IT WAS into this establishment that Jean Valjean had fallen, in Fauchelevent’s words, ‘out of the sky’. After putting Cosette to bed he and Fauchelevent had a meal in front of a blazing fire and then, there being no other bed, they stretched out on bales of straw. Before closing his eyes Valjean said, ‘I shall have to stay here,’ and the words exercised Fauchelevent’s mind for the rest of the night.
But the truth is that neither of them slept. Knowing now that Javert was on his trail Valjean realized that he and Cosette could not hope to hide anywhere in the town. Chance having brought him to the convent, his only thought was to remain there. In his situation it was at once the most dangerous and the safest place – most dangerous since no man might enter it, and to be discovered there would of itself cause him to be sent to prison; but safest because who would look for him there? The most unlikely hiding-place was the most secure.
Fauchelevent, for his part, was racking his brains. He began by saying to himself that the whole thing was beyond him. How had Monsieur Madeleine contrived to get in over that formidable wall and, what was more, bring a child with him? Who was the child, and where had they come from? Fauchelevent had heard no news of Montreuil-sur-mer since he had been in the convent, and he knew nothing of what had happened. Père Madeleine’s manner discouraged questions, and he said to himself that in any case one does not question a saint. For him the great man had lost none of his greatness. Certain words that he had let fall, however, gave Fauchelevent the impression that he must have gone bankrupt owing to the hardness of the times, and was now running to escape his creditors; or perhaps he had been compromised in some political affair and must go into hiding. This latter thought did not displease the old man, who, like so many of our northern peasants, was at heart a Bonapartist. That Monsieur Madeleine should regard the convent as a place of refuge and wish to remain there was understandable; but the child remained a complete mystery. Faced by this element of the incomprehensible the old man lost himself in conjecture, seeing only one thing clearly, that the former mayor had saved his life. ‘It’s my turn,’ he thought. ‘He didn’t waste any time thinking when he crawled under that cart to rescue me.’ At all costs he must now come to his aid. Even if Monsieur Madeleine turned out to be a thief, even a murderer, he must still be saved, since he was also a saint.
But how contrive matters so that he could stay in the convent? Insuperable though the problem appeared, Fauchelevent refused to be daunted. The humble Picardy peasant, with no other resources than devotion, goodwill, and a store of peasant cunning which must now be made to serve a generous impulse, was steadfast in his resolve to outwit the defences of the convent and scale the rigid barriers of the Rule of St Benedict. Fauchelevent was an old man who all his life had been wholly self-centred but who now, at the end of his days, crippled, infirm and having no further interest in life, took pleasure in his sense of gratitude, and, having the chance to perform a good deed, clutched at it with the eagerness of a dying man offered a glass of some rare vintage which he has never previously tasted. Moreover the air he had breathed during his several years at the convent had so modified his character that a virtuous act of some kind had become for him a necessity.
So he determined to serve Monsieur Madeleine.
We have called him a humble Picardy peasant, and this is a true but incomplete description. We need now to look more closely at Père Fauchelevent. He was a peasant but he had been a law-scrivener, which lent sharp practice to his cunning and astuteness to his simplicity. Having for a variety of reasons failed in his business of scrivener he had sunk to the level of carter and casual labourer; but beneath the oaths and whiplashes inseparable, as it seems, from the handling of horses something of the scrivener still lingered. He had some natural intelligence and his language had become less uncouth than that of the ordinary peasant. He liked to discourse, which is rare among villagers, and people said of him, ‘He talks almost like a gentleman.’ In short Fauchelevent was what an earlier age would have termed half-burgess and half-villein, a mingling of citizen and rustic. Although harshly treated by the world and bearing the marks of this ill-usage, he was still a creature of impulse and spontaneity, qualities which prevent a man from being wholly bad. His faults and vices, such as they had been, were superficial, and in general his appearance was more prepossessing than otherwise. That aged forehead had none of the vertical wrinkles that betoken malice or stupidity.
At daybreak Père Fauchelevent, having deeply cogitated, opened his eyes and looked at Monsieur Madeleine who, seated on his truss of straw, was watching Cosette while she slept. He sat up and said:
‘Well, here you are, but how are we going to arrange for you to be here?’
The question summed up the situation, arousing Jean Valjean from his preoccupations, and the two men took counsel together.
‘To start with,’ said Fauchelevent, ‘you mustn’t set foot outside this cottage, neither you nor the child. One glimpse of either of you in the garden will give us all away.’
‘That is true.’
‘The fact is, Monsieur Madeleine,’ said Fauchelevent, ‘you’ve arrived at a fortunate moment – or unfortunate, I should say. One of the ladies is very ill, said to be dying. The last rites are being performed, the forty-hour prayers, so the whole community has something on its mind and nobody is going to worry about us. A saint is departing this world. Well, of course, we’re all saints here, the difference being that they call their dwellings cells and I call mine a shanty. There are prayers for the dying and prayers for the dead. So that means that for today we shan’t be disturbed, but I can’t answer for tomorrow.’
‘In any case,’ said Jean Valjean, ‘this cottage is tucked away behind some sort of ruin. There are trees. Surely it can’t be seen from the convent?’
‘True, and the nuns never come near it. But there are the children.’
At this point Fauchelevent was interrupted by the single note of a bell. He broke off and signed to Valjean to listen. The bell sounded again.
‘So she’s dead,’ he said. ‘That’s the death-knell. That bell will toll once a minute for the next twenty-four hours, until the body is taken out of the chapel. The children play in the garden. A ball has only to come bouncing this way and they’ll be running after it, looking everywhere, although they know it isn’t allowed. They’re little imps, those children.’
‘What children?’
‘They’d spot you in no time, and you’d have the whole lot squealing, “There’s a man!” But there’s no danger of that today. There’ll be no recreation period, nothing but prayers. Hark to that bell. Every minute, like I said.’
‘I think I understand,’ said Valjean. ‘There’s a boarding-school.’ The thought had instantly crossed his mind that it might be a place for the education of Cosette.
‘Little girls by the dozen,’ said Fauchelevent. ‘They’d run away squealing. A man in this place is like someone with the plague. That’s why I have a bell tied to me, as though I were a wild animal.’
Jean Valjean was now plunged in thought, reflecting that this convent might be their salvation. He said aloud:
‘The problem is to, stay here.’
‘No,’ said Fauchelevent, ‘the problem is to get out.’
Valjean started. ‘To get out?’
‘Yes, Monsieur. If you’re to be admitted you must come from outside. You can’t just be found here like this. For me, you’ve fallen from Heaven, but that’s because I know you. The nuns expect people to come in through the door.’
Another bell now rang, sounding a more elaborate peal.
‘Ah,’ said Fauchelevent. ‘That’s to summon the mothers to the chapter. They always hold a chapter when someones dies. She died at daybreak, like people mostly do. But why can’t you go out the way you came in? I don’t want to ask questions, but how did you get in?’
Jean Valjean had turned pale. The thought of returning to that dreadful street caused him to shudder. It was like escaping from a tiger-infested forest and being advised to go back into it. He pictured the police swarming throughout the quarter, watchers and patrols all over the place, hands everywhere ready to seize him by the collar, with Javert presiding.
‘Impossible,’ he said. ‘Père Fauchelevent, you must assume that I’ve fallen from the skies.’
‘And I’m ready to believe it,’ said Fauchelevent. ‘No need to tell me anything. God picked you up to have a look at you and then let you go again. Only, He made a mistake. He should have put you in a monastery. There’s another bell. That’ll be for the porter to go to the Municipality to report the death, and they’ll send a doctor to confirm it. All part of the ceremony of dying. The ladies don’t like those visits. Doctors don’t believe in anything. They lift up veils, and sometimes other things as well. But they’ve been very quick sending for the doctor this time. I wonder what’s happened. That child of yours is still asleep. What’s her name?’
‘Cosette.’
‘Is she really yours – as it might be, your granddaughter?’
‘Yes.’
‘There’ll be no trouble getting her out of here. There’s a service-door to the outside yard. I knock and the door-keeper opens. It’ll just be old Fauchelevent going out with his gardener’s hod on his back. You’ll have to tell the little girl to keep quiet. She’ll be inside the basket, hidden under a piece of sacking. I’ll take her to a friend of mine, an old woman who keeps a fruit-shop in the Rue du Chemin-Vert. She’s deaf and I’ll have to shout, but I’ll get her to understand that it’s my niece and she’s got to look after her until tomorrow. Then the child can come back here with you. Because I’ll find some way of getting you in. I’ll have to. But how are you going to get out?’
Jean Valjean shook his head.
‘No one must see me, Père Fauchelevent. That is the essential thing. You will have to contrive something like Cosette’s basket and piece of sacking.’
Fauchelevent scratched the lobe of his ear with the middle finger of his left hand, a sign of great perplexity. He was still pondering when the bell again rang.
‘That’ll be the doctor,’ he said. ‘He’ll have a look and say, “She’s dead all right.” After the doctor has stamped the passport to paradise the undertaker sends round a coffin. If it’s a mother, the mothers lay her out; and if it’s a sister the sisters do it. And then I nail her up. That’s part of my duties as gardener. A gardener is always something of a grave-digger. She’s put in a small room by the chapel, with a door giving on to the street, and no man except the doctor is allowed in. Me and the pall-bearers, we don’t count as men. That’s where I nail up the coffin. The pall-bearers take her away, and gee-up, Dobbin, that’s how we go to Heaven. They come with an empty box and take it away with something in it. And that’s a burial. De profundis.’
