Les Miserables (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (56 page)

He however put several questions to himself and made several answers: “After what he has done for me, if he were a thief, would I save him? just the same. If he were an assassin, would I save him? just the same. Since he is a saint, shall I save him? just the same.”

But to have him remain in the convent, what a problem was that! Before that almost chimerical attempt, Fauchelevent did not recoil; this poor Picardy peasant, with no other ladder than his devotion, his goodwill, a little of that old country cunning, engaged for once in the service of a generous intention, undertook to scale the impossibilities of the cloister and the craggy escarpments of the rules of St. Benedict. Fauchelevent was an old man who had been selfish throughout his life, and who, near the end of his days, crippled, infirm, having no interest longer in the world, found it sweet to be grateful, and seeing a virtuous action to be done, threw himself into it like a man who, at the moment of death, finding at hand a glass of some good wine which he had never tasted, should drink it greedily. We might add that the atmosphere which he had been breathing now for several years in this convent had destroyed his former personality, and had at last rendered some good action necessary to him.
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He formed his resolution then: to devote himself to Monsieur Madeleine.

We have just described him as a
poor Picardy peasant.
The description is true, but incomplete. At the point of this story at which we now are, a closer acquaintance with Fauchelevent becomes necessary. He was a peasant, but he had been a notary, which added craft to his cunning, and penetration to his simplicity. Having, from various causes, failed in his business, from a notary he had fallen to a cartman and labourer. But, in spite of the oaths and blows which seem necessary with horses, he had retained something of the notary. He had some natural wit; he said neither I is nor I has; he could carry on a conversation, a rare thing in a village; and the other peasants said of him: he talks almost like a gentleman. Fauchelevent belonged in fact to that class which the flippant and impertinent vocabulary of the last century termed half-middle-class, half-rustic; and which the metaphors ranging from the castle to the hovel pigeonhole among the commoners as a bit cloddish, a bit citified,
pepper-and-salt.
Fauchelevent, although sorely tried and sorely used by Fortune; a sort of poor old soul worn threadbare, was nevertheless an impulsive man, and had a very willing heart; a precious quality, which prevents one from ever being wicked. His faults and his vices, for such he had had, were superficial; and finally, his physiognomy was one of those which attract the observer. That old face had none of those ugly wrinkles in the upper part of the forehead which indicate wickedness or stupidity.

At daybreak, having dreamed enormously, old Fauchelevent opened his eyes, and saw Monsieur Madeleine, who, seated upon his bunch of straw, was looking at Cosette as she slept. Fauchelevent half arose, and said:

“Now that you are here, how are you going to manage to come in?”

This question summed up the situation, and wakened Jean Valjean from his reverie.

The two men took counsel.

“To begin with,” said Fauchelevent, “you will not set foot outside of this room, neither the little girl nor you. One step in the garden, we are ruined.”

“That is true.”

“Monsieur Madeleine,” resumed Fauchelevent, “you have arrived at a very good time; I mean to say very bad; there is one of these ladies dangerously sick. On that account they do not look this way much. She must be dying. They are saying the forty-hour prayers. The whole community is in disarray. That takes up their attention. She who is about departing is a saint. In fact, we are all saints here; all the difference between them and me is, that they say: our cell, and I say: my shanty. They are going to have the rites for the dying, and then for the dead. For to-day we shall be quiet here; but I cannot answer for to-morrow.”

“However,” observed Jean Valjean, “this shanty is under the corner of the wall; it is hidden by a sort of ruin; there are trees; they cannot see it from the convent.”

“And I add, that the nuns never come near it.”

“Well?” said Jean Valjean.

The question mark which followed that “well” meant: it seems to me that we can remain here concealed. This Fauchelevent answered:—

“There are the little girls.”

“What little girls?” asked Jean Valjean.

As Fauchelevent opened his mouth to explain the words he had just uttered, a single stroke of a bell was heard.

“The nun is dead,” said he. “There is the knell.”

And he motioned to Jean Valjean to listen.

The bell sounded a second time.

