Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [190]
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