A ray of sunshine flooding into the room fell upon Cosette’s sleeping face, causing her lips to part as though she were drinking its light. Jean Valjean was gazing at her and no longer listening to Fauchelevent. But the lack of an audience did not deter the old man. He droned tranquilly on.
‘The grave will be in the Cimetière Vaugirard. They say they’re going to do away with that old cemetery. It doesn’t fit in with regulations, it wears uniform and it’s going to be retired. A pity, because it’s convenient. The grave-digger, Père Mestienne, is a friend of mine. The nuns from this convent have a special privilege, they’re allowed to be taken there at nightfall. The Prefect issued a special order. But, lord, what a lot of things have happened since yesterday, Mother Crucifixion dead and Père Madeleine –’
‘Buried alive,’ said Jean Valjean, sadly smiling.
‘Buried alive! Well, so you will be if you’re here for good.’
The bell rang yet again, and this time Fauchelevent hastily took his own bell off its nail and strapped it to his knee.
‘That’s for me. The prioress wants me. There, I’ve gone and pricked myself with the buckle. You wait here, Monsieur Madeleine, and don’t move till I come back. There’s wine and bread and cheese if you’re hungry.’
He went out muttering, ‘I’m coming. I’m coming,’ and Valjean saw him cross the garden as fast as his damaged leg allowed, glancing at his melon-patch as he passed. A few minutes later, having warned the nuns of his passing, he knocked gently on a door and a gentle voice replied, ‘For ever. For ever.’ – that is to say, ‘Come in.’
The door was that of a small room adjoining the chapter-room which was used when the gardener was interviewed in connection with his duties. The prioress, seated on the only chair, was awaiting him.
To appear at once troubled and controlled in moments of crisis is the especial quality of certain characters and certain callings, notably priests and the members of religious communities. This double preoccupation was apparent at the moment of Fauchelevent’s entry in the aspect of the prioress, the charming and erudite and generally cheerful Mlle de Blemeur, Mère Innocente.
The gardener, with a respectful salutation, remained standing in the doorway. The prioress, who was telling her beads, looked up and said, ‘Ah, it’s you, Père Fauvent,’ this being the abbreviation that was commonly used in the convent.
The old man bobbed and touched his forehead again.
‘You sent for me, Reverend Mother.’
‘I’ve something to say to you.’
‘I too,’ said Fauchelevent, with a boldness that secretly terrified him, ‘have something to say to the Very Reverend Mother.’
‘You have something to tell me?’
‘A request.’
‘Well, let me hear it.’
Old Fauchelevent, the one-time scrivener, was a peasant of the calculating kind. A shrewd show of ignorance can be effective; it disarms mistrust and it ensnares. During the period of a little more than two years that he had been in the convent Fauchelevent had become a part of the community. Solitary as he always was, busy about his garden, he had nothing else but curiosity to occupy his mind. The veiled women coming and going at a distance were to him like a fluttering of shadows, but by dint of observation and perspicacity he had endowed them with substance, bringing the spectral figures to life. He was like a deaf man who grows more longsighted or a blind man whose hearing becomes acute. He had learnt to read the code of the bells and had reached the point where nothing was hidden from him in that silent, enigmatic place: the sphinx whispered her secrets in his ear. But knowing everything, Fauchelevent disclosed nothing. That was his especial skill. The convent thought him stupid, a great merit in religion. The mothers esteemed him highly, feeling that he was to be trusted. Moreover he was regular in his habits, never going outside the walls except for the obvious necessities of his garden. His discreet bearing counted greatly in his favour. However, he was in the confidence of two men: the porter, from whom he learned the proceedings of the chapter, and the grave-digger at the cemetery, who told him about the special interment rites. He might be said, in short, to view the nuns in a double light, with one eye on life and the other on death. But he did not abuse his knowledge and was valued accordingly. Old, crippled, seeing nothing and probably hard of hearing – such admirable qualities! It would be difficult to replace him.
And now, in the consciousness of his worth, he embarked at the invitation of the prioress upon a rambling and profound country discourse. He talked at length about age and infirmity, the increasing burden of his years, the size of the garden and the many tasks he had to perform, such as last night, for instance, when he had had to go out and straw the melons under the moon because of the danger of frost; and at length he came to the point, which was that he had a brother (the prioress started), not a young man (the prioress looked reassured) who, if permitted, would come to live with him and assist him, an excellent gardener who would serve the community better than he could himself; failing this, if his brother could hot be accepted, feeling himself to be no longer equal to his task he would be compelled with the utmost regret to leave them. Finally, his brother had a granddaughter whom he wished to bring with him, a little girl who might be brought up under God by the community and who one day – who could tell? – might become a member of it.
When he had finished speaking the prioress ceased telling her beads and said:
‘Would it be possible for you to obtain a stout iron crowbar by this evening?’
‘For what purpose?’
‘For use as a lever.’
‘Yes, Reverend Mother,’ said Fauchelevent.
Without saying any more the prioress rose and went into the next room, which was the chapter-hall, where the chantry mothers were doubtless assembled. Fauchelevent was left alone.
A quarter of an hour elapsed. The prioress returned and resumed her seat. Both speakers seemed preoccupied. We report as exactly as we can the conversation that ensued.
‘Père Fauvent?’
‘Reverend Mother?’
‘You are familiar with the chapel?’
‘I have a small recess where I hear Mass and the Offices.’
‘And you have been in the choir in connection with your work?’
‘Two or three times.’
‘I want a stone to be lifted.’
‘A heavy one?’
‘The flagstone beside the altar.’
‘The stone which closes the vault?’
‘That is a job for two men.’
‘Mère Ascension, who is as strong as a man, will help you.’
‘A woman is not the same as a man.’
‘She’s the only one. We all do what we can. Because Dom Mabillon has given us four hundred and seven epistles of St Bernard, and Merlonus Horstius only three hundred and sixty-seven, I do not for that reason despise Merlonus Horstius.’
‘Nor I, Reverend Mother.’
‘The merit lies in doing our best. A cloister is not a workshop.’
‘Nor is a woman a man. My brother’s very strong.’
‘Besides, you will have your crowbar.’
‘That is the only kind of key for that kind of door.’
‘There’s a ring in the stone.’
‘I’ll slip the bar through it.’
‘And it is set on a pivot.’
‘Very well, Reverend Mother, I’ll open the vault.’
‘The four chantry mothers will be present.’
‘And when the vault has been opened?’
‘It will have to be closed again.’
‘Will that be all?’
‘No.’
‘Tell me what else you want, Most Reverend Mother.’
‘Fauvent, we trust you.’
‘I am here to do your bidding.’
‘And to keep silence.’
‘Yes.’
‘When the vault has been opened –’
‘I’m to close it again.’
‘But first there is something else … ’
‘Yes, Reverend Mother?’
‘Something must be lowered into it.’
There was a moment of silence broken by the prioress after a slight pursing of her lower lip which seemed to denote hesitation.
‘You know, do you not, Père Fauvent, that one of the mothers died this morning?’
‘No.’
‘You didn’t hear the bell?’
‘One hears nothing at the end of the garden.’
‘It’s all I can do to hear my own bell.’
‘She died at daybreak.’
‘And then, the wind wasn’t blowing my way.’
‘It was Mère Crucifixion, of most blessed memory.’
The prioress was again silent while her lips moved as though in prayer. She went on:
‘Three years ago Madame de Béthune, a Jansenist, was converted to orthodoxy, simply from having seen Mère Crucifixion at her devotions.’
‘Ah, now I can hear the death-bell, Reverend Mother.’
‘She has been taken into the mortuary chamber adjoining the chapel.’
‘I know it’
‘No man other than yourself is allowed in that room, or should be allowed in it. Do not forget that. It would be a fine thing if a man were to enter the mortuary chamber!’
‘More often!’
‘What!’
‘More often.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said, more often.’
‘More often than what?’
‘I didn’t say more often than anything, Reverend Mother. I just said, more often.’
‘I don’t understand. Why did you say it?’
‘I was just agreeing with you, Reverend Mother.’
‘But I didn’t say, more often.’
‘I know you didn’t. I said it for you.’
At this moment the clock struck nine.
‘At this hour of nine and at every hour praised and adored be the Holy Sacrament,’ murmured the prioress.
‘Amen,’ said Fauchelevent.
The striking of the hour was fortunate. It put an end to the subject of ‘more often’, a tangle from which the prioress and he might never have extricated themselves. He mopped his forehead.
The prioress murmured a few more words, presumably of a devotional kind, and then resumed.
‘During her lifetime Mère Crucifixion made conversions. Now that she is dead she will perform miracles.’
‘She will perform miracles,’ repeated Fauchelevent, falling into line and hoping not to get out of step.
‘Our community has been greatly blessed in Mère Crucifixion. No doubt it is not given to everyone to die, like Cardinal de Bérulle, speaking the words of the Holy Mass. She did not attain to this happiness, but she died a most precious death. She was conscious to the last. She talked to us and to the angels. She laid upon us her last injunctions. If you possessed a little more faith, Père Fauvent, and had been there in her cell, she would have healed your leg by laying her hand on it. She was smiling. We felt that she was being resurrected in God. Paradise was present at her death.’
‘Amen,’ said Fauchelevent, thinking that this was the conclusion of a prayer. He waited in silence while the prioress told several of her beads.
