Les Miserables (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (60 page)

“That’s true,” replied the gravedigger.

“Five minutes is not time enough for you to fill the grave—it’s as deep as the very devil—and get out of this before the gate is shut.”

“You’re right.”

“In that case, there is fifteen francs fine.”

“Fifteen francs!”

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

“Just by the barrière. Fifteen minutes’ walk. Number 87 Rue de Vaugirard.”

“You have time, if you make it snappy, to get out at once.”

“That’s true.”

“Once outside of the gate, you scamper home, get your card, come back, and the gatekeeper will let you in again. Having your card, there’s nothing to pay. Then you can bury your dead man. I’ll stay here, and watch him while you’re gone, to see that he doesn’t run away.”

“I owe you my life, peasant!”

“Be off, then, quick!” said Fauchelevent.

The gravedigger, overcome with gratitude, shook his hands, and started at a run.

When the gravedigger had disappeared through the bushes, Fauchelevent listened until his footsteps died away, and then, bending over the grave, called out in a low voice:

“Father Madeleine!”

No answer.

Fauchelevent shuddered. He dropped rather than clambered down into the grave, threw himself upon the head of the coffin, and cried out:

“Are you there?”

Silence in the coffin.

Fauchelevent, no longer able to breathe for the shiver that was on him, took his cold chisel and hammer, and wrenched off the top board. The face of Jean Valjean could be seen in the twilight, his eyes closed and his cheeks colourless.

Fauchelevent’s hair stood erect with alarm; he rose to his feet, and then tottered with his back against the side of the grave, ready to sink down upon the coffin. He looked upon Jean Valjean.

Jean Valjean lay there pallid and motionless.

Fauchelevent murmured in a voice low as a whisper:

“He is dead!”

Then straightening himself, and crossing his arms so violently that his clenched fists sounded against his shoulders, he exclaimed:

“This is the way I have saved him!”

Then the poor old man began to sob, talking aloud to himself the while, for it is a mistake to think that talking to one’s self is not natural. Powerful emotions often speak aloud.

“It’s Father Mestienne’s fault. What did he die for, the fool? What was the use of going off in that way, just when no one expected it? It was he who killed poor M. Madeleine. Father Madeleine! He is in the coffin. He’s settled. There’s an end of it. Now, what’s the sense of such things? Good God! he’s dead! Yes, and his little girl—what am I to do with her? What will the fruit-woman say? That such a man could die in that way. Good Heaven, is it possible! When I think that he put himself under my care! ... Father Madeleine! Father Madeleine! Mercy, he’s suffocated, I said so—but, he wouldn’t believe me. Now, here’s a pretty piece of business! He’s dead—one of the very best men God ever made; aye, the best, the very best! And his little girl! I’m not going back there again. I’m going to stay here. To have done such a thing as this! It’s well worth while to be two old greybeards, in order to be two old fools. But, to begin with, how did he manage to get into the convent—that’s where it started. Such things shouldn’t be done. Father Madeleine! Father Madeleine! Father Madeleine! Madeleine! Monsieur Madeleine! Monsieur Mayor! He doesn’t hear me. Get yourself out of this now, if you please.”

And he tore his hair.

At a distance, through the trees, a harsh grating sound was heard. It was the gate of the cemetery closing.

Fauchelevent again bent over Jean Valjean, but suddenly jumped back as far as one can in a grave. Jean Valjean’s eyes were open, and gazing at him.

To behold death is terrifying, and to see a sudden resurrection is nearly as much so. Fauchelevent became cold and white as a stone, wild-eyed and utterly disconcerted by all these powerful emotions, and not knowing whether he had the dead or the living to deal with, stared at Jean Valjean, who in turn stared at him.

“I was falling asleep,” said Jean Valjean.

And he rose to a sitting posture.

Fauchelevent dropped on his knees.

“Oh, blessed Virgin! How you frightened me!”

Then, springing again to his feet, he cried:

“Thank you, Father Madeleine!”

Jean Valjean had merely swooned. The open air had revived him.

