On a fine May morning last year (1861) a wayfarer, the person who is telling this story, was coming from Nivelles, and was proceeding toward La Hulpe. He was on foot and following, between two rows of trees, a wide paved road which undulates over a constant succession of hills, that raise the road and let it fall again, and form, as it were, enormous waves. He had passed Lillois and Bois-Seigneur Isaac, and noticed in the west the slate-covered steeple of Braine l'Alleud, which looks like an overturned vase. He had just left behind him a wood upon a hill, and at the angle of a cross-road, by the side of a sort of worm-eaten gallows which bore the inscription, "Old barrier, No. 4," a wine-shop, having on its front the following notice: "The Four Winds, Échabeau, private coffee-house."
About half a mile beyond this pot-house, he reached a small valley, in which there is a stream that runs through an arch formed in the causeway. The clump of trees, wide-spread but very green, which fills the valley on one side of the road, is scattered on the other over the fields, and runs gracefully and capriciously toward Braine l'Alleud. On the right, and skirting the road, were an inn, a four-wheeled cart in front of the door, a large bundle of hop-poles, a plough, a pile of dry shrubs near a quick-set hedge, lime smoking in a square hole, and a ladder lying along an old shed with straw partitions. A girl was hoeing in a field, where a large yellow bill—probably of a show at some Kermesse—was flying in the wind. At the corner of the inn, a badly-paved path ran into the bushes by the side of a pond, on which a flotilla of ducks was navigating. The wayfarer turned into this path.
After proceeding about one hundred yards, along a wall of the 15th century, surmounted by a coping of crossed bricks, he found himself in front of a large arched stone gate, with a rectangular moulding, in the stern style of Louis XIV., supported by two flat medallions. A severe façade was over this gate; a wall perpendicular to the façade almost joined the gate and flanked it at a right angle. On the grass-plat in front of the gate lay three harrows, through which the May flowers were growing pell-mell. The gate was closed by means of two decrepit folding-doors, ornamented by an old rusty hammer.
The sun was delightful, and the branches made that gentle May rustling, which seems to come from nests even more than from the wind. A little bird, probably in love, was singing with all its might. The wayfarer stooped and looked at a rather large circular excavation in the stone to the right of the gate, which resembled a sphere. At this moment the gates opened and a peasant woman came out. She saw the wayfarer and noticed what he was looking at.
"It was a French cannon-ball that made it," she said, and then added: "What you see higher up there, on the gate near a nail, is the hole of a heavy shell, which did not penetrate the wood."
"What is the name of this place?" the wayfarer asked.
"Hougomont," said the woman.
The wayfarer drew himself up, he walked a few steps, and then looked over the hedge. He could see on the horizon through the trees a species of mound, and on this mound something which, at a distance, resembled a lion. He was on the battlefield of Waterloo.
Jean Valjean was recaptured. As our readers will probably thank us for passing rapidly over painful details, we confine ourselves to the quotation of two paragraphs published by the newspapers of the day, a few months after the occurrence of the surprising events at M——. These articles are rather summary, but it must be remembered that no Gazette des Tribunaux existed at that period. The first we take from the Drapeau Blanc, dated July 25, 1823.
"A bailiwick of the Pas de Calais has just been the scene of an uncommon event. A man, who was a stranger to the department and called M. Madeleine, had some years previously revived by a new process an old local trade,—the manufacture of jet and black beads. He made his own fortune, and, let us add, that of the bailiwick, and in acknowledgment of his services he was appointed Mayor. The police discovered that M. Madeleine was no other than an ex-convict, who had broken his ban, condemned in 1796 for robbery, of the name of Jean Valjean. He has been sent back to the Bagne. It appears that prior to his arrest he succeeded in withdrawing from M. Lafitte's a sum of more than half a million, which he had banked there, and which it is said that he had honestly acquired by his trade. Since his return to Toulon futile efforts have been made to discover where this amount is concealed."