‘The wishes of the dead, Père Fauvent, must be respected. It is a matter in which I have consulted a number of ecclesiastics, pious men whose lives are given to the work of the Church, and who reap a rich harvest.’
‘You know, Reverend Mother, you can hear the death-bell much better here than in the garden.’
‘Besides, this is something more than a dead woman. She was a saint.’
‘Like yourself, Reverend Mother.’
‘For twenty years she slept in her coffin, having received the express permission of our Holy Father, Pope Pius VII.’
‘The one who crowned the Emp— that is to say, Bonaparte.’
It was a surprising slip on the part of a man as astute as Fauchelevent, but fortunately the prioress, absorbed in her own thoughts, did not hear it. She went on:
‘St Diodore, the Archbishop of Cappadocia, desired to have the single word, Acarus, which means an earthworm, inscribed on his tomb, and this was done. Is that not true?’
‘Yes, Reverend Mother.’
‘The blessed Mezzocane, Abbot of Aquila, desired to be buried under a gallows. This was done.’
‘True.’
‘St Terence, the Bishop of Ostia, at the mouth of the Tiber, desired that his tombstone should be engraved with the symbol denoting a parricide, in the hope that passers-by would spit on it. This was done. The wishes of the dead must be respected.’
‘The body of Bernard Guidonis, who was born in France near Roche-Abeille, was taken on his instructions, and in defiance of the King of Castille, to the Dominican church at Limoges, although Bernard Guidonis had been Bishop of Tuy, in Spain. Can this be denied? It is attested by Plantavit de la Fosse.’
‘Then it must be true, Reverend Mother.’
More beads of the rosary were told.
‘Père Fauvent, Mère Crucifixion will be buried in the coffin in which she slept for twenty years.’
‘Quite right.’
‘It will be a continuance of her sleep.’
‘So that’s the coffin I’m to nail up?’
‘Yes.’
‘And we won’t bother about the one they bring in?’
‘Exactly. The four chantry-mothers will help you.’
‘To nail the coffin? But I don’t need them.’
‘No. To lower it.’
‘To lower it? Where?’
‘Into the vault.’
Fauchelevent started.
‘The vault under the altar? But –’
‘You will have a crowbar –’
‘Yes, but –’
‘The wishes of the dead must be respected. This was Mère Crucifixion’s last wish, that her remains should not be consigned to profane ground, but that she should rest in death where she had prayed in life, under the altar in our chapel. She desired this of us – that is to say, she commanded it.’
‘But it’s forbidden.’
‘Forbidden by man but sanctioned by God.’
‘But what if it became known?’
‘We trust you.’
‘Me, I’m like a stone in the wall, but –’
‘I have consulted with the Mothers of the Chapter, who are now assembled, and we have decided that Mère Crucifixion shall be buried according to her express desire. Think, Père Fauvent, of the miracles that may result from this! Think of the glory to our community under God! Miracles come from tombs.’
‘But, Reverend Mother, if an agent from the Commission of Health –’
‘St Benedict II defied Constantin Pogonat over a matter of burial.’
‘– or the Commissioner of Police –’
‘Chonodemaire, one of the seven German kings who joined the Gauls in the reign of Constantine, expressly acknowledged the right of members of religious orders to be buried in a place of religion, that is to say, under the altar –’
‘– or an inspector from the Prefecture –’
‘The world counts for nothing in the face of religion. Martin, the eleventh general of the Carthusians, gave his order this device: Stat Crux dum volvitur orbis – The Cross will remain while the world revolves.’
‘Amen,’ said Fauchelevent, happy to have his doubts set at rest, as they always were by the sound of Latin.
Any audience will suffice a person who has been too long silent. The orator Gymnastoras, being released from prison with his head stuffed with arguments and syllogisms, stopped at the first tree he came to and harangued it, doing his utmost to convert it to his views. Thus the prioress, normally confined within the barriers of silence and having words heaped up within her, rose to her feet and poured forth a torrent that was like the opening of a sluice-gate.
‘I have Benedict at my right hand and Bernard at my left. Who was Bernard? He was the first Abbot of Clairvaux, and Fontaines in Burgundy is blessed inasmuch as it was his birthplace. His father was called Técelin and his mother was Alethea. He began at Cîteaux and ended at Clairvaux. He was ordained abbot by the Bishop of Châlon-sur-Saône, Guillaume de Champeaux. He instructed seven hundred novices and founded one hundred and sixty monasteries. He defeated Abelard at the Council of Rheims in 1140, and Pierre de Bruys and Henry his disciple, and a flock of black sheep known as the Apostolics. He confounded Arnaud de Bresce, pulverized the monk Raoul, slayer of Jews, dominated the Council of Rheims in 1148, and caused Gilbert de la Porée, Bishop of Poitiers, and Éon de l’Étoile to be condemned. He reconciled the differences of princes, enlightened King Louis the Young, counselled Pope Eugene III, ruled the Temple, preached the Crusade, and during his life performed two hundred and fifty miracles, as many as thirty-nine in a single day. Who was Benedict? He was the patriarch of Monte Cassino, the second founder of a monastic order, the Basil of the west. His order has produced forty popes, two hundred cardinals, fifty patriarchs, sixteen hundred archbishops, four thousand six hundred bishops, four emperors, twelve empresses, forty-six kings, forty-one queens, three thousand six hundred canonized saints, and it has endured for fourteen hundred years. Bernard on one side, and sanitation on the other; Benedict and the Inspector of Roadways! The State, the roads, the undertaker’s parlour, regulations and administration – what have we to do with those things? No onlooker cares for the way we are treated. We have not even the right to consign our dust to the Lord. Your sanitation is a revolutionary invention. God is made subordinate to the Commissioner of Police – that is our present century! Silence, Fauvent!’
Fauchelevent had fidgeted in discomfort under this tirade. The prioress continued:
‘The monasteries’ right of sepulchre is not in doubt, only fanatics and misguided persons deny it. We live in times of terrible confusion. The world is ignorant of things that it should know and knows things that are better unknown. Men are gross and impious. There are people who do not distinguish between the great St Bernard and St Bernard of the Catholic Poor, a worthy cleric who lived in the thirteenth century. Some carry blasphemy to the point of likening the scaffold of Louis XVI to the Cross of Jesus Christ. But Louis XVI was only a king. We must be watchful for God! There are no longer right-minded and wrong-minded men. The name of Voltaire is known, but not the name of César de Bus: yet César de Bus is blessed and Voltaire is accursed. The late archbishop, Cardinal de Périgord, did not even know that Charles de Condren succeeded Bérulle, that François Bourgoin succeeded Condren, Jean-François Senault succeeded Bourgoin and was himself succeeded by the father of St Marthe, all generals of the Oratory. The name of Père Coton is remembered, not because he was one of the three founders of that Order but because he was the subject of an obscene allusion by the Huguenot king, Henri IV. St François de Sales endeared himself to worldly people by cheating at cards. And so they attack religion. Why? Because there have been bad priests, because Sagittaire, the Bishop of Gap, was the brother of Salone, Bishop of Embrun, and both were worshippers of Mammon. What does that matter? Does it alter the fact that Martin de Tours was a saint who gave half his cloak to a poor man? The saints are persecuted, eyes are closed to truth, darkness is the daily wear. The most savage beasts are those that are blind. No one thinks seriously of Hell. Oh, the wickedness of the people! “In the name of the King” means, in these days, “In the name of the Revolution!” No man knows where his duty lies, to the living or to the dead. To die in sanctity is forbidden, burial is a civic matter. That is an outrage! St Léon II wrote two letters, one to Pierre Notaire and the other to the King of the Visigoths, disputing and rejecting the authority of the Exarch and the supremacy of the Emperor in this matter of the burial of the dead, and in the same matter Gautier, Bishop of Châlons, defied Otto, the Duke of Burgundy. The magistrature sustained them. In the old days the Chapter had a voice even in worldly affairs. The Abbé de Cîteaux, general of the Cistercian Order, was a hereditary member of the Parliament of Burgundy. We have always disposed of our dead as we saw fit. Is not the body of St Benedict himself in France, in the Abbaye de Fleury, called Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire, although he died in Italy, at Monte Cassino, in the year 543? All that is incontestable. I abhor schismatics and abominate heretics, but I will detest still more anyone who denies these things. We have only to read the works of Arnoul Wion, Gabriel Bucelin, Trithemus, Maurolicus, and Dom Luc d’Achery.’
The prioress sighed and then turned to Fauchelevent.
‘Père Fauvent, is it agreed?’
‘It is agreed, Reverend Mother.’
‘We may rely upon you?’
‘I shall obey. I am at the service of the convent.’
‘That is well. You will close the coffin and the sisters will carry it into the chapel. The Office for the Dead will be held. Then they will return to the cloister, and between eleven and midnight you will come with your crowbar. Everything will take place in the greatest secrecy. Only the four chantry-mothers will be in the chapel, with Mère Ascension and yourself.’
‘And the sister who is making atonement?’
‘She will not turn her head.’
‘But she’ll hear.’
‘She will not listen. Besides, what is known in the convent is not known to the world outside.’
There was a further pause. The prioress said:
‘You will not wear your bell. There is no need for the sister making atonement to know that you are there.’
‘If you please, Reverend Mother –’
‘Yes?’
‘Has the doctor been?’
‘He will come at four o’clock. The bell has been rung to summon him. But you do not hear the bells?’
‘I only listen for my own.’
