9
THE MAN WITH THE BELL
HE WALKED straight to the man whom he saw in the garden. He had taken in his hand the roll of money which was in his vest-pocket.
This man had his head down, and did not see him coming. A few strides, Jean Valjean was at his side.
Jean Valjean approached him, exclaiming:
“A hundred francs!”
The man started and raised his eyes.
“A hundred francs for you,” continued Jean Valjean, “if you will give me refuge to-night.”
The moon shone full in Jean Valjean’s bewildered face.
“What, it is you, Father Madeleine!” said the man.
This name, thus pronounced, at this dark hour, in this unknown place, by this unknown man, made Jean Valjean start back.
He was ready for anything but that. The speaker was an old man, bent and lame, dressed much like a peasant, who had on his left knee a leather knee-cap from which hung a rather large bell. His face was in the shade, and could not be distinguished.
Meanwhile the goodman had taken off his cap, and was exclaiming, tremulously:
“Ah! my God! how did you come here, Father Madeleine? How did you get in, O Lord? Did you fall from the sky? There is no doubt, if you ever do fall, you will fall from there. And what has happened to you? You have no cravat, you have no hat, you have no coat? Do you know that you would have frightened anybody who did not know you? No coat? Merciful heavens! are the saints all crazy now? But how did you get in?”
One word did not wait for another. The old man spoke with a rustic volubility in which there was nothing disquieting. All this was said with a mixture of astonishment, and frank good nature.
“Who are you? and what is this house!” asked Jean Valjean.
“Oh! indeed, that is good now,” exclaimed the old man. “I am the one you got the place for here, and this house is the one you got me the place in. What! you don’t remember me?”
“No,” said Jean Valjean. “And how does it happen that you know me?”
“You saved my life,” said the man.
He turned, a ray of the moon lighted up his side face, and Jean Valjean recognised old Fauchelevent.
“Ah!” said Jean Valjean, “it is you? yes, I remember you.”
“That is very fortunate!” said the old man, in a reproachful tone.
“And what are you doing here?” added Jean Valjean.
“Oh! I am covering my melons.”
Old Fauchelevent had in his hand, indeed, at the moment when Jean Valjean accosted him, the end of a piece of awning which he was stretching out over the melon patch. He had already spread out several in this way during the hour he had been in the garden. It was this work which made him go through the peculiar motions observed by Jean Valjean from the shed.
He continued:
“I said to myself: the moon is bright, there is going to be a frost. Suppose I put their jackets on my melons? And,” added he, looking at Jean Valjean, with a loud laugh, “you would have done well to do as much for yourself? but how did you come here?”
Jean Valjean, finding that he was known by this man, at least under his name of Madeleine, went no further with his precautions. He multiplied questions. Oddly enough their parts seemed reversed. It was he, the intruder, who put questions.
“And what is this bell you have on your knee?”
“That!” answered Fauchelevent, “that is so that they may keep away from me.”
“How! keep away from you?”
Old Fauchelevent winked in an indescribable manner.
“Ah! Bless me! there’s nothing but women in this house; plenty of young girls. It seems that I am dangerous to meet. The bell warns them. When I come they go away.”
“What is this house?”
“Why, you know very well.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Why, you got me this place here as gardener.”
“Answer me as if I didn’t know.”
“Well, it is the Convent of the Petit Picpus, then.”
Jean Valjean remembered. Chance, that is to say, Providence, had thrown him precisely into this convent of the Quartier Saint Antoine, to which old Fauchelevent, crippled by his fall from his cart, had been admitted, upon his recommendation, two years before. He repeated as if he were talking to himself:
“The Convent of the Petit Picpus!”
“But now, really,” resumed Fauchelevent, “how the deuce did you manage to get in, you, Father Madeleine? It is no use for you to be a saint, you are a man; and no men come in here.”
“But you are here.”
“There is none but me.”
“But,” resumed Jean Valjean, “I must stay here.”
“Oh! my God,” exclaimed Fauchelevent.
Jean Valjean approached the old man, and said to him in a grave voice:
“Father Fauchelevent, I saved your life.”
“I was first to remember it,” answered Fauchelevent.
“Well, you can now do for me what I once did for you.”
Fauchelevent grasped in his old wrinkled and trembling hands the robust hands of Jean Valjean, and it was some seconds before he could speak; at last he exclaimed:
“Oh! that would be a blessing of God if I could do something for you, in return for that! I save your life! Monsieur Mayor, the old man is at your disposal.”
A wonderful joy had, as it were, transfigured the old gardener. A radiance seemed to shine forth from his face.bl
“What do you want me to do?” he added.
“I will explain. You have a room?”
“I have a solitary shanty, over there, behind the ruins of the old convent, in a corner that nobody ever sees. There are three rooms.”
The shanty was in fact so well concealed behind the ruins, and so well arranged, that no one should see it—that Jean Valjean had not seen it.
“Good,” said Jean Valjean. “Now I ask of you two things.”
“What are they, Monsieur Madeleine?”
“First, that you will not tell anybody what you know about me. Second, that you will not attempt to learn anything more.”
“As you please. I know that you can do nothing dishonourable, and that you have always been a man of God. And then, besides, it was you that put me here. It is your place, I am yours.”
“Very well. But now come with me. We will go for the child.”
“Ah!” said Fauchelevent, “there is a child!”
He said not a word more, but followed Jean Valjean as a dog follows his master.
In half an hour Cosette, again become rosy before a good fire, was asleep in the old gardener’s bed. Jean Valjean had put on his cravat and coat; his hat, which he had thrown over the wall, had been found and brought in. While Jean Valjean was putting on his coat, Fauchelevent had taken off his knee-cap with the bell attached, which now, hanging on a nail near a shutter, decorated the wall. The two men were warming themselves, with their elbows on a table, on which Fauchelevent had set a piece of cheese, some brown bread, a bottle of wine, and two glasses, and the old man said to Jean Valjean, putting his hand on his knee:
“Ah! Father Madeleine! you didn’t know me at first? You save people’s lives and then you forget them? Oh! that’s bad; they remember you. You are ungrateful!”