Les Miserables (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (59 page)

Fauchelevent remained speechless. He had hardly the strength to stammer out:

“But it’s not possible!”

“It is so.”

“But,” repeated he, feebly, “the gravedigger is Father Mestienne.”

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

Fauchelevent grew pale; he stared at Gribier.

He was a long, thin, livid man, perfectly funereal. He had the appearance of a broken-down doctor turned gravedigger.

Fauchelevent burst out laughing.

“Ah! what droll things happen! Old Mestienne is dead. Little old Mestienne is dead, but hurrah for little old Lenoir! You know what little old Lenoir is? It is the mug of red wine on the counter for a six spot. It is the mug of Surene, zounds! real Paris Surene. So he is dead, old Mestienne! I am sorry for it; he was a jolly fellow. But you too, you are a jolly fellow. Isn’t that so, comrade? we will go and take a drink together, right away.”

The man answered: “I have studied, I have graduated. I never drink.”

The hearse had started moving again, and was rolling along the main avenue of the cemetery.

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

The gravedigger walked before him.

Fauchelevent again scrutinised the unexpected Gribier.

He was one of those men who, though young, have an old appearance, and who, though thin, are very strong.

“Comrade!” cried Fauchelevent.

The man turned.

“I am the gravedigger of the convent.”

“My colleague,” said the man.

Fauchelevent, illiterate, but very keen, understood that he had to do with a very formidable species, a good talker.

He mumbled out:

“Is it so, Father Mestienne is dead?”

The man answered:

“Perfectly. The good God consulted his list of bills payable. It was Father Mestienne’s turn. Father Mestienne is dead.”

Fauchelevent repeated mechanically.

“The good God.”

“The good God,” said the man authoritatively. “What the philosophers call the Eternal Father; the Jacobins, the Supreme Being.”

“Are we not going to make each other’s acquaintance?” stammered Fauchelevent.

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

“We are not acquainted as long as we have not drunk together. He who empties his glass empties his heart. Come and drink with me. You can’t refuse.”

“Business first.”

Fauchelevent said to himself: I am lost.

They were now only a few turns of the wheel from the path that led to the nuns’ corner.

The gravedigger continued:

“Peasant, I have seven youngsters that I must feed. As they must eat, I must not drink.”

And he added with the satisfaction of a serious being who is making a sententious phrase:

“Their hunger is the enemy of my thirst.”

The hearse turned a huge cypress, left the main path, took a little one, entered upon the grounds, and was lost in a thicket. This indicated the immediate proximity of the grave. Fauchelevent slackened his pace, but could not slacken that of the hearse. Luckily the mellow soil, wet by the winter rains, stuck to the wheels, and made the track heavy.

He approached the gravedigger.

“They have such a good little Argenteuil wine,” suggested Fauchelevent.

“Villager,” continued the man, “I ought not to be a gravedigger. My father was porter at the Prytanée.
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He intended me for literature. But he was unfortunate. He lost his money on stocks. I was obliged to renounce the condition of an author. However, I am still a public scribe.”

“But then you are not the gravedigger?” replied Fauchelevent, catching at a straw, feeble as it was.

“One does not prevent the other. I cumulate.”

Fauchelevent did not understand this last word.

“Let us go and drink,” said he.

Here an observation is necessary. Fauchelevent, whatever was his anguish, proposed to drink, but did not explain himself on one point; who should pay? Ordinarily Fauchelevent proposed, and Father Mestienne paid. A proposal to drink resulted evidently from the new situation produced by the fact of the new gravedigger, and this proposal he must make; but the old gardener left, not unintentionally, the proverbial quarter of an hour of Rabelais unclear.
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As for himself, Fauchelevent, however excited he was, did not care to pay.

The gravedigger went on, with a smile of superiority:

“We must live. I accepted the succession of Father Mestienne. When one has almost finished his classes, he is a philosopher. To the labour of my hand, I have added the labour of my arm. I have my little writer’s shop at the Market in the Rue de Sèvre. You know? the umbrella market. All the cooks of the Croix Rouge come to me; I patch up their declarations to their true loves. In the morning I write love letters; in the evening I dig graves. Such is life, peasant.”

The hearse advanced; Fauchelevent, full of anxiety, looked about him on all sides. Great drops of sweat were falling from his forehead.

“However,” continued the gravedigger, “one cannot serve two mistresses; I must choose between the pen and the pick. The pick hurts my hand.”

The hearse stopped.

The choir-boy got out of the hearse, then the priest.

One of the forward wheels of the hearse was lifted a little by a heap of earth, beyond which was seen an open grave.

“This is a laugh!” repeated Fauchelevent in consternation.

WHO WAS in the coffin? We know. Jean Valjean.

Jean Valjean had arranged it so that he could live in it, and could breathe, if only barely.

It is a strange thing to what extent an easy conscience gives calmness in other respects. The entire strategem pre-arranged by Jean Valjean had been working, and working well, since the night before. He counted, as did Fauchelevent, upon Father Mestienne. He had no doubt of the result. Never was a situation more critical, never calmness more complete.

The four boards of the coffin exhaled a kind of terrible peace. It seemed as if something of the repose of the dead had entered into the tranquillity of Jean Valjean.

From within that coffin he had been able to follow, and he had followed, all the phases of the fearful drama which he was playing with Death.

Soon after Fauchelevent had finished nailing down the upper board, Jean Valjean had felt himself carried out, then wheeled along. By the diminished jolting, he had felt that he was passing from the pavement to the hard ground; that is to say, that he was leaving the streets and entering upon the boulevards. By a dull sound, he had divined that they were crossing the bridge of Austerlitz. At the first stop he had comprehended that they were entering the cemetery; at the second stop he had said: here is the grave.