‘That is well.’
‘I shall need a crowbar at least six feet long, Reverend Mother.’
‘Where will you get one?’
‘That will not be difficult in a place where there are so many iron bars. I have plenty at the bottom of the garden.’
‘You are to come three-quarters of an hour before midnight. Don’t forget.’
‘Another thing, Reverend Mother.’
‘Well?’
‘If you have any other work of this kind, my brother is exceptionally strong.’
‘You must do it as quickly as you can.’
‘But I can’t work fast. I’m getting old. That’s why I need help. And I limp.’
‘A limp is no sin. It may even be a blessing. The Emperor Henry II, who opposed the antipope Gregorius and restored Benedict VIII, was called by two other names, the Saint and the Cripple.’
‘It’s a great thing to have two,’ murmured Fauchelevent, who was indeed a little hard of hearing.
‘You had better allow a full hour, Père Fauvent. Be near the High Altar with your crowbar at eleven. The service will begin at midnight, and your work must be completed a good quarter-of-an-hour beforehand.’
‘I will do everything in my power to prove my devotion to the community. That is understood. I’ll nail the coffin, and at precisely eleven I shall be in the chapel. The chantry-mothers and Mère Ascension will also be there. Two men would be better still, but no matter, I shall have my crowbar. We will open the vault and lower the coffin and close the vault again. No traces will be left and the Government will suspect nothing. So it is all settled, Reverend Mother?
‘What else is there?’
‘There will be the coffin that is brought in, an empty coffin. What are we to do with that, Père Fauvent?’
There was a pause while both considered this matter.
‘It will be taken out and buried.’
‘Empty?’
Another pause followed, and then Fauchelevent made a gesture dismissing that problem.
‘Reverend Mother, I will nail both coffins. No one is allowed in that room except myself. I will cover the empty one with the pall.’
‘But when the bearers carry it to the hearse, and when it is lowered into the grave, they will know by the weight that there is nothing in it.’
‘The dev—’ burst out Fauchelevent and checked himself as the prioress began to make the sign of the cross with her eyes upon him. He searched hastily for an expedient to cover his lapse.
‘I’ll put earth in the coffin, Reverend Mother – enough to make it feel as though there was a body.’
‘Yes, that will do. Earth and the flesh are one. You will see to it, Père Fauvent?’
‘Most certainly.’
The prioress’s grave and troubled expression gave way to one of reassurance. She made a sign of dismissal, and Fauchelevent turned towards the door. But as he was about to leave the room she said gently:
‘Père Fauvent, I am pleased with you. Tomorrow, after the burial, bring your brother to see me, and tell him to bring his granddaughter.’
The steps of a cripple are like the gropings of the half-blind; they do not quickly reach their destination. Moreover Fauchelevent was thinking. It took him nearly a quarter of an hour to return to the cottage. Cosette was awake and Jean Valjean had seated her by the fire. At the moment when Fauchelevent entered he was pointing to the gardener’s hod hanging on the wall and saying:
‘Listen carefully, my love. We have got to leave this place, but we shall come back here and be happy. The gardener will carry you out on his back in that basket. He will take you to a place where a lady will look after you until I come to fetch you. You must be very good and not say a word if you do not want Mme Thénardier to catch you.’
Cosette nodded gravely.
Valjean looked round at Fauchelevent.
‘Well?’
‘Everything’s arranged and nothing is. I’ve got leave to take you to the prioress, but before I can bring you in you’ve got to go out. That’s where the trouble lies. The child’s easy enough provided she’ll keep quiet.’
‘I can answer for that.’
‘But what about you, Père Madeleine?’ Fauchelevent waited hopefully for an answer and finally burst out: ‘Why on earth can’t you go out the way you got in?’
Jean Valjean simply replied as he had done before:
‘Impossible.’
‘But in that case, how the dev— how the deuce are we to get you out?’ Fauchelevent sat muttering, half to himself. ‘There’s another thing that worries me. I said I’d put earth in it, but that won’t do. If it’s packed tight it’ll be too heavy, and if it’s loose it’ll shift about, it won’t feel like a body. They’ll suspect something.’
Valjean was staring at him, unable to follow any of this. The old man went on to explain the situation, the resolve of the Chapter that the dead nun should be interred in the chapel vault according to her wish and in defiance of regulations, the part which he was to play in the affair and the stratagem whereby he would present Valjean to the prioress as his brother and Cosette as his niece. But there remained this problem of the empty coffin.
‘What coffin are you talking about?’ asked Valjean.
‘The municipal coffin. The doctor reports that a nun has died and the Municipality sends round a coffin, and the next day the pallbearers come with a hearse and take her off to the cemetery. But if they lift an empty coffin they’ll know there’s nothing in it.’
‘Then you must put something in it.’
‘Another dead body? I haven’t got one.’
‘A living body.’
‘What do you mean?’
Fauchelevent, who was seated, rose up from his chair as though a fire-cracker had exploded beneath it.
‘You!’
‘Why not?’ Valjean smiled one of his rare smiles which were like sunshine breaking through a winter’s sky. ‘When you told me that Mère Crucifixion had died I said, if you remember, that Père Madeleine was buried alive. That is what it will be.’
‘In fact, you’re just joking. You aren’t serious.’
‘But indeed I am. We are agreed that I must get out of here unseen. I said that you would have to find the equivalent of a hod and a piece of sacking. And there it is. The hod will be of pine and the sacking will be a black pall.’
‘White. The nuns are always buried in white.’
‘Well then, white.’
‘You’re no ordinary man, Père Madeleine.’
It was a device typical of the wild and foolhardy contrivances of prison inmates, but seeing it against the background of the disciplined and peaceful life of the convent Fauchelevent was as filled with amazement as if he had seen a heron fishing in the gutter in the Rue Saint-Denis.
‘I have got to get out without being seen,’ said Jean Valjean, ‘and this is a way of doing it. But what happens exactly? Where will this empty coffin be?’
‘In what is called the mortuary chamber, resting on trestles with a pall over it.’
‘How long will it be?’
‘Six feet.’
‘Tell me about the mortuary chamber.’
‘It’s on the ground floor, with a barred window on to the garden, closed by shutters on the outside, and two doors, one to the chapel and the other to the street.’
‘Have you the key to both doors?’
‘No, only to the convent door. The porter has the other.’
‘When does he unlock it?’
‘Only to admit the pall-bearers to take away the coffin. When this has been done the door locked again.’
‘Who nails the coffin?’
‘I do.’
‘And you cover it with the pall?’
‘Will you be alone?’
‘Yes. Except for the police doctor and the pall-bearers, no other man is allowed in the mortuary chamber. It’s written on the wall.’
‘Can you hide me in the chamber some time during the night when everyone’s asleep?’
‘Not in the chamber itself. But there’s a closet where I keep my burial tools. I have a key to that.’
‘What time will the hearse come tomorrow?’
‘At about three in the afternoon. The body will be buried a little before nightfall in the Cimetière Vaugirard. It’s some distance away.’
‘So I shall have to hide all night and all tomorrow morning in your closet. I shall need food.’
‘I can bring you some.’
‘And you can nail me in the coffin at two.’
Fauchelevent sat back, cracking his finger-joints.
‘It’s impossible.’
‘Nonsense. What is so difficult about putting a few nails in a coffin?’
What to Fauchelevent appeared inconceivable appeared to Valjean a simple matter. He had known worse things. Whoever has served a long prison sentence has learned the art of adapting his body to the means of escape. Flight, to the prisoner, is like the crisis in a grave illness that either kills or cures. A successful escape is a cure, and what will a man not do to be cured? To be carted away in a nailed box and kept in it for some hours husbanding one’s breath, half-suffocating but not dying, all this was well within the dark powers of Jean Valjean. Indeed, the convict’s expedient of a living man in a coffin has been used even by emperors. If we are to believe the monk Austin Castillejo, it was the means whereby Charles V, wishing to pay a last visit to La Plombe after his abdication, was taken into the Monastery of Saint-Just and out again.
Recovering his wits, Fauchelevent cried:
‘But how are you to breathe? The thought appals me.’
‘You have a brace-and-bit, I suppose, or a gimlet. You must bore a few small holes in the lid over my mouth. And you need not nail the lid too tightly.’
‘All right. But what if you cough or sneeze?’
‘An escaping prisoner does not cough or sneeze. We must make up our minds to it, Père Fauchelevent,’ said Valjean. ‘I must either be caught here or go out on that hearse.’
We all know the habit of cats of hesitating in an open doorway. Which of us has not said to a cat, ‘Well, come in if you want to?’ There are men who, in moments when a decision is called for, hover uncertainly like the cat, at the risk of being crushed by the closing of the door. These cautious spirits may run greater risks than those who are more daring. Fauchelevent was by nature one of them, but Valjean’s imperturbability was too much for him. He muttered:
‘Well, I suppose so. There’s no other way.’
‘What worries me,’ said Valjean, ‘is what will happen at the cemetery.’