The second article, which is rather more detailed, is extracted from the Journal de Paris of the same date:—
"An ex-convict of the name of Jean Valjean has just been tried at the Var assizes, under circumstances which attract attention. This villain had succeeded in deceiving the vigilance of the police, and had behaved so cleverly as to be made Mayor of one of our small towns in the north, where he established a rather considerable trade. He was at length unmasked, and arrested through the indefatigable zeal of the public authorities. He had, as his concubine, a girl of the town, who died of a fit at the moment of his arrest. This scoundrel, who is endowed with Herculean strength, managed to escape but three or four days later the police again captured him in Paris, at the moment when he was entering one of those small coaches which run from the capital to the village of Montfermeil (Seine et Oise). It is said that he took advantage of these three or four days of liberty to withdraw from one of our chief bankers an amount estimated at six or seven hundred thousand francs. According to the indictment he buried it at some spot only known to himself, and it has not been found; but however this may be, this Jean Valjean has just been tried at Var assizes for a highway robbery committed with violence some eight years ago upon one of those honest lads, who, as the patriarch of Ferney has said in immortal verse,—
'De Savoie arrivent tous les ans
Et dont la main légèrement essuie
Ces longs canaux engorgés par la suie.'
This bandit made no defence, but it was proved by the skilful and eloquent organ of public justice that Jean Valjean was a member of a band of robbers in the south. Consequently Valjean was found guilty and sentenced to death. The criminal refused to appeal to the Court of Cassation, but the King, in his inexhaustible mercy, deigned to commute his sentence into penal servitude for life. Jean Valjean was immediately removed to the galleys at Toulon."
It will not be forgotten that Jean Valjean had displayed religious tendencies at M——, and some of the papers, among them the Constitutionnel, regarded this commutation as a triumph of the Priest party. Jean Valjean changed his number at Toulon, and was known as 9430. Let us state here once and for all that with M. Madeleine the prosperity of M—— disappeared: all he had foreseen in his night of hesitation and fever was realized; his absence was in truth the absence of the soul. After his fall there took place at M—— that selfish division of great fallen existences, that fatal break-up of flourishing things, which is daily accomplished obscurely in the human community, and which history has only noticed once because it occurred after the death of Alexander. Lieutenants crown themselves kings; overseers suddenly became manufacturers, and envious rivalries sprang up. M. Madeleine's large work-shops were shut up; the buildings fell into a ruinous condition, and the artisans dispersed, some leaving the town, others the trade. All was henceforth done on a small scale instead of a large one, for lucre instead of the public welfare. There was no centre, but on all sides violent competition. M. Madeleine had commanded and directed everything. When he fell, a spirit of contest succeeded that of organization, bitterness succeeded cordiality, and mutual hatred the good-will of the common founder. The threads tied by M. Madeleine became knotted and broken; the process was falsified, the articles became worse, and confidence was destroyed; the outlets diminished, and there were fewer orders; wages fell, there were stoppages, and lastly came bankruptcy.
The State itself perceived that some one had been crushed somewhere, for less than four years after the sentence of the court identifying M. Madeleine and Jean Valjean, to the profit of the galleys, the cost of collecting the taxes was doubled in the bailiwick of M——. M. de Villèle made a remark to that effect in the House in February, 1827.