He felt that hands hastily seized the coffin, then a harsh scraping upon the boards; he concluded that that was a rope which they were tying around the coffin to let it down into the excavation.

Then he felt a kind of dizziness.

Probably the bearer and the gravedigger had tipped the coffin and let the head down before the feet. He returned fully to himself on feeling that he was horizontal and motionless. He had touched the bottom.

He felt a certain chill.

A voice arose above him, icy and solemn. He heard pass away, some Latin words which he did not understand, pronounced so slowly that he could catch them one after another:

A child’s voice said:

The deep voice recommenced:

The child’s voice responded:

He heard upon the board which covered him something like the gentle patter of a few drops of rain. It was probably the holy water.

He thought: “This will soon be finished. A little more patience. The priest is going away. Fauchelevent will take Mestienne away to drink. They will leave me. Then Fauchelevent will come back alone, and I shall get out. That will take a good hour.”

The deep voice resumed.

And the child’s voice said:

Jean Valjean, intently listening, perceived something like receding steps.

“Now there they go,” thought he. “I am alone.”

All at once he heard a sound above his head which seemed to him like a clap of thunder.

It was a spadeful of earth falling upon the coffin.

A second spadeful of earth fell.

One of the holes by which he breathed was stopped up.

A third spadeful of earth fell.

Then a fourth.

There are things stronger than the strongest man. Jean Valjean lost consciousness.

LET US SEE what occurred over the coffin in which Jean Valjean lay.

When the hearse had departed and the priest and the choir-boy had got into the carriage, and were gone, Fauchelevent, who had never taken his eyes off the gravedigger, saw him stoop, and grasp his spade, which was standing upright in the heap of earth.

Hereupon, Fauchelevent formed a supreme resolve.

Placing himself between the grave and the gravedigger, and folding his arms, he said:

“I’ll pay for it!”

The gravedigger eyed him with amazement, and replied:

“What, peasant?”

Fauchelevent repeated:

“I’ll pay for it!”

“For what?”

“For the wine.”

“What wine?”

“The Argenteuil.”

“Where’s the Argenteuil?”

“At the Good Quince.”

“Go to the devil!” said the gravedigger.

And he threw a spadeful of earth upon the coffin.

The coffin gave back a hollow sound. Fauchelevent felt himself stagger, and nearly fell into the grave. In a voice in which the strangling sound of the death-rattle began to be heard he cried:

“Come, comrade, before the Good Quince closes!”

The gravedigger took up another spadeful of earth. Fauchelevent continued:

“I’ll pay,” and he seized the gravedigger by the arm.

“Hark ye, comrade,” he said, “I am the gravedigger of the convent, and have come to help you. It’s a job we can do at night. Let us take a drink first.”

And as he spoke, even while clinging desperately to this urgent effort, he asked himself, with some misgiving: “And even should he drink—will he get tipsy?”

“Good rustic,” said the gravedigger, “if you insist, I consent. We’ll have a drink but after my work, never before it.”

And he tossed his spade again. Fauchelevent held him.

“It is Argenteuil at six sous the pint!”

“Ah, bah!” said the gravedigger, “you’re a bore. Ding-dong, ding-dong, the same thing over and over again; that’s all you can say. Be off, about your business.”

And he threw in the second spadeful.

Fauchelevent had reached that point where a man knows no longer what he is saying. “Oh! come on, and take a glass, since I’m the one to pay,” he again repeated.

“When we’ve put the child to bed,” said the gravedigger.

He tossed in the third spadeful: then, plunging his spade into the earth, he added:

“You see, now, it’s going to be cold to-night, and the dead one would cry out after us, if we were to plant her there without good covering.”

At this moment, in the act of filling his spade, the gravedigger stooped low and the pocket of his vest gaped open.

The bewildered eye of Fauchelevent rested mechanically on this pocket, and remained fixed.

The sun was not yet hidden behind the horizon, and there was still light enough to distinguish something white in the gaping pocket.

All the lightning which the eye of a Picardy peasant can contain flashed into the pupils of Fauchelevent. A new idea had struck him.

Without the gravedigger, who was occupied with his spadeful of earth, perceiving him, he slipped his hand from behind into the pocket, and took from him the white object it contained.

The gravedigger flung into the grave the fourth spadeful.

Just as he was turning to take the fifth, Fauchelevent, looking at him with imperturbable calmness, asked:

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

The gravedigger stopped.

“What card?”

“The sun is setting.”

“Well, let him put on his night-cap.”

“The cemetery-gate will be closed.”

“Well, what then?”

“Have you your card?”

“Oh! my card!” said the gravedigger, and he felt in his pocket.

Having rummaged one pocket, he tried another. From these, he proceeded to try his watch-fobs, exploring the first, and turning the second inside out.

“No!” said he, “no! I haven’t got my card. I must have forgotten it.” “Fifteen francs fine!” said Fauchelevent.

The gravedigger turned green. Green is the paleness of people naturally livid.

“Oh, good-gracious God, what a fool I am!” he exclaimed. “Fifteen francs fine!”

“Three hundred-sou coins,” said Fauchelevent.

The gravedigger dropped his spade.

Fauchelevent’s turn had come.

“Come! come, recruit,” said Fauchelevent, “never despair; there’s nothing to kill oneself about, and feed the worms. Fifteen francs are fifteen francs, and besides, you may not have them to pay. I am an old hand, and you a new one. I know all the tricks and traps and turns and twists of the business. I’ll give you a friend’s advice. One thing is clear—the sun is setting—and the graveyard will be closed in five minutes.”