Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [189]
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