Montfermeil is situated between Livry and Chelles, on the southern slope of the lofty plateau which separates the Ourque from the Marne. At the present day it is a rather large place, adorned with stucco villas all the year round, and with holiday-making cits on Sunday. In 1823 there were neither so many white houses nor so many happy cits as there are now, and it was merely a village in the woods. A visitor certainly came across here and there a few country-houses of the last century, recognizable by their air of pretension, their balconies of twisted iron, and the tall windows, in which the little squares produce all sorts of green hues on the white of the closed shutters. But Montfermeil was not the less a village; retired cloth-dealers and persons fond of country life had not yet discovered it. It was a quiet, pleasant spot, which was not on a road to anywhere. Persons lived there cheaply that peasant life which is so tranquil and abundant. The only thing was that water was scarce, owing to the elevation of the plateau, and it had to be fetched from some distance. That end of the village which was on the Gagny side obtained its water from the splendid ponds in the forest there; but the other end, which surrounds the church and is on the Chelles side, could only obtain drinking-water from a little spring about a quarter of an hour's walk from Montfermeil, near the road to Chelles; laying in water was therefore a hard task for every family. The large houses and the aristocracy, among which Thénardier's pot-house may be reckoned, paid a liard a bucket to a man whose trade it was, and who earned by it about eight sous a day. But this man only worked till seven P.M. in summer, and till five in winter; and once night had set in and the ground-floor shutters were closed, any person who had no water to drink must either fetch it or go without.
This was the terror of the poor creature whom the reader will not have forgotten, little Cosette. It will be remembered that Cosette was useful to the Thénardiers in two ways,—they made the mother pay and the child act as servant. Hence when the mother ceased payment, for the reason which we know, the Thénardiers kept Cosette, who took the place of a servant. In this quality she had to fetch water when it was wanted, and the child, terrified at the idea of going to the spring at night, was very careful that the house should never be without water. Christmas of 1823 was peculiarly brilliant at Montfermeil; the beginning of the winter was mild, and there had been neither snow nor frost. Some mountebanks, who came from Paris, had obtained leave from the mayor to erect their booth in the village high street, and a party of travelling hawkers had put their stalls in the church square, and even in the lane in which Thénardier's pot-house was situated. This filled the inns and pot-houses, and produced a noisy, joyous life in this quiet little place. As a faithful historian we are bound to add that among the curiosities displayed in the market-place was a menagerie, in which some ragged fellows showed the peasants of Montfermeil one of those terrific Brazilian vultures of which the Paris Museum did not possess a specimen till 1845, and which have a tricolor cockade for an eye. Naturalists, I believe, call this bird Caracara Polyborus; it belongs to the Apicide order and the vulture family. A few old Bonapartist soldiers living in the village went to see this bird with devotion, and the mountebanks declared that the tricolor cockade was a unique phenomenon, and expressly produced by Nature for their menagerie.
On the Christmas evening several carters and hawkers were sitting to drink, round four or five candles, in Thénardier's tap-room. This room was like those usually found in pot-houses; there were tables, pewter pots, bottles, drinkers, and smokers, but little light, and a good deal of uproar. The date of the year was, however, indicated by the two objects, fashionable at that time among tradespeople, and which were on a table,—a kaleidoscope and a lamp of clouded tin. Madame Thénardier was watching the supper, which was roasting before a bright clear fire, while her husband was drinking with his guests and talking politics. In addition to the political remarks, which mainly referred to the Spanish war and the Duc d'Angoulême, local parentheses like the following could be heard through the Babel:—
"Over at Nanterre and Suresne the vintage has been very productive, and where people expected ten barrels they have a dozen. The grapes were very juicy when put under the press."—"But the grapes could not have been ripe?"—"In these parts, they must not be picked ripe, for the wine becomes oily in spring."—"Then it must be a very poor wine?"—"There are poorer wines than those about here," etc.
Or else a miller exclaimed,—
"Are we responsible for what there is in the sack? We find a lot of small seeds, which we can't waste time in sifting, and which must pass under the mill-stones; such as tares, lucern, cockles, vetches, amaranths, hemp-seed, and a number of other weeds, without counting the pebbles which are so frequent in some sorts of wheat, especially Breton wheat. I don't like grinding Breton wheat, any more than sawyers like sawing beams in which there are nails. You can fancy the bad dust all this makes in the hopper, and then people complain unfairly of the flour, for it is no fault of ours."
Between two windows a mower seated at a table with a farmer, who was making a bargain to have a field mown in spring, said,—
"There is no harm in the grass being damp, for it cuts better. But your grass is tender, and hard to cut, sir, for it is so young, and bends before the scythe," etc. etc.