Joy is the reflex of terror. Fauchelevent had nearly as much difficulty as Jean Valjean in coming to himself.

“Then you’re not dead! Oh, what good sense you have! I called you so loudly that you got over it. When I saw you with your eyes shut, I said, ‘Well, there now! he’s suffocated!’ I would have gone raving mad—mad enough for a strait-jacket. They’d have put me in the Bicêtre. What would you have had me do, if you had been dead? And your little girl! the fruit-woman would have understood nothing about it! A child dropped into her lap, and its grandfather dead! What a story to tell! By all the saints in heaven, what a story! Ah! but you’re alive—that’s the best of it.”

“I am cold,” said Jean Valjean.

These words recalled Fauchelevent completely to the real state of affairs, which were urgent. These two men, even when restored, felt without knowing it, a peculiar agitation and a strange inward trouble, which was but the sinister bewilderment of the place.

“Let us get away from here at once,” said Fauchelevent.

He thrust his hand into his pocket, and drew from it a flask with which he was provided.

“But a drop of this first!” said he.

The flask completed what the open air had begun. Jean Valjean took a swallow of brandy, and felt thoroughly restored.

He got out of the coffin, and assisted Fauchelevent to nail down the lid again. Three minutes afterwards, they were out of the grave.

After this, Fauchelevent was calm enough. He took his time. The cemetery was closed. There was no fear of the return of Gribier the gravedigger. That recruit was at home, hunting up his “card,” and rather unlikely to find it, as it was in Fauchelevent’s pocket. Without his card, he could not get back into the cemetery.

Fauchelevent took the spade and Jean Valjean the pick, and together they buried the empty coffin.

When the grave was filled, Fauchelevent said to Jean Valjean:

“Come, let us go; I’ll keep the spade, and you take the pick.”

Night was coming on rapidly.

Jean Valjean found it hard to move and walk. In the coffin he had stiffened considerably, somewhat in reality like a corpse. The anchylosis of death had seized him in that narrow wooden box. He had, in some sort, to thaw himself out of the sepulchre.

“You are benumbed,” said Fauchelevent; “and what a pity that I’m lame, or we’d run a bit.”

“No matter!” replied Jean Valjean, “a few steps will put my legs into walking order.”

They went out by the avenues the hearse had followed. When they reached the closed gate and the porter’s lodge, Fauchelevent, who had the gravedigger’s card in his hand, dropped it into the box, the porter drew the cord, the gate opened, and they went through.

“How well everything goes!” said Fauchelevent; “what a good plan that was of yours, Father Madeleine!”

They passed the Barrière Vaugirard in the easiest way in the world. In the neighbourhood of a graveyard, a pick and spade are two passports.

The Rue de Vaugirard was deserted.

“Father Madeleine,” said Fauchelevent, as he went along, looking up at the houses, “you have better eyes than mine—which is number 87?”

“Here it is, now,” said Jean Valjean.

“There’s no one in the street,” resumed Fauchelevent. “Give me the pick, and wait for me a couple of minutes.”

Fauchelevent went in at number 87, ascended to the topmost flight, guided by the instinct which always leads the poor to the garret, and knocked, in the dark, at the door of a little attic room. A voice called:

“Come in!”

It was Gribier’s voice.

Fauchelevent pushed open the door. The lodging of the gravedigger was, like all these shelters of the needy, an unfurnished but much littered loft. A packing-case of some kind—a coffin, perhaps—supplied the place of a bureau, a straw pallet the place of a bed, a butter-pot the place of water-cooler, and the floor served alike for chairs and table. In one corner, on a ragged old scrap of carpet, was a haggard woman, and a number of children were huddled together. The whole of this wretched interior bore the traces of recent overturn. One would have said that there had been an earthquake served up there “for one.” The coverlets were displaced, the ragged garments scattered about, the pitcher broken, the mother had been weeping, and the children probably beaten; all traces of a headlong and violent search. It was plain that the gravedigger had been looking, wildly, for his card, and had made everything in the attic, from his pitcher to his wife, responsible for the loss. He had a desperate appearance.

