5
IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO BE A DRUNKARD TO BE IMMORTAL
NEXT DAY, as the sun was declining, the scattered passers-by on the Boulevard du Maine took off their hats at the passage of an old-fashioned hearse, adorned with death‘s-heads, cross-bones, and tear-drops. In this hearse there was a coffin covered with a white cloth upon which was displayed a large black cross like a great dummy with hanging arms. A draped carriage, in which might be seen a priest in a surplice, and a choir-boy in a red skullcap, followed. Two bearers in grey uniform with black trimmings walked on the right and left of the hearse. In the rear came an old man dressed like a labourer, who limped. The procession moved towards the Vaugirard cemetery.
Sticking out of the man’s pocket were the handle of a hammer, the blade of a cold chisel, and the double handles of a pair of pincers.
The Vaugirard cemetery was an exception among the cemeteries of Paris. It had its peculiar usages, as it had its porte-cochère, and its small door which, in the neighbourhood, old people faithful to archaic words called the horse-man’s door and the pedestrian door. The Bernardine-Benedictines of the Petit Picpus had obtained the right, as we have said, to be buried in a corner apart and at night, this ground having formerly belonged to their community. The gravediggers, having thus to work in the cemetery in the evening in summer, and at night in winter, were subject to a special regulation. The gates of the cemeteries of Paris closed at that epoch at sunset, and, this being a measure of municipal order, the Vaugirard cemetery was subject to it like the rest.
bp The gatehouse door and the pedestrian door were two contiguous gratings; near which was a pavilion built by the architect Perronet, in which the guardian of the cemetery lived. These gratings therefore inexorably turned upon their hinges the instant the sun disappeared behind the dome of the Invalides. If any gravedigger, at that moment, had lingered in the cemetery his only resource for getting out was his gravedigger’s card, given him by the administration of funeral ceremonies. A sort of letterbox was arranged in the shutter of the gate-keeper’s window. The gravedigger dropped his card into this box, the gate-keeper heard it fall, pulled the string, and the pedestrian door opened. If the gravedigger did not have his card, he gave his name; the gate-keeper, sometimes in bed and asleep, got up, went to identify the gravedigger, and open the door with the key; the gravedigger went out, but paid fifteen francs fine.
This cemetery, with its peculiar procedures, violated the symmetry of the administration. It was suppressed shortly after 1830. The Mont Par nasse Cemetery, called the Cemetery of the East, has succeeded it, and has inherited this famous drinking house let into the Vaugirard cemetery, which was surmounted by a quince painted on a board, which looked on one side upon the tables of the drinkers, and on the other upon graves, with this inscription:
The Good Quince.bqThe Vaugirard cemetery was what might be called a decayed cemetery. It was falling into disuse. Mould was invading it, flowers were leaving it. The well-to-do citizens little cared to be buried at Vaugirard; it sounded poor. Père Lachaise is very fine! to be buried in Père Lachaise is like having mahogany furniture. That says elegance to everyone. The Vaugirard cemetery was a venerable inclosure, laid out like an old French garden. Straight walks, box, evergreens, hollies, old tombs under old yews, very high grass. Night there was terrible. There were some very dismal outlines there.
The sun had not yet set when the hearse with the white pall and the black cross entered the avenue of the Vaugirard cemetery. The lame man who followed it was no other than Fauchelevent.
The burial of Mother Crucifixion in the vault under the altar, the departure of Cosette, the introduction of Jean Valjean into the dead-room, all had been carried out without obstruction, and nothing had gone wrong.
We will say, by the way, the inhumation of Mother Crucifixion under the convent altar is, to us, a perfectly venial thing. It is one of those faults which resemble a duty. The nuns had accomplished it, not only without discomposure, but with an approving conscience. In the cloister, what is called the “government” is only an interference with authority, an interference which is always questionable. First the rule of the order; as to the law, we will see. Men, make as many laws as you please, but keep them for yourselves. The tribute to Cæsar is never more than the remnant of the tribute to God. A prince is nothing in the presence of a principle.
Fauchelevent limped behind the hearse, very well satisfied. His two twin plots, one with the nuns, the other with M. Madeleine, one for the convent, the other against it, had succeeded equally well. Jean Valjean’s calmness had that powerful tranquillity which is contagious. Fauchelevent had now no doubt of success. What remained to be done was nothing. Within two years he had fuddled the gravedigger ten times, good Father Mestienne, a rubicund old fellow. Father Mestienne was play for him. He did what he liked with him. He controlled him at will and at his fancy. Mestienne saw through Fauchelevent’s eyes.
br Fauchelevent’s security was complete.
At the moment the convoy entered the avenue leading to the cemetery, Fauchelevent, happy, looked at the hearse and rubbed his big hands together, saying in an undertone:
“Here’s a farce!”
Suddenly the hearse stopped; they were at the gate. It was necessary to exhibit the burial permit. The undertaker whispered with the porter of the cemetery. During this colloquy, which always causes a delay of a minute or two, somebody, an unknown man, came and placed himself behind the hearse at Fauchelevent’s side. He was a working-man, who wore a vest with large pockets, and had a pick under his arm.
Fauchelevent looked at this unknown man.
“Who are you?” he asked.
The man answered:
“The gravedigger.”