Cosette was seated at her usual place, the cross-bar of the table, near the chimney; she was in rags, her bare feet were thrust into wooden shoes, and she was knitting, by the fire-light, stockings intended for the young Thénardiers. Two merry children could be heard laughing and prattling in an adjoining room; they were Éponine and Azelma. A cat-o'-nine-tails hung from a nail by the side of the chimney. At times, the cry of a baby somewhere in the house was audible through the noise of the tap-room; it was a little boy Madame Thénardier had given birth to one winter, "without knowing how," she used to say, "it was the effect of the cold," and who was a little over three years of age. The mother suckled him, but did not love him; when his cries became too troublesome, Thénardier would say,—"There's your brat squalling; go and see what he wants." "Bah!" the mother would answer, "he's a nuisance;" and the poor deserted little wretch would continue to cry in the darkness.
An observation is necessary here about the present pages and others which will follow. It is now many years that the author of this work—forced, he regrets to say, to allude to himself—has been absent from Paris, and since he left that city it has been transformed, and a new city has sprung up, which is to some extent unknown to him. He need not say that he is fond of Paris, for it is his mental birth-place. Owing to demolitions and rebuilding, the Paris of his youth, the Paris which he religiously carried away in his memory, is at this hour a Paris of the past. Permit him, then, to speak of that Paris as if it still existed. It is possible that at the present day there is neither street nor house at the spot where the author purposes to lead the reader, saying, "In such a street there is such a house." If the readers like to take the trouble they can verify. As for him, he does not know new Paris, and writes with old Paris before his eyes in an illusion which is precious to him. It is sweet to him to fancy that something still remains of what he saw when he was in his own country, and that all has not faded away. So long as you move about in your native land you imagine that these streets are matters of indifference to you, that these roofs and doors are as nothing, that these walls are strange to you, that these trees are no better than the first tree you come across, that these houses which you do not enter are useless to you, and that the pavement on which you walk is made of stones and nothing more. At a later date, when you are no longer there, you perceive that these streets are dear to you, that you miss these roofs, windows, and doors, that the walls are necessary to you, that you love the trees, that these houses, which you did not enter, you entered daily, and that you have left some of your feelings, your blood, and your heart, on these paving-stones. All these spots which you no longer see, which perhaps you may never see again, and of which you have retained the image, assume a melancholy charm, return to you with the sadness of an apparition, make the sacred land visible to you, and are, so to speak, the very form of France: and you love and evoke them such as they are, such as they were, obstinately refusing to make any change in them; for you cling to the face of your country as to the countenance of your mother. Let us be permitted, then, to speak of the past at present: we will beg our readers to bear this in mind, and will continue our narrative.
Jean Valjean at once left the boulevard and entered the streets, making as many turnings as he could, and at times retracing his steps to make sure that he was not followed. This manœuvre is peculiar to the tracked deer, and on ground where traces are left it possesses the advantage of deceiving huntsmen and dogs; in venery it is called a "false reimbushment." The moon was at its full, and Jean Valjean was not sorry for it, for as the luminary was still close to the horizon it formed large patches of light and shade in the streets. Valjean was able to slip along the houses and walls on the dark side and watch the bright side; perhaps he did not reflect sufficiently that the dark side escaped his notice. Still, in all the deserted lanes which border the Rue de Poliveau he felt certain that no one was following him. Cosette walked on without asking questions; the sufferings of the first six years of her life had introduced something passive into her nature. Moreover—and this is a remark to which we shall have to revert more than once—she was accustomed to the singularities of her companion, and the strange mutations of fate. And then she felt in safety as she was with him. Jean Valjean did not know any more than Cosette whither he was going; he trusted to God, as she trusted to him. He fancied that he also held some one greater than himself by the hand, and felt an invisible being guiding him. However, he had no settled idea, plan, or scheme; he was not absolutely certain that it was Javert; and then again it might be Javert ignorant that he was Jean Valjean. Was he not disguised? Was he not supposed to be dead? Still, during the last few days several things had occurred which were becoming singular, and he wanted nothing more. He was resolved not to return to No. 50-52, and, like the animal driven from its lair, he sought a hole in which to hide himself until he could find a lodging. Jean Valjean described several labyrinths in the Quartier Mouffetard, which was as fast asleep as if it were still under mediæval discipline and the yoke of the Curfew, and combined several streets into a clever strategic system. There were lodging-houses where he now was, but he did not enter them, as he did not find anything to suit him, and he did not suppose for a moment that if persons were on his trail they had lost it again.