“It is the knell, Monsieur Madeleine. The bell will strike every minute, for twenty-four hours, until the body goes out of the church. You see they play. During their recess, if a ball rolls here, that is enough for them to come after it, in spite of the rules, and rummage all about here. Those cherubs are little devils.”

“Who?” asked Jean Valjean.

“The little girls. You would be found out very soon. They would cry, ‘What! a man!’ But there is no danger to-day. There will be no recreation. The day will be all prayers. You hear the bell. As I told you, a stroke every minute. It is the knell.”

“I understand, Father Fauchelevent. There are student boarders.”

And Jean Valjean thought within himself:—

“Here, then, Cosette can be educated, too.”

Fauchelevent exclaimed:

“Zounds! they are the little girls for you! And how they would scream at sight of you! and how they would run! Here, to be a man, is to have the plague. You see how they fasten a bell to my leg, as they would to a wild beast.”

Jean Valjean was studying more and more deeply. “The convent would save us,” murmured he. Then he raised his voice:

“Yes, the difficulty is in remaining.”

“No,” said Fauchelevent, “it is to get out.”

Jean Valjean felt his blood run cold.

“To get out?”

“Yes, Monsieur Madeleine, in order to come in, it is necessary that you should get out.”

And, after waiting for a sound from the tolling bell to die away, Fauchelevent pursued:

“It would not do to have you found here like this. Whence do you come? for me you have fallen from heaven, because I know you; but for the nuns, you must come in at the door.”

Suddenly they heard a complicated ringing upon another bell.

“Oh!” said Fauchelevent, “that is the ring for the nuns who have a voice in the affairs of the convent. They are going to the assembly. They always hold one when anybody dies. She died at daybreak. It is usually at daybreak that people die. But cannot you go out the way you came in? Let us see; this is not to question you, but where did you come in?”

Jean Valjean became pale; the bare idea of climbing down again into that formidable street, made him shudder. Make your way out of a forest full of tigers, and when out, fancy yourself advised by a friend to return. Jean Valjean imagined all the police still swarming in the quarter, officers on the watch, sentries everywhere, frightful fists stretched out towards his collar,—Javert, perhaps, at the corner of the square.

“Impossible,” said he. “Father Fauchelevent, let it go that I fell from on high.”

“Ah! I believe it, I believe it,” replied Fauchelevent. “You have no need to tell me so. God must have taken you into his hand, to have a close look at you, and then put you down. Only he meant to put you into a monastery; he made a mistake. Hark! another ring; that is to warn the porter to go and notify the municipality, so that they may go and notify the coroner, so that he may come and see that there is really a dead woman. All that is the ceremony of dying. These good ladies do not like this visit very much. A physician believes in nothing. He lifts the veil. He even lifts something else, sometimes. How soon they have notified the inspector, this time! What can be the matter? Your little one is asleep yet. What is her name?”

“Cosette.”

“She is your girl? that is to say: you should be her grandfather?”

“Yes.”

“For her, to get out will be easy. I have my door, which opens into the court. I knock; the porter opens. I have my basket on my back; the little girl is inside; I go out. Old Fauchelevent goes out with his basket—that is all simple. You will tell the little girl to keep very still. She will be under cover. I will leave her as soon as I can, with a good old friend of mine, a fruit merchant, in the Rue du Chemin Vert, who is deaf, and who has a little bed. I will scream into her ear that Cosette is my niece, and she must keep her for me till to-morrow. Then the little girl will come back with you; for I shall bring you back. It must be done. But how are you going to manage to get out?”

Jean Valjean shook his head.

“Let nobody see me, that is all, Father Fauchelevent. Find some means to get me out, like Cosette, in a basket, and under cover.”

Fauchelevent scratched the tip of his ear with the middle finger of his left hand—a sign of serious embarrassment.

A third ring made a diversion.