Should a man survive a cannon-shot through his breast, he would present the appearance that Fauchelevent did.
“The gravedigger?”
“Yes.”
“You!”
“Me.”
“The gravedigger is Father Mestienne.”
“He was.”
“What! he was?”
“He is dead.”
Fauchelevent was ready for anything but this, that a gravedigger could die. It is, however, true; gravediggers themselves die. By dint of digging graves for others, they open their own.
Fauchelevent remained speechless. He had hardly the strength to stammer out:
“But it’s not possible!”
“It is so.”
“But,” repeated he, feebly, “the gravedigger is Father Mestienne.”
“After Napoleon, Louis XVIII. After Mestienne, Gribier. Peasant, my name is Gribier.”
Fauchelevent grew pale; he stared at Gribier.
He was a long, thin, livid man, perfectly funereal. He had the appearance of a broken-down doctor turned gravedigger.
Fauchelevent burst out laughing.
“Ah! what droll things happen! Old Mestienne is dead. Little old Mestienne is dead, but hurrah for little old Lenoir! You know what little old Lenoir is? It is the mug of red wine on the counter for a six spot. It is the mug of Surene, zounds! real Paris Surene. So he is dead, old Mestienne! I am sorry for it; he was a jolly fellow. But you too, you are a jolly fellow. Isn’t that so, comrade? we will go and take a drink together, right away.”
The man answered: “I have studied, I have graduated. I never drink.”
The hearse had started moving again, and was rolling along the main avenue of the cemetery.
Fauchelevent had slackened his pace. He limped still more from anxiety than from infirmity.
The gravedigger walked before him.
Fauchelevent again scrutinised the unexpected Gribier.
He was one of those men who, though young, have an old appearance, and who, though thin, are very strong.
“Comrade!” cried Fauchelevent.
The man turned.
“I am the gravedigger of the convent.”
“My colleague,” said the man.
Fauchelevent, illiterate, but very keen, understood that he had to do with a very formidable species, a good talker.
He mumbled out:
“Is it so, Father Mestienne is dead?”
The man answered:
“Perfectly. The good God consulted his list of bills payable. It was Father Mestienne’s turn. Father Mestienne is dead.”
Fauchelevent repeated mechanically.
“The good God.”
“The good God,” said the man authoritatively. “What the philosophers call the Eternal Father; the Jacobins, the Supreme Being.”
“Are we not going to make each other’s acquaintance?” stammered Fauchelevent.
“It is made. You are a peasant, I am a Parisian.”
“We are not acquainted as long as we have not drunk together. He who empties his glass empties his heart. Come and drink with me. You can’t refuse.”
“Business first.”
Fauchelevent said to himself: I am lost.
They were now only a few turns of the wheel from the path that led to the nuns’ corner.
The gravedigger continued:
“Peasant, I have seven youngsters that I must feed. As they must eat, I must not drink.”
And he added with the satisfaction of a serious being who is making a sententious phrase:
“Their hunger is the enemy of my thirst.”
The hearse turned a huge cypress, left the main path, took a little one, entered upon the grounds, and was lost in a thicket. This indicated the immediate proximity of the grave. Fauchelevent slackened his pace, but could not slacken that of the hearse. Luckily the mellow soil, wet by the winter rains, stuck to the wheels, and made the track heavy.
He approached the gravedigger.
“They have such a good little Argenteuil wine,” suggested Fauchelevent.
“Villager,” continued the man, “I ought not to be a gravedigger. My father was porter at the Prytanée.
bs He intended me for literature. But he was unfortunate. He lost his money on stocks. I was obliged to renounce the condition of an author. However, I am still a public scribe.”
“But then you are not the gravedigger?” replied Fauchelevent, catching at a straw, feeble as it was.
“One does not prevent the other. I cumulate.”
Fauchelevent did not understand this last word.
“Let us go and drink,” said he.
Here an observation is necessary. Fauchelevent, whatever was his anguish, proposed to drink, but did not explain himself on one point; who should pay? Ordinarily Fauchelevent proposed, and Father Mestienne paid. A proposal to drink resulted evidently from the new situation produced by the fact of the new gravedigger, and this proposal he must make; but the old gardener left, not unintentionally, the proverbial quarter of an hour of Rabelais unclear.
bt As for himself, Fauchelevent, however excited he was, did not care to pay.
The gravedigger went on, with a smile of superiority:
“We must live. I accepted the succession of Father Mestienne. When one has almost finished his classes, he is a philosopher. To the labour of my hand, I have added the labour of my arm. I have my little writer’s shop at the Market in the Rue de Sèvre. You know? the umbrella market. All the cooks of the Croix Rouge come to me; I patch up their declarations to their true loves. In the morning I write love letters; in the evening I dig graves. Such is life, peasant.”
The hearse advanced; Fauchelevent, full of anxiety, looked about him on all sides. Great drops of sweat were falling from his forehead.
“However,” continued the gravedigger, “one cannot serve two mistresses; I must choose between the pen and the pick. The pick hurts my hand.”
The hearse stopped.
The choir-boy got out of the hearse, then the priest.
One of the forward wheels of the hearse was lifted a little by a heap of earth, beyond which was seen an open grave.
“This is a laugh!” repeated Fauchelevent in consternation.