As the clock of St. Étienne du Mont struck eleven he passed the police office at No. 14, in the Rue de Pontoise. A few minutes after, the instinct to which we have referred made him look round, and he distinctly saw, by the office lamp which betrayed them, three men, who were following him rather closely, pass in turn under this lamp on the dark side of the street. One of these men turned into the office, and another, who was in front, appeared to him decidedly suspicious.
"Come, child," he said to Cosette; and he hastened out of the Rue de Pontoise. He made a circuit, skirted the Passage des Patriarches, which was closed at that hour, and eventually turned into the Rue des Postes. There is an open space here, where the Rollin College now stands, and into which the Rue Neuve St. Geneviève runs.
We need hardly say that the Rue Neuve St. Geneviève is an old street, and that a post-chaise does not pass along the Rue des Postes once in ten years. This street was inhabited by potters in the 13th century, and its real name is Rue des Pots.
The moon threw a bright light upon this open space, and Jean Valjean hid himself in a doorway, calculating that if the men were still following him he could not fail to have a good look at them as they crossed the open space. In fact, three minutes had not elapsed when the men appeared. There were now four of them, all tall, dressed in long brown coats and round hats, and holding large sticks in their hands. They were no less alarming through their stature and huge fists, than through their sinister movements in the darkness; they looked like four spectres disguised as citizens. They stopped in the centre of the square, and formed a group as if consulting, and apparently undecided. The leader turned and pointed with his right hand in the direction Jean Valjean had taken, while another seemed to be pointing with some degree of obstinacy in the opposite direction. At the moment when the first man turned the moon lit up his face brilliantly, and Jean Valjean recognized Javert perfectly.
This book is a drama in which the hero is the Infinite. The second character is Man.
Under these circumstances, as a convent happens to lie on our road, we ought to enter it. Why? Because the convent, which belongs as much to the East as to the West, to antiquity as to modern times, to Paganism, to Buddhism, to Mahometanism, as to Christianity, is one of the lenses which man brings to bear on the Infinite.
This is no place to develop unrestrictedly certain ideas; still, while we maintain absolutely our reservations, our restrictions, and even our indignation, we ought to acknowledge, that whenever we find in man the sense of the Infinite, well or ill conceived, we are seized with a feeling of respect. In the synagogue, in the mosque, in the pagoda, in the wigwam, there is a repulsive side which we detest, and a sublime side which we reverence. What a subject for meditation for the spirit, and what a boundless revery is the reverberation of God on the human wall!
It was into this house that Jean Valjean had fallen from heaven, as Fauchelevent said. He had climbed the garden-wall which formed the angle of the Rue Polonceau; the hymn of angels which he heard in the middle of the night was the nuns chanting matins; the hall which he had caught a glimpse of in the darkness was the chapel; the phantom he had seen stretched out on the ground was the phantom making reparation; and the bell which had so strangely surprised him was the gardener's bell fastened to Fauchelevent's knee. So soon as Cosette was in bed Jean Valjean and Fauchelevent supped on a glass of wine and a lump of cheese before a good blazing log; then, as the only bed in the cottage was occupied by Cosette, each threw himself on a truss of straw. Before closing his eyes Jean Valjean said, "I must stop here henceforth", and this remark trotted about Fauchelevent's head all night In fact, neither of them slept; Jean Valjean, feeling himself discovered and Javert on his track, understood that he and Cosette were lost if they entered Paris. Since the new blast of wind had blown him into this convent Jean Valjean had but one thought, that of remaining in it. Now, for a wretch in his position, this convent was at once the most dangerous and the safest place,—the most dangerous, because as no man was allowed to enter it, if he were discovered it would be a crime, and Jean Valjean would only take one step from the convent to the prison; the safest, because if he succeeded in remaining in it who would come to seek him there? Inhabiting an impossible spot was salvation.