‘Well, at least that’s no problem,’ said Fauchelevent. ‘If you can survive the coffin I can get you out of the grave. The grave-digger’s an old wine-bibber of my acquaintance, Père Mestienne, a real soak. He’ll be easy to handle. I can tell you what will happen. We’ll get there just before dusk, three-quarters of an hour before the cemetery closes. The hearse takes you right to the grave with me walking behind, that being part of my job. I’ll have a few tools in my pocket. They put a rope round the coffin and lower it into the grave, the priest says a few prayers, sprinkles holy water, makes the sign of the cross and then off they go, leaving me and Père Mestienne on our own, we’re friends, you see. Well, perhaps he’s drunk already, or perhaps he isn’t. If he isn’t I say to him, “Come and have a glass while the Bon Coing is still open.” I get him properly soused, which won’t take long because he’s always halfway there; I leave him under the table and borrow his pass to the cemetery and come back alone. Or if he’s drunk enough already I say, “You go on home and I’ll do the job for you.” Either way there’ll be only me and I’ll soon have you out of the grave.’
Jean Valjean reached out his hand and Fauchelevent clasped it with a touching display of peasant devotion.
‘Then that is settled, Père Fauchelevent. We shall have no trouble.’
‘Provided nothing goes wrong,’ reflected Fauchelevent. ‘But oh my Lord, if it does!’
On the following afternoon the rare pedestrians on the Boulevard du Maine removed their hats at the passing of an old-style hearse ornamented with skulls, crossbones, and falling tears. The coffin on the hearse was draped in a white pall embroidered with a black cross so large that it resembled a dead man with his arms hanging. It was followed by a draped carriage in which were a priest in his surplice and a choir-boy wearing a red cap. Two pall-bearers in uniforms of grey with black trimmings walked on either side of the hearse, and behind the carriage walked an old man with a limp, from the pocket of whose workman’s overall there protruded the handle of a hammer, the blade of a chisel, and the double grip of a pair of pincers.
The procession was making for the Cimetière Vaugirard, which was exceptional among Paris cemeteries in that it had its own customs, besides having a main gateway and a smaller gate, known to the older inhabitants of the quarter who clung to old forms, as the carriage-gate and the foot-gate. As we have said, the Bernardine-Benedictines of the Petit-Picpus had secured the right to be buried in their own corner and at nightfall, the land having formerly belonged to their community. The grave-diggers, being thus obliged to work in the evening, and by darkness in winter, were required to observe special rules. At that time the Paris cemeteries closed at sundown, and the Cimetière Vaugirard had to conform to this regulation like the rest. The carriage-gate and the foot-gate stood side by side, and adjoining them was a small lodge, designed by the architect Perronet, which was the dwelling of the cemetery-keeper. Both wrought-iron gates were closed directly the sun sank behind the dome of the Invalides. If a grave-digger was still in the cemetery he could only get out by means of the special pass issued to him by the Municipality. There was a sort of letter-box in one of the shutters of the keeper’s lodge. He thrust his card through this, and the keeper, hearing it drop, pulled the cord that opened the foot-gate. If he had forgotten to bring his card he shouted his name, and the keeper, who was sometimes in bed and asleep, got up and after identifying him opened the gate with his key. In this event the grave-digger paid a fine of fifteen francs.
These singularities, so jarring to administrative susceptibilities, brought about the official closing of the cemetery soon after 1830. It was succeeded by the Cimetière de Montparnasse, known as the Eastern Cemetery, but was in some sort perpetuated by the celebrated wine-house Au Bon Coing, of which the sign was a painting of a quince, and which stood on the fringe of the cemetery, with tables on one side and tombstones on the other.
At the time of which we write the Cimetière Vaugirard was already falling into disuse. Moss was invading it, and its flowers were vanishing. Respectable citizens had little desire to be buried there; it had a smell of pauperdom. Père-Lachaise, for example, was quite another matter; it was like mahogany furniture, a symbol of elegance. Vaugirard was an ancient enclosure laid out like an old French garden, with straight paths flanked by box and juniper and holly, old tombs under old yews and long grass.
The sun had still not set when the hearse and carriage entered the avenue leading to the cemetery gate, with Fauchelevent limping behind them. Fauchelevent was in a state of high delight. Everything had gone according to plan, the interment of Mère Crucifixion in the vault under the altar, the removal of Cosette, the introduction of Jean Valjean into the mortuary chamber and then into the empty coffin. The two conspiracies in which he had been involved, one with the nuns and the other with Monsieur Madeleine, one at the bidding of the convent and the other unknown to it, had both been carried through without a hitch. Valjean’s massive calm was infectious. Fauchelevent no longer doubted their complete success. What remained to be done was trifling. He had helped the rubicund Père Mestienne, the grave-digger, to get drunk a dozen times in the past two years. He had Père Mestienne in his pocket; he could do what he liked with him, make him dance to whatever tune he chose. Fauchelevent had no misgivings. As they approached the gates he rubbed his big hands together, muttering, ‘What a lark!’
The procession pulled up at the gates, where the burial-permit had to be shown. During the brief colloquy which ensued between the chief pall-bearer, representing the Municipality, and the keeper, a stranger joined the party, taking his place beside Fauchelevent. He was some sort of workman, clad in a smock with large pockets and carrying a pickaxe under his arm.
Fauchelevent looked at him in some surprise and asked:
The man replied: ‘I’m the grave-digger.’
The effect on Fauchelevent was as though he had been hit by a cannon-ball.
‘The grave-digger!’
‘That’s right.”
‘But – but Père Mestienne is the grave-digger.’
‘Used to be.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He’s dead.’
Fauchelevent had been prepared for anything except this, that a grave-digger should die. Yet the thing does happen, even grave-diggers die in the end. In digging the graves of others they prepare the way for their own.
Fauchelevent stared open-mouthed, finding scarcely the strength to stammer:
‘It’s impossible!’
‘It’s a fact.’
‘But,’ said Fauchelevent weakly, ‘Père Mestienne has always been the grave-digger.’
‘Not any more. After Napoleon, Louis XVIII. After Mestienne, Gribier. My name is Gribier.’
Fauchelevent gazed wanly at this Gribier. He was a tall, thin, sallow man with a face of flawless solemnity. He looked like a failed doctor who had taken up grave-digging. Fauchelevent burst out laughing.
‘The things that happen! So Mestienne is dead, poor old Père Mestienne! But Père Lenoir is still alive. Do you know Père Lenoir? – the jug of wine on the counter, the flagon of good red Paris wine. Père Mestienne is dead and I grieve for him. He enjoyed life. But you too, comrade, you enjoy life. Don’t you? We must have a glass together in a little while.’
The man replied: ‘I’ve had schooling. I reached the fourth grade. I don’t drink.’
The procession was again in motion, moving along the main avenue of the cemetery. Fauchelevent had fallen a little behind, limping as much from agitation as from infirmity. He was again examining the unexpected Gribier, who was one of those men who look old while still young and although slight of build are very strong.
‘Comrade,’ he said, and Gribier turned to look at him. ‘I’m the grave-digger from the convent.’
‘We are colleagues,’ said Gribier.
Fauchelevent, untutored but very shrewd, had realized by now that he had a formidable character to deal with, a man of eloquence.
‘So Père Mestienne is dead,’ he murmured.
‘Precisely. The good God consulted his files and found that it was the turn of Père Mestienne. He is quite dead.’
‘The good God …’ Fauchelevent repeated mechanically.
‘The good God,’ Gribier said with authority. ‘To philosophers the Eternal Father, and to the Jacobins the Supreme Being.’
‘But aren’t we to get acquainted?’ stammered Fauchelevent.
‘We already know each other. You are a countryman and I am a Parisian.’
‘You don’t get to know a man until you’ve drunk with him. In emptying your glass you empty your heart. We must have a drink together. You can’t refuse.’
‘We must first attend to our business.’
Fauchelevent thought: ‘I’m done for.’
They were now near the narrower pathway leading to the plot reserved for the nuns. Gribier said:
‘Countryman, I have seven kids to feed. If they’re to eat, I can’t afford to drink.’ He added with the impressiveness of a man who enjoys turning a phrase. ‘Their hunger is the enemy of my thirst.’
The procession, rounding a clump of cypresses, was now on the narrower path. Its muddy state, following the winter rains, obliged the hearse to move more slowly. Fauchelevent drew closer to Gribier.
‘There’s a very good little Argenteuil wine …’ he murmured.
‘You must understand, villager,’ said Gribier, ‘that I should not by rights be a grave-digger. My father, who was a clerk, destined me for literature. But he had misfortunes. He lost money on the Bourse. I had to give up authorship. But I am still a public writer.’
‘In fact, not really a grave-digger,’ said Fauchevelent, grasping at this straw.
‘The one does not interfere with the other. I’m a pluralist.’
This last word was beyond Fauchelevent. ‘We must have a drink,’ he repeated.
And here an observation is necessary. Fauchelevent had proposed a drink, but despite his anguished state he had failed to specify one particular, namely, who was to pay for it. In his dealings with Père Mestienne it was he who had proposed and the latter who had paid. Clearly in the changed circumstances an explicit offer should have been made, but the old peasant had instinctively left this matter – the proverbial moment of darkness, as Rabelais has called it – in suspense, the truth being that regardless of his terrors he did not at all wish to pay.
Gribier continued with a lofty smile:
‘One has to eat. I agreed to take over the duties of Père Mestienne. When one has nearly completed one’s studies one is a philosopher. I supplement the labour of the pen with the labour of the hand. I have my writer’s stall in the market on the Rue de Sèvres – do you know it, the Marché aux Parapluies? All the kitchen-maids in the Croix-Rouge quarter come to me and I run up effusions for their sweethearts. In the morning I write love-letters and in the afternoon I dig graves. Such is life, countryman.’
The hearse ploughed on and Fauchelevent gazed distractedly about him with beads of sweat gathering on his forehead.