But Fauchelevent was in too great a hurry for the end of his adventure, to notice this gloomy side of his triumph.

As he came in, he said:

“I’ve brought your spade and pick.”

Gribier looked at him with stupefaction.

“What, it is you, peasant?”

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

And he set down the pick and the spade on the floor.

“What does all this mean?” asked Gribier.

“Why, it means that you let your card drop out of your pocket; that I found it on the ground when you had gone; that I buried the corpse; that I filled in the grave; that I finished your job; that the porter will give you your card, and that you will not have to pay the fifteen francs. That’s what it means, recruit!”

“Thanks, villager!” exclaimed Gribier, in amazement. “The next time I will treat.”

AN HOUR LATER, in the depth of night, two men and a child stood in front of No. 62, Petite Rue Picpus. The elder of the men lifted the knocker and rapped.

It was Fauchelevent, Jean Valjean, and Cosette.

The two men had gone to look for Cosette at the shop of the fruiteress of the Rue de Chemin Vert, where Fauchelevent had left her on the preceding evening. Cosette had passed the twenty-four hours wondering what it all meant and trembling in silence. She trembled so much that she had not wept, nor had she tasted food nor slept. The worthy fruit-woman had asked her a thousand questions without obtaining any other answer than a sad look that never varied. Cosette did not let a word of all she had heard and seen, in the last two days, escape her. She divined that a crisis had come. She felt, in her very heart, that she must be “good.” Who has not experienced the supreme effect of these two words pronounced in a certain tone in the ear of some little frightened creature, “Don’t speak!” Fear is mute. Besides, no one ever keeps a secret so well as a child.

But when, after those mournful four-and-twenty hours, she again saw Jean Valjean, she uttered such a cry of joy that any thoughtful person hearing her would have divined in it an escape from some yawning gulf.
^bw

Fauchelevent belonged to the convent and knew all the pass-words. Every door opened before him.

Thus was that doubly fearful problem solved of getting out and getting in again.

The porter, who had his instructions, opened the little side door which served to communicate between the court and the garden, and which, twenty years ago, could still be seen from the street, in the wall at the extremity of the court, facing the porte-cochère. The porter admitted all three by this door, and from that point they went to this private inner parlour, where Fauchelevent had, on the previous evening, received the orders of the prioress.

The prioress, rosary in hand, was awaiting them. A mother, with her veil down, stood near her. A modest taper lighted, or one might almost say, pretended to light up the parlour.

The prioress scrutinised Jean Valjean. Nothing scans so carefully as a downcast eye.

Then she proceeded to question:

“You are the brother?”

“Yes, reverend mother,” replied Fauchelevent.

“What is your name?”

Fauchelevent replied:

“Ultimus Fauchelevent!”

He had, in reality, had a brother named Ultimus, who was dead.

“From what part of the country are you?”

Fauchelevent answered:

“From Picquigny, near Amiens.”

“What is your age?”

Fauchelevent answered:

“Fifty.”

“What is your business?”

Fauchelevent answered:

“Gardener.”

“Are you a true Christian?”

Fauchelevent answered:

“All of our family are such.”

“Is this your little girl?”

Fauchelevent answered:

“Yes, reverend mother.”

“You are her father?”

Fauchelevent answered:

“Her grandfather.”

The mother said to the prioress in an undertone:

“He answers well.”

Jean Valjean had not spoken a word.

The prioress looked at Cosette attentively, and then said, aside to the mother—

“She will be homely.”

The two mothers talked together very low for a few minutes in a corner of the parlour, and then the prioress turned and said—

“Father Fauvent, you will have another knee-cap and bell. We need two, now.”

So, next morning, two little bells were heard tinkling in the garden and the nuns could not keep from lifting a corner of their veils. They saw two men digging side by side, in the lower part of the garden under the trees—Fauvent and another. Immense event! The silence was broken, so far as to say—

“It’s an assistant-gardener!”