On his side, Fauchelevent racked his brains. He began by declaring to himself that he understood nothing. How was M. Madeleine, in spite of all the surrounding walls, here? And convent walls cannot be passed at a stride. How was he here with a child? People do not scale a perpendicular wall with a child in their arms. Who was this child? Where did they both come from? Since Fauchelevent had been in the convent he had received no news from M——, and did not know what had occurred there. Father Madeleine had that look which discourages questioning, and moreover Fauchelevent said to himself, "A saint is not to be cross-questioned." It was only from a few words which escaped Jean Valjean that the gardener fancied he could come to the conclusion that M. Madeleine had probably been made bankrupt by the hard times, and was pursued by his creditors; or else he was compromised in a political affair and was in hiding, which idea did not displease Fauchelevent, because, like most of the peasants in the north of France, he was a stanch Bonapartist. M. Madeleine had chosen the convent as his asylum, and it was simple that he should wish to remain there. But the inexplicable thing, to which Fauchelevent constantly recurred and which addled his brains, was that M. Madeleine was here, and here with this child. Fauchelevent saw them, touched them, spoke to them, and did not believe it. The gardener was stumbling among conjectures and saw nothing clear but this,—"M. Madeleine saved my life." This sole certainty was sufficient, and decided him; he said to himself, "It is my turn now." He added in his conscience, "M. Madeleine did not deliberate long when he had to get under the cart to save me," and he decided upon saving M. Madeleine. He, however, asked himself several questions, to which he gave divers answers. "After what he did for me, should I save him, if he were a robber? All the same. If he were an assassin, would I save him? All the same. Since he is a saint, shall I save him? All the same."
What a problem it was, though, to enable him to remain in the convent! Still, Fauchelevent did not recoil before this almost chimerical attempt; this poor Picard peasant, who had no other ladder but his devotion, his good-will, and a small stock of old rustic craft, this time turned to a generous purpose, undertook to scale the impossibilities of the convent, and the rough escarpments of the rule of St. Benedict. Fauchelevent was an old man, who had been during life selfish, and who, at the end of his days, limping, infirm, and taking no interest in the world, found it pleasant to be grateful, and seeing a virtuous action to be done, he flung himself upon it like a man who, on the point of death, lays his hand on a glass of good wine which he had never tasted, and eagerly drinks it off. We may add, that the air which he had been breathing for some years in this convent had destroyed his personality, and had eventually rendered some good deed a necessity for him. He, therefore, formed the resolution of devoting himself for M. Madeleine. We have just called him a "poor Picard peasant;" the qualification is correct but incomplete. At the present stage of our story a little physiological examination of Father Fauchelevent becomes useful. He was a peasant, but he had been a notary, which added chicanery to his cunning and penetration to his simplicity. Having, through various reasons, failed in his business, he descended from a notary to be a carter and day-laborer; but in spite of the oaths and lashes necessary for horses, as it seems, something of the notary had clung to him. He had some natural wit; he did not say "I are" or "I has;" he could converse, which was a rare thing in a village, and the other peasants used to say of him, "He talks exactly like a gentleman in a hat." Fauchelevent in fact belonged to that species which the impertinent and light vocabulary of the last century qualified as "a bit of a rustic and a bit of a townsman, pepper and salt." Fauchelevent, though sorely tried, and much worn by fate, a sort of poor old threadbare soul, was still a man to act on the first impulse, and spontaneously,—a precious quality which prevents a man from ever being wicked. His defects and vices, for he had such, were on the surface, and altogether his physiognomy was one of those which please the observer. His old face had none of those ugly wrinkles on the top of the forehead which signify wickedness or stupidity. At daybreak, after thinking enormously, Father Fauchelevent opened his eyes and saw M. Madeleine sitting on his truss of straw, and looking at the sleeping Cosette; Fauchelevent sat up too, and said,—
"Now that you are here, how will you manage to get in?" This remark summed up the situation, and aroused Jean Valjean from his reverie. The two men held counsel.