“That is the coroner leaving,” said Fauchelevent. “He has looked, and said she is indeed dead. When the inspector has stamped the passport for paradise, the undertaker sends a coffin. If it is a Holy Mother, the Mothers wrap her in the shroud; if it is a Holy Sister, the Sisters do. After which, I nail it up. That’s a part of my gardening. A gardener is something of a gravedigger. They put her in a low room in the church which communicates with the street, and where no man can enter except the coroner. I do not count the bearers and myself as men. In that room I nail the coffin. The bearers come and take her, and giddy-up, driver: that is the way they go to heaven. They bring in a box with nothing in it, they carry it away with something inside. That is what an interment is. De
profundis.”

A ray of the rising sun beamed upon the face of the sleeping Cosette, who half-opened her mouth dreamily, seeming like an angel drinking in the light. Jean Valjean was looking at her. He no longer heard Fauchelevent.

Not being heard is no reason for silence. The good old gardener peaceably continued his garrulous account.

“The grave is at the Vaugirard cemetery. They claim that this Vaugirard cemetery is going to be suppressed. It is an ancient cemetery, which is exempt from the regulations, which does not wear the uniform, and which is going to be retired. I am sorry for it, for it is convenient. I have a friend there—Father Mestienne, the gravedigger. The nuns here have the privilege of being carried to that cemetery at night-fall. There is an order of the Police Headquarters, expressly for them. But how many events since yesterday! Mother Crucifixion is dead, and Father Madeleine”—

“Is buried,” said Jean Valjean, sadly smiling.

Fauchelevent echoed the word.

“Really, if you were here for good, it would be a genuine burial.”

A fourth time the bell rang out. Fauchelevent quickly took down the knee-piece and bell from the nail, and buckled it on his knee.

“This time, it is for me. The mother prioress wants me. Well! I am pricking myself with the tongue of my buckle. Monsieur Madeleine, do not stir, but wait for me. There is something new. If you are hungry, there is the wine, and bread and cheese.”

And he went out of the hut, saying: “I am coming, I am coming.”

Jean Valjean saw him hasten across the garden, as fast as his crooked leg would let him, with side glances at his melons the while.

In less than ten minutes, Father Fauchelevent, whose bell put the nuns to flight as he went along, rapped softly at a door, and a gentle voice answered—
Forever, Forever!
that is to say,
Come in.

This door was that of the parlour allotted to the gardener, for use when it was necessary to communicate with him. This parlour was near the hall of the chapter. The prioress, seated in the only chair in the parlour, was waiting for Fauchelevent.

A SERIOUS and troubled bearing is peculiar, on critical occasions, to certain characters and certain professions, especially priests and monastics. At the moment when Fauchelevent entered, this double sign of preoccupation marked the countenance of the prioress, the charming and learned Mademoiselle de Blemeur, Mother Innocent, who was ordinarily cheerful.

The gardener made a timid bow, and stopped at the threshold of the cell. The prioress, who was saying her rosary, raised her eyes and said:

“Ah! it is you, Father Fauvent.”

This abbreviation had been adopted in the convent.

Fauchelevent again began his bow.

“Father Fauvent, I have called you.”

“I am here, reverend mother.”

“I wish to speak to you.”

“And I, for my part,” said Fauchelevent, with a boldness at which he was alarmed himself, “I have something to say to the most reverend mother.”

The prioress looked at him.

“Ah, you have a communication to make to me.”

“A petition!”

“Well, what is it?”

The goodman, with the assurance of one who feels that he is appreciated, began before the reverend prioress a rustic harangue, quite diffuse and very profound. He spoke at length of his age, his infirmities, of the weight of years henceforth doubly heavy upon him, of the growing demands of his work, of the size of the garden, of the nights to be spent, like last night for example, when he had to put awnings over the melons on account of the moon; and finally ended with this: “that he had a brother—(the prioress gave a start)—a brother not young—(second start of the prioress, but a reassured start)—that if it was desired, this brother could come and live with him and help him; that he was an excellent gardener; that the community would get good services from him, better than his own; that, otherwise, if his brother were not admitted, as he, the oldest, felt that he was broken down, and unequal to the labour, he would be obliged to leave, though with much regret; and that his brother had a little girl that he would bring with him, who would be reared under God in the house, and who, perhaps,—who knows?—would some day become a nun.