Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [194]
“Father Fauvent, I am satisfied with you; to-morrow after the burial, bring your brother to me, and tell him to bring his daughter.”
4
IN WHICH JEAN VALJEAN HAS QUITE THE APPEARANCE OF HAVING READ AUSTIN CASTILLEJO THE STRIDES of the lame are like the glances of the one-eyed: they do not speedily reach their aim. Furthermore, Fauchelevent was perplexed. It took him nearly a quarter of an hour to get back to the shanty in the garden. Cosette was awake. Jean Valjean had seated her near the fire. At the moment when Fauchelevent entered, Jean Valjean was showing her the gardener’s basket hanging on the wall and saying to her:
“Listen attentively to me, my little Cosette. We must go away from this house, but we shall come back, and we shall be very well off here. The good man here will carry you out on his back inside there. You will wait for me at a lady’s. I shall come and find you. Above all, if you do not want the Thénardiess to take you back, obey and say nothing.”
Cosette nodded her head with a serious look.
At the sound of Fauchelevent opening the door, Jean Valjean turned.
“Well?”
“All is arranged, and nothing is,” said Fauchelevent. “I have permission to bring you in; but before bringing you in, it is necessary to get you out. That is where the cart is blocked! For the little girl, it is easy enough.”
“You will carry her out?”
“And she will keep quiet?”
“I will answer for it.”
“But you, Father Madeleine?”
And, after an anxious silence, Fauchelevent exclaimed:
“But why not go out the way you came in?”
Jean Valjean, as before, merely answered: “Impossible.”
Fauchelevent talking more to himself than to Jean Valjean, grumbled:
“There is another thing that torments me. I said I would put in some earth. But I think that earth inside, instead of a body, will not be like it; that will not do, it will shake about; it will move. The men will feel it. You understand, Father Madeleine, the government will find it out.”
Jean Valjean stared at him, and thought that he was raving.
Fauchelevent resumed:
“How the d—ickens are you going to get out