"In the first place," said Fauchelevent, "you must begin by not setting foot outside this cottage, neither you nor the little one. One step in the garden, and we are done."
"That is true."
"Monsieur Madeleine," Fauchelevent continued, "you have arrived at a very lucky moment, I ought to say a very unhappy one, for one of our ladies is dangerously ill. In consequence of this, folk will not look much this way. It seems that she is dying, and the forty hours' prayers are being said. The whole community is aroused, and that occupies them. The person who is on the point of going off is a saint. In fact, though, we are all saints here; the only difference between them and me is that they say 'our cell,' and I say 'my cottage.' There will be a service for the dying, and then the service for the dead. For to-day we shall be all quiet here; but I do not answer for to-morrow."
"Still," Jean Valjean observed, "this cottage is retired; it is hidden by a sort of ruin; there are trees, and it cannot be seen from the convent."
"And I may add that the nuns never approach it."
"Well?" Jean Valjean asked.
The interrogation that marked this "well" signified "I fancy that we can remain concealed here," and it was to this interrogation that Fauchelevent replied:
"There are the little ones."
"What little ones?" Jean Valjean asked.
As Fauchelevent opened his mouth to answer, a stroke rang out from a bell.
"The nun is dead," he said, "that is the knell."
And he made Jean Valjean a sign to listen. A second stroke rang out.
"It is the passing bell, Monsieur Madeleine. The bell will go on so minute after minute for twenty-four hours, till the body leaves the church. You see they play about; at recreations they need only lose a ball, and in spite of the prohibition, they will come and look for it here and ransack everything. Those cherubs are little devils."
"Who?" Jean Valjean asked.
"The little ones; I can tell you that you would soon be discovered. They would cry out, 'Why, it's a man!' But there is no danger to-day, for there will be no recreation. The day will be spent in prayer. You hear the bell, as I told you, one stroke a minute;—it is the knell."
"I understand, Father Fauchelevent, they are boarders."
And Jean Valjean thought to himself:
"It is a chance for educating Cosette."
Fauchelevent exclaimed,—
"By Job, I should think they are boarders! They would sniff around you, and then run away. To be a man here is to have the plague, as you can see; a bell is fastened to my paw as if I were a wild beast."
Jean Valjean reflected more and more deeply. "This convent would save us," he muttered, and then added aloud,—
"Yes, the difficulty is to remain."
"No," said Fauchelevent, "it is to go out."
Jean Valjean felt the blood rush back to his heart.
"Go out?"
"Yes, Monsieur Madeleine, in order to come in, you must go out."
And, after waiting till a knell had died out in air, Fauchelevent continued,—
"You must not be found here like that. Where do you come from? For me, you fall from heaven because I know you, but the nuns require that people should come in by the front door."
All at once a complicated ringing of another bell could be heard.
"Ah!" said Fauchelevent, "the vocal mothers are being summoned to a Chapter,—a Chapter is always held when any one dies. She died at daybreak, and they generally die at daybreak. But can't you go out by the way that you came in? Come,—I don't want to ask you a question,—but where did you come in?"
Jean Valjean turned pale: the mere idea of going back to that formidable street made him tremble. Come out of a forest full of tigers, and once out of it just imagine a friend advising you to go in again. Jean Valjean figured to himself the police still searching in the quarter, the agents watching, vedettes everywhere, frightful fists stretched out toward his collar, and Javert, perhaps, in a corner lurking for his prey.
"Impossible!" he said. "Suppose, Father Fauchelevent, that I really fell from above."
"Why, I believe it," Fauchelevent continued; "you need not tell me so. Well, there is another peal; it is to tell the porter to go and warn the municipal authorities that they should send and inform the physician of the dead, so that he may come and see there is a dead woman here. All that is the ceremony of dying. The good ladies are not very fond of such visits, for a doctor believes in nothing; he raises the veil, and sometimes raises something else. What a hurry they have been in to warn the doctor this time! What is up, I wonder? Your little girl is still asleep; what is her name?"
"Cosette."
"Is she your daughter? I mean, are you her grandfather?"
"Yes."
"To get her out will be easy. I have my special door, which opens into the yard; I knock, the porter opens. I have my basket on my back, with the little girl in it, and go out. You will tell her to be very quiet, and she will be under the hood. I will leave her for the necessary time with an old Mend of mine, a fruiteress in the Rue du Chemin Vert, who is deaf, and where there is a little bed. I will shout in her ear that it is my niece, and bid her keep her for me till to-morrow; then the little one will come in with you, for I mean to bring you in again. But how will you manage to get out?"
Jean Valjean shook his head.
"The great point is that no one sees me, Father Fauchelevent. Find means to get me out in the same way as Cosette."
Fauchelevent scratched the tip of his ear with the middle finger of his left hand, which was a sign of serious embarrassment. A third peal caused a diversion.
"That is the doctor going away," said Fauchelevent. "He has had a look and said, 'She is dead, all right.' When the doctor has countersigned the passport for Paradise, the undertakers send a coffin. If it is a mother, the mothers put her in it; if a sister, the sisters; and after that, I nail up. That is part of my gardening, for a gardener is a bit of a grave-digger. The coffin is placed in the vestry room which communicates with the street, and which no man is allowed to enter but the doctor, for I don't count the undertakers and myself as men. It is in this room that I nail up the coffin; the undertakers fetch it, and then—Gee-up, driver—that's the way people go to heaven. A box is brought, in which there is nothing, and it is carried off with something in it; and that's what a burial is. De Profundis."
A horizontal sunbeam illumined the face of the sleeping Cosette, who opened her lips and looked like an angel imbibing light. Jean Valjean was gazing at her again, and no longer listened to Fauchelevent. Not to be heard is no reason why a man should hold his tongue, so the worthy old gardener quickly continued his chatter,—
"The grave is dug in the Vaugirard cemetery; people say that it is going to be shut up. It is an old cemetery, which has no uniform, and is going on half-pay; it is a pity, for it is convenient. I have a friend there, Father Mestrenne, the grave-digger. The nuns of this house possess the privilege of being carried to that cemetery at nightfall; they have a decree of the prefecture expressly for them. But what events since yesterday! Mother Crucifixion is dead, and Father Madeleine—"
"Is buried," Jean Valjean said, with a sad smile.
Fauchelevent echoed the word.
"Well, if you were here altogether it would be a real burial."
A fourth peal rang out. Fauchelevent quickly took down his knee-cap and put it on.
"This time it is for me. The Mother Prioress wants me. There, I have pricked myself with the tongue of my buckle. Monsieur Madeleine, don't stir, but wait for me. There is something up; if you are hungry, there is bread, wine, and cheese."
And he left the cottage, saying, "Coming, coming."
Jean Valjean watched him hurrying across the garden as rapidly as his leg would allow, while taking a side glance at his melon frames. Less than ten minutes after, Father Fauchelevent, whose bell routed all the nuns as he passed, tapped gently at a door, and a soft voice answered, "Forever, forever," that is to say, "Come in." It was the door of the parlor reserved expressly for the gardener, and adjoining the Chapter room. The prioress, seated on the only chair in the room, was waiting for Fauchelevent.