‘However,’ said Gribier, ‘one cannot serve two mistresses. I shall have to choose between the pen and the shovel. The shovel blisters my hands.’
The procession came to a halt. The choir-boy got out of the carriage followed by the priest. One of the small front wheels of the hearse had risen slightly on a mound of earth beyond which was an open grave.
‘What a lark!’ repeated Fauchelevent in consternation.
Jean Valjean had so arranged himself in the coffin that he could breathe just enough. It is wonderful how far ease of mind may promote a sense of security. His plan was going well and had done so from the start. Like Fauchelevent he counted on Père Mestienne and he had no doubt of the outcome. Never had a more critical situation been met with more perfect calm.
The four walls of the coffin exuded a kind of terrible peace, as though Valjean’s tranquillity partook in some sort of the repose of the dead. From within his confinement he could follow every stage of the tense drama in which his adversary was Death.
Shortly after Fauchelevent had nailed down the coffin-lid he had felt himself lifted up and then borne on wheels. The diminished jolting had told him when they had left the cobbles of the back streets and were on the smoother surface of the boulevards, and from the echo he had known when they were crossing the Pont d’Austerlitz. He had realized when they stopped for the first time that they were entering the cemetery, and when they stopped again he said to himself, ‘We’ve reached the graveside.’ The coffin jerked abruptly and there were scraping sounds which he guessed were made by ropes being passed round it. Suddenly he felt that he was standing on his head. The bearers and the grave-digger had failed to keep the coffin level and were lowering it head foremost into the grave. His momentary dizziness passed when he was motionless and again horizontal and knew that he was lying on the bottom.
He had a sensation of chill. A cool and solemn voice was raised above him intoning words of Latin which he could not understand, but uttering them so slowly and meticulously that he could distinguish every one.
‘Qui dormiunt in terrae pulvere, evigilabunt; alii in vitam aeternam, et alii in opprobrium, ut videant semper.’
A boy’s voice chanted:
‘De profundis.’
The first voice said:
‘Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine e. ’
The boy replied:
‘Et lux perpetua luceat ei.’
He heard what was like the sound of rain pattering on the lid of the coffin and knew that it was holy water. He thought: ‘This will soon be over. A little patience. The priest will leave and Fauchelevent will take Mestienne off for a drink. Then he’ll come back and let me out. An hour at the outside.’
The voice intoned, ‘Requiescat in pace’, and the boy replied, ‘Amen.’
Jean Valjean, intently listening, presently heard the sound of departing footsteps. ‘They’re going away,’ he thought. ‘I’m alone.’
But then there was a sound above his head that was like the thunder of an avalanche. It was made by a spadeful of earth falling on the coffin-lid.
A second followed it and a third. The holes through which he breathed were being covered over.
There are things too strong for even the strongest man. Jean Valjean fainted.
The following scene had been enacted at the graveside.
When the hearse had left, followed by the priest and the choirboy in the carriage, Fauchelevent, who had never taken his eyes off Gribier, saw him reach for his shovel, which was standing upright in the mound of earth. Fauchelevent then made the supreme sacrifice. Thrusting himself between the grave and the grave-digger, he folded his arms and said:
‘I’ll pay.’
Gribier looked at him in astonishment.
‘What was that?’
‘I said, I’ll pay.’
‘Pay what?’
‘The wine.’
‘What wine?’
‘The Argenteuil.’
‘Where is it, this Argenteuil?’
‘At the Bon Coing.’
‘Oh, go to the devil!’ said Gribier, and tossed a spadeful of earth on the coffin.
The coffin gave back a hollow sound. Fauchelevent was now tottering on his feet, ready to fall into the grave himself. He cried in a strangled voice that was half a groan:
‘But, comrade, before the Bon Coing closes!’
Ignoring this, Gribier drove his shovel into the mound of earth. Fauchelevent said again, ‘I’m paying,’ and clutched him by the arm. ‘Listen, comrade, I’m the convent grave-digger and I’ve come to help you. But this is a job that can be done after dark. We should start by having a drink.’ He clung to him despairingly, tormented by the thought, ‘But even if we do have a drink, can I get him drunk?’
‘Well, countryman,’ said Gribier, ‘all right, I’ll have a drink with you, if you insist. But after the work is done, not before.’
He bent over his spade while Fauchelevent still sought to restrain him.
‘But it’s real Argenteuil, at six sous the carafe.’
‘You’re like a bell-ringer,’ said Gribier. ‘Ding-dong, ding-dong – always the same tune. Go away and leave me alone.’
He shovelled in the second spadeful of earth. Fauchelevent had now reached a state where he no longer knew what he was saying.
‘But a drink – a drink! I’ve said I’ll pay.’
‘When we’ve put the baby to bed,’ said Gribier, and down went the third spadeful. ‘It’s going to be cold tonight. We’d have the dead woman after us if we didn’t cover her up properly.’
At this moment, as he was about to throw in the fourth spadeful, Fauchelevent’s distracted gaze noted something. Gribier’s side-pocket had gaped open as he was bending forward, and the old man had a glimpse of something white inside. As much light of inspiration as a Picardy peasant is capable of gleamed in Fauchelevent’s eye. While Gribier was still bowed over his shovel he slipped a hand into the open pocket and deftly removed the contents.
The fourth spadeful went in, and Fauchelevent then said in a voice of the utmost calm:
‘By the way, newcomer, have you got your card?’
Gribier turned to look at him.
‘What card?’
‘It’s nearly sunset.’
‘So the sun will have to put on his night-cap.’
‘The gates will be shut.’
‘And so?’
‘So have you got your card?’
‘Oh, that card.’ Gribier felt in his pocket. He then felt in his other pocket, in every part of his garments. ‘It seems I must have forgotten it.’
‘Fifteen francs fine,’ said Fauchelevent.
Gribier turned green, green being the pallor of sallow-faced men.
‘May all the saints preserve us! Fifteen francs!’
‘Three hundred-sou pieces.’
Gribier dropped his shovel.
This was Fauchelevent’s moment.
‘Come, come,’ he said soothingly. ‘No need to despair. No need to commit suicide and fill another grave. Fifteen francs is fifteen francs and I don’t suppose you can afford it. But I’m an old hand. I know all the ins and outs. I’ll tell you what you can do. One thing is certain, the sun’s nearly set, it’s touching the Invalides. The gates will be shut in five minutes.’
‘That’s true.’
‘This is a good deep grave. You haven’t time to fill it in and get out before they close.’
‘True enough.’
‘In which case, fifteen francs fine.’
‘Fifteen francs.’
‘But you’ve still got time to get out – where do you live?’
‘Near the barrier, 87 Rue de Vaugirard. Fifteen minutes walk.’
‘Well, you’ve still got time to get out if you go at once and hurry. You run along home and get your card, and the keeper will let you back in again and nothing to pay. So then you fill in the grave. Meanwhile I’ll stay here and keep watch over the dead to make sure they don’t get away.’
‘That’s very good of you, countryman.’
‘Then off you go,’ said Fauchelevent.
Gribier departed at a run and vanished behind the cypresses. Fauchelevent waited until the sound of his footsteps had died away, then bent over the grave and called:
‘Père Madeleine!’
There was no reply.
Fauchelevent shivered. Tumbling rather than climbing down into the grave, he cried with his lips close to the head of the coffin:
‘Are you there?’
Silence.
Trembling so much that he could scarcely breathe, Fauchelevent used his chisel and hammer to lever up the lid. The face of Jean Valjean shone whitely in the dusk, the eyes were closed.
Fauchelevent’s hair rose on his head. He straightened himself and sagged weakly against the side of the grave, almost collapsing over the coffin. Jean Valjean lay motionless. He gazed down at him and murmured, ‘He’s dead!’ Then he beat his breast with his clenched fists and cried, ‘So this is how I save him!’
The poor old man burst into tears, talking aloud as he wept. It is a mistake to suppose that the monologue is unnatural. Strong emotion needs to find a voice.
‘All because of Père Mestienne! Why did the old fool have to die just when no one expected it? He’s responsible for this, and here’s Père Madeleine in his grave and nothing to be done. Where’s the sense in that? He’s dead, he’s dead, and what about the little girl, what am I to do with her and what’s the woman in the fruit-shop going to say? That a man like him should die like this – how can one believe in God? When I think of how he got me out from under my cart! Père Madeleine! He must have suffocated. I was afraid of it but he wouldn’t believe me. A dirty trick for fate to play! He’s dead, the best man that ever walked this earth. And there’s die child. Well, I’m not going back to the convent, that’s for sure, not after this. I’ll stay with him. Two old men together, two crazy old men. But how did he get in in the first place? How did it all start? One shouldn’t do these things. Père Madeleine! Monsieur le maire! But he can’t hear. He can’t get us out of this one!’ And Fauchelevent tore his hair.
A distant sound of squeaking from beyond the trees told him that the cemetery gates were being closed.
He bent down again over Jean Valjean, and suddenly he started back, recoiling as far as the narrow walls of the grave would allow. Valjean’s eyes were open and he was looking up at him.
The sight of death is terrible, but the sight of resurrection is scarcely less so. Fauchelevent was for a moment turned to stone, his face pale and drawn, not knowing whether he had to do with the living or the dead.
‘I fell asleep,’ said Jean Valjean and sat up.
‘Holy Mother of Heaven!’ cried Fauchelevent. ‘How you frightened me!’
Rapture is the reflex of terror. He had nearly as much difficulty in recovering his wits as had Valjean.
‘You’re not dead after all! The strength there is in your spirit! I called and called to you and you came back. When I saw you there with your eyes shut I thought, that’s it! He’s suffocated! I was ready to go raving mad, fit for a strait-jacket. What would I have done if you’d been dead? What would that woman have thought of the little girl, a child dropped in her lap and the grandfather dead? Saints preserve us, what a story! And all the time you were alive!’
‘I’m cold,’ said Jean Valjean.
The words brought Fauchelevent back to earth and to the urgency of their situation. Although they were now in their right mind, both men were troubled by the desolate atmosphere of that place.
‘Let’s get out of here quickly,’ Fauchelevent said. ‘But first a drop of something.’ And he got out the flask he had brought with him.
The flask completed what the fresh air had begun. After a gulp of eau-de-vie Valjean was himself again. He got out of the coffin and helped Fauchelevent to re-nail the lid; a minute later both men were standing beside the grave.
Fauchelevent’s calm was now restored. They could take their time. The cemetery was closed and there was nothing to fear from Gribier, who must now be at home searching vainly for the card in Fauchelevent’s pocket, without which he could not get in again. The old man took the spade and Valjean took the pick, and together they buried the empty coffin. When the grave was filled in he said:
‘Now let’s be off. I’ll keep the shovel and you carry the pick.’
It was nearly dark.
Valjean had a slight difficulty in walking, confinement in the coffin having made him something near to a corpse. The rigidity of death had assailed him within those narrow walls; he had to shake off the chill of the grave.
‘You’re stiff,’ said Fauchelevent. ‘It’s a pity I’m bow-legged. Otherwise we’d run.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll soon be in working order.’
They went back by the way the hearse had come. When they reached the gates and the keeper’s lodge Fauchelevent dropped the grave-digger’s card through the letter-box, the keeper pulled the cord, the foot-gate opened and they went out.
‘How well it has all gone off,’ said Fauchelevent. ‘That was an excellent idea of yours, Père Madeleine.’
They passed through the Vaugirard barrier without the least trouble. In the neighbourhood of a cemetery a pick and shovel are a passport in themselves. The Rue de Vaugirard was deserted.
‘Père Madeleine,’ said Fauchelevent, studying the housefronts, ‘your eyes are better than mine. Tell me when we get to No. 87.’
‘We’ve just come to it,’ said Valjean.
‘There’s no one about,’ said Fauchelevent ‘Give me the pick and wait here a couple of minutes.’
He went into No. 87 and, guided by the instinct which takes a poor man to the attics, climbed to the top floor, where he knocked on a door. Gribier’s voice called to him to come in.
Fauchelevent entered. The grave-digger’s home was like all dwellings of the needy, a place of sparse and congested squalor. A packing-case, or it may have been a coffin, was used as a cupboard, a pail held the water-supply, a straw mattress served as a bed, and the floor took the place of table and chairs. Seated in a corner on a worn strip of carpet was a thin-faced woman surrounded by a huddle of children. The wretched place bore signs of a recent upheaval, as though it had been visited by its own private earthquake. Coverings had been stripped off, tattered garments scattered, a jug had been broken, the woman had been crying and the children had probably been beaten. It was evident that the grave-digger had been searching frantically for his card and blaming everyone for its loss. He had a look of desperation.
But Fauchelevent was too anxious to proclaim the happy ending to pay much attention to the regrettable aspects of his triumph. He marched in saying:
‘I’ve brought back your pick and shovel.’
Gribier was staring at him in astonishment.
‘It’s you, countryman!’
‘And you’ll find your card at the keeper’s lodge.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Gribier.
‘Simple enough. The card must have fallen out of your pocket. I picked it up after you’d left. And then I filled in the grave. I’ve done the job for you, the keeper will give you back your card and you won’t have to pay the fifteen francs. That’s all.’
‘Thank you, thank you, countryman!’ cried Gribier, clasping him warmly by the hand. ‘I’ll pay for drinks next time.’
An hour later, when it was quite dark, the two men, with Cosette, knocked at the door of No. 62, Petite Rue Picpus.
They had fetched Cosette from the fruit-shop in the Rue du Chemin-Vert where Fauchelevent had taken her the evening before. Cosette had passed those twenty-four hours in a state of terrified bewilderment, understanding nothing and trembling so much that she had not once cried. Nor had she eaten or slept. The good-hearted woman of the shop had asked her countless questions to which the only reply was a mute, mournful stare. Cosette had told her nothing at all of what she had seen or heard during the past two days. She realized that something terrible had happened and was profoundly conscious of the need to ‘be good’. Who does not know the effect of those words spoken in a certain tone of voice into a small, frightened ear? ‘You mustn’t say a word!’ Fear is a deaf-mute. Moreover, no one can keep a secret better than a child. But when, after those miserable twenty-four hours, Jean Valjean returned to her, she welcomed him with such a cry of delight that any discerning person might have guessed the state she had been in.
Thus the twofold problem had been solved, of getting Valjean out of the convent and bringing him back again. The porter, who had his orders, unlocked the small service door leading from the outer yard to the garden, which twenty years ago was still to be seen from the street, in the wall facing the main door. They went through and made their way to the small inner parlour where on the previous day Fauchelevent had received his instructions from the prioress.
She was seated, rosary in hand, with the veiled figure of one of the chantry-mothers standing beside her. A single taper lighted the parlour, or made a pretence of lighting it.
The prioress examined Jean Valjean. Nothing is more penetrating than the gaze of a downcast eye. She asked:
‘You are the brother?’
‘Yes, Reverend Mother,’ replied Fauchelevent.
‘What is your name?’
Again it was Fauchelevent who replied.
‘Ultime Fauchelevent.’ He had had a brother of that name who had died.
‘Where do you come from?’
Fauchelevent replied:
‘From Picquigny, near Amiens.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Fifty.’
‘And what is your trade?’
‘Gardener.’
‘Are you a good Christian?’
‘All the family are good Christians.’
‘This child belongs to you?’
‘Yes, Reverend Mother.’
‘You are her father?’
‘Her grandfather.’
The chantry-mother murmured to the prioress:
In fact, Jean Valjean had not spoken a word.
The prioress was looking attentively at Cosette. She murmured to the chantry-mother:
‘She’ll be plain.’
The two women conferred softly for some minutes in the corner of the room. Then the prioress turned to Fauchelevent and said:
‘Père Fauvent, you will have to get another knee-strap and bell. We shall now need two.’
So next morning two bells were to be heard tinkling in the garden, and the nuns could not resist the temptation to lift a corner of their veils. They saw two men working side by side under the trees. It was a tremendous happening, and a whisper broke the silence, ‘There’s an assistant-gardener.’ To which the chantry-mothers added: ‘He’s the brother of Père Fauvent.’
In short, Jean Valjean with his knee-strap and bell was now installed as a recognized member of the establishment under the name of Ultime Fauchelevent.
What had principally decided the matter was the prioress’s remark about Cosette, ‘She will be plain.’ Having reached this conclusion she took an instant liking to the little girl and made a place for her as a charity pupil in the school. And this was entirely logical. There may be no mirrors in a convent, but every woman is conscious of her appearance. The girl who knows herself to be pretty is less likely to become a nun, the sense of vocation varying inversely with the degree of beauty. So the plain ones are much preferred.
The affair greatly enhanced the standing of old Fauchelevent, who indeed had achieved a threefold success – with Jean Valjean, whom he had rescued and sheltered, with Gribier, who believed that he had saved him a fine, and with the convent, which thanks to him had defied Caesar in the service of God. There was now an occupied coffin in the Petit-Picpus vault and an empty one in the Cimetière Vaugirard, a breach of regulations which would have outraged Public Order had Public Order known about it. The convent’s sense of obligation to Fauchelevent was great; he became the best of servants and the most treasured of gardeners. On the archbishop’s next visit the prioress told his Grace the story, making it partly a confession and partly a boast. The archbishop related it, with approval but in confidence, to M. de Latil, confessor to Monsieur, the king’s brother. Indeed Fauchelevent’s renown travelled as far as Rome. We have ourselves seen a letter written by the reigning pope, Leo XII, to one of his relatives, then serving under the papal nuncio in Paris, in which his Holiness says: ‘It seems that in one of the Paris convents there is a most excellent gardener named Fauvan, a saintly man.’ But none of this reached Fauchelevent in his cottage. He continued to hoe and graft and straw his melons in ignorance of his excellence and saintliness, no more conscious of fame than the pedigree bull whose picture appears in the Illustrated London News with the legend, ‘Prize-winner at the Cattle Show’.
Cosette in the convent continued to keep silent. She thought of herself, very naturally, as Jean Valjean’s child. Knowing no more than this, there was no more for her to say. But in any event she would have said nothing. Nothing makes a child more secretive than unhappiness, and she had suffered so much that she was afraid of everything, of talking and almost of breathing. An incautious word had so often brought down an avalanche on her head! The time she had been with Valjean had not been long enough to give her a complete sense of security, but she quickly adapted herself to the convent. Her only regret was that she no longer had Catherine. This was something that she could not mention, although she did once say to Valjean, ‘If I’d known I’d have brought her with me.’
As a pupil she had to wear the school uniform. Jean Valjean kept the clothes she discarded, the mourning garments he had brought her when he took her away from the Thénardiers, and which were still comparatively new. He packed them, the black dress, the woollen stockings and the shoes, together with a great deal of camphor and the other aromatics so plentiful in convents, in a small valise that he managed to procure, and this he kept on a chair by his bed, with the key always in his pocket. Cosette once asked him: ‘Father, what is in that box that smells so nice?’
Old Fauchelevent, unconscious though he remained of his celebrity, was well rewarded for his good deed: in the first place, because it gave him great satisfaction; secondly because he had much less work to do; and thirdly because he was able to smoke three times as much as in the past, and with a particular relish, since it was Monsieur Madeleine who paid for the tobacco. But the nuns never adopted the name ‘Ultime’; they referred to Valjean as ‘the other Fauvent’.
Had those saintly ladies possessed the acuity of a Javert they might have been struck by the fact that whenever there was any errand to be run, outside the convent walls, it was always the old, crippled Fauvent who went, and never his brother. But, perhaps because eyes intent upon God are blind to earthly things, or perhaps because they were too interested in watching one another, they never noticed this.
It may be added that Jean Valjean was wise in his policy of lying low. Javert kept the district under close observation for an entire month. For Valjean the convent was an island in a hostile sea, his world was bounded by its walls. He saw enough of the sky to ensure his peace of mind and enough of Cosette to ensure his happiness. A new and tranquil life began for him.
He lived with Fauchelevent in the shanty at the bottom of the garden. The ramshackle building, which was still standing in 1845, consisted, as we have said, of three rooms with bare plaster walls. The largest of them was given to Monsieur Madeleine on the insistence of Fauchelevent, although Jean Valjean protested. The only adornment of this room, apart from the two nails on which hung his gardener’s hod and his knee-strap, was a royalist bank-note for ten livres, issued in La Vendée in 1793 and nailed to the wall by Fauchelevent’s predecessor, a former chouan who had died in the convent.
Valjean was an excellent gardener. Having started life as a tree-pruner he had no difficulty in returning to this trade. It will be recalled that he knew many secrets of country lore. The trees in the orchard were mostly of mixed strain; by pruning and grafting he greatly improved their yield.
Cosette was allowed to spend an hour with him every day, and since he was very much better company than the nuns, she adored him. She would come running to the cottage when the hour struck, filling it with her presence, and Valjean would glow with a pleasure heightened by the pleasure he gave her. It is a charming quality of the happiness we inspire in others that, far from being diminished like a reflection, it comes back to us enhanced. At times when she was playing with the other children he would watch them at a distance and he could always distinguish her laughter from the rest.
For she learned to laugh, and as she did so her whole appearance changed, its darkness was dispelled. Laughter is a sun that drives out winter from the human face. She was still not pretty but she was becoming a delightful little girl, capable of saying most sensible things in her soft, childish voice. When she went indoors at the end of the recreation period Valjean would gaze at the classroom windows, and he would get up at night to look at the windows of her dormitory.
God works in His own way. The convent itself, with Cosette, sustained and completed the transformation of Jean Valjean which the bishop had begun. It is certain that one of the paths of virtue leads to the sin of Pride, a bridge built by the devil himself. Jean Valjean had been tending in this direction when Providence brought him to Petit-Picpus. When he compared himself with the bishop he felt humble and unworthy; but as the years passed he had begun to compare himself with other men, and pride crept in. Perhaps, who knows, he would have lapsed again into hatred.
The convent had put a stop to this. It was his second place of confinement. In his youth, at what for him had been the beginning of life, and later, all too recently, he had known another, an ugly, terrible place whose harshness seemed to him an iniquitous distortion of justice, a crime on the part of the law. After prison, a convent: from being an inmate of the one he had become an observer of the other, and he scrupulously compared them in his mind.
At times, leaning on his spade, he would let his thoughts drift in meditation. He would recall the wretchedness of his former companions. They rose at dawn and worked till dark, such sleep as they were allowed being on plank-beds with the thinnest of mattresses in rooms warmed only during the harshest winter months. They wore hideous red caps and, as a concession, cotton trousers in the hot season and a woollen cloak in the cold. They drank no wine and were allowed meat only when on hard labour. They lived without names, were known only by numbers and to some extent turned into numbers themselves, eyes and voices lowered, hair cropped, subject to the lash and to constant humiliation.
Then his thoughts would turn to this other community. These women, too, had cropped hair, eyes and voices lowered, not in humiliation but under the mockery of the world, and their shoulders bore the marks not of the lash but of the scourging of their self-inflicted discipline. They too had discarded their worldly names, but in favour of others more austere. Never did they eat meat or drink wine, and they often went without food until evening. They were clad, not in red but in black woollen robes like shrouds, oppressive in summer and insufficient in winter, nothing added or subtracted according to the season, no comfort of linen in summer or wool in winter; and for six months in the year they wore hair-shirts which induced fever. They lived in unrelieved cold, in cells where no fire was ever lighted, and they slept, not on mattresses but on straw. Nor were they allowed to sleep in peace after the day’s work but must rise out of the first warmth of slumber to pray in the ice-cold, gloomy chapel, kneeling on its stones. And each must take her share in the ritual of atonement, kneeling for twelve hours on end, or prostrate with her head on her crossed arms.
Those others had been men, these were women. The men had been criminals – thieves and murderers, bandits, fire-raisers, patricides. And what crime had these women committed? They had committed none.
On the one side, outrage, sacrilege, violence, all the forms that evil can take; on the other side perfect innocence almost risen above the world in a mysterious Assumption, holding to earth only through virtue and holding to Heaven through sanctity. On one side the whispered avowal of crimes committed; on the other side, the open confession of faults – such faults! – and such crimes! On the one side a stench, and on the other an ineffable perfume. On the one side a moral distemper, kept out of sight and isolated under the law, which slowly destroyed its victims; on the other side a chaste seclusion of souls inhabiting the same dwelling. There utter darkness and here shadow; but a shadow filled with light, a light filled with radiance.
Two places of slavery, but in the first a possible end, the legal limit of the sentence, the hope of escape; in the second perpetuity, with no other aspiration than, in the distant future, that light of liberty that men call death. In the first, only chains of metal, in the second the chains of faith.
And what came out of these places? From the first a vast malediction, a gnashing of teeth, in hatred, the evil of despair, a rage against all human kind, and a mockery of Heaven; from the second, blessedness and love. Yet in both places, so alike and so unlike, two sets of utterly different beings were accomplishing the same task, a work of expiation.
In the case of the first, Jean Valjean could understand this – personal expiation, expiation of oneself. But he was hard put to it to understand the second, being beyond reproach, beyond blemish, and he asked himself, trembling – expiation of what, and for what? The voice of his conscience answered him: the most godlike of human bounties, expiation on behalf of others.
Here we refrain from all personal reflections. We are simply the narrator, putting ourself in the place of Jean Valjean and seeking to convey what was in his thoughts. He was witness of the sublime height of self-abnegation, the highest possible peak of virtue – innocence which forgives the faults of men and expiates them in their stead; servitude accepted, suffering endured, torment sought after by souls that have not sinned in order to spare those that have; the love of mankind lost in the love of God, yet still preserved and suppliant; weak and gentle souls, bearing the affliction of those who are punished and smiling with those who are recompensed.
He thought of this and remembered that he had dared to pity himself! Often he would rise in the night and listen to the hymns of thanksgiving of those innocent beings bowed down by austerity, and the blood ran cold in his veins as he reflected that the voices of the justly chastised were raised only in blasphemy, and that he himself, no better than the rest, had shaken his fist at God.
Thinking of the events of his own life, he was moved to profound reflection, as though hearing the deep voice of Providence itself. The escapes, the barriers surmounted, the chances taken at the risk of death, the hard and difficult climb, the struggles to escape from one place of expiation which in the end had brought him to this other? Was not this an allegory of his life?
This house, too, was a prison, dismally resembling the one from which he had escaped, though it had been conceived with no such thought in mind. He was again confronted by locks and bars, but these protected angels. The high walls he had seen caging tigers here enclosed lambs. This was a place of expiation, but not of chastisement; yet it was more austere, more sombre and relentless than the other. These virgins were more harshly subdued than the convicts. A cold, rough wind, the wind that had frozen his youth, had blown through the nest of vultures; but the wind blowing through this dovecote was keener and more piercing still.
When he thought of these things his whole being was abased before the mystery of the Sublime. All pride left him; he looked unsparingly at himself, felt his weakness and often wept. Everything that had entered his life in the past six months brought him back to the saintly injunctions of the bishop, Cosette through love, the convent through humility.
Sometimes in the dark of evening, when the garden was deserted, he was to be seen on his knees on the pathway bordering the chapel, outside the window he had peered through on the night of his arrival and turned towards the place where he knew the sister who was making atonement would be prostrate in prayer. Thus kneeling to her, he too prayed. It seemed that he dared not kneel directly to God.
The things that now surrounded him, the peace of the garden, the scent of the flowers, the gaiety and laughter of the children, the grave simplicity of the nuns, the silence of the cloister, these things possessed his being until by degrees his very soul was informed with them, peace and silence and simplicity, the scent of flowers and of happiness. And he thought that at two critical moments in his life two of God’s houses had taken him in, the first when all other doors were closed and human society rejected him, and the second when society was again his enemy and the prison gates were again open: without the first he would have drifted into a life of crime, without the second into a life of torment. His whole heart was melted in gratitude and his love was magnified.
Thus the years passed and Cosette grew into girlhood.