmost secrecy; there will be no one in the chapel but the four singing mothers, Mother Ascension, and yourself."
"And the sister who will be at the post?"
"She will not turn round."
"But she will hear."
"She will not listen. Moreover, what the convent knows the world is ignorant of."
There was another pause, after which the prioress continued,—
"You will remove your bell, for it is unnecessary for the sister at the stake to notice your presence."
"Reverend Mother?"
"What is it, Father Fauvent?"
"Has the physician of the dead paid his visit?"
"He will do so at four o'clock to-day; the bell has been rung to give him notice. But do you not hear any ringing?"
"I only pay attention to my own summons."
"Very good, Father Fauvent."
"Reverend Mother, I shall require a lever at least six feet long."
"Where will you get it?"
"Where there are plenty of gratings there are plenty of iron bars. I have a pile of old iron at the end of the garden."
"About three quarters of an hour before midnight, do not forget."
"Reverend Mother?"
"What is it?"
"If you have other jobs like this, my brother is a strong fellow for you,—a Turk."
"You will be as quick as possible."
"I cannot do things quickly, for I am infirm, and for that reason require an assistant. I halt."
"Halting is not a crime, and may be a blessing. The Emperor Henry II., who combated the Anti-pope Gregory, and re-established Benedict VIII., has two surnames,—the saint and the cripple."
"Two excellent surtouts," muttered Fauchelevent, who really was rather hard of hearing.
"Father Fauvent, now I think of it, take a whole hour, for it will not be too much. Be at the High Altar with your crowbar at eleven o'clock, for the service begins at midnight, and all must be finished a good quarter of an hour previously."
"I will do everything to prove my zeal to the community. I will nail up the coffin, and be in the chapel at eleven o'clock precisely; the singing mothers and Mother Ascension will be there. Two men would be better; but no matter, I shall have my crowbar. We will open the vault, let down the coffin, and close it again. After that there will not be a trace, and the Government will have no suspicion. Reverend Mother, is all arranged thus?"
"No."
"What is there still?"
"There is the empty coffin."
This was a difficulty; Fauchelevent thought of and on it, and so did the prioress.
"Father Fauvent, what must be done with the other coffin."
"It must be buried."
"Empty?"
Another silence. Fauchelevent made with his left hand that sort of gesture which dismisses a disagreeable question.
"Reverend Mother, I will nail up the coffin and cover it with the pall."
"Yes; but the bearers, while placing it in the hearse and lowering it into the grave, will soon perceive that there is nothing in it."
"Oh, the de—!" Fauchelevent exclaimed. The prioress began a cross, and looked intently at the gardener; the vil stuck in his throat, and he hastily improvised an expedient to cause the oath to be forgotten.
"Reverend Mother, I will put earth in the coffin, which will produce the effect of a body."
"You are right, for earth is the same as a human being. So you will manage the empty coffin?"
"I take it on myself."
The face of the prioress, which had hitherto been troubled and clouded, now grew serene. She made the sign of a superior dismissing an inferior, and Fauchelevent walked toward the door. As he was going out, the prioress gently raised her voice.
"Father Fauvent, I am satisfied with you; to-morrow, after the interment, bring me your brother, and tell him to bring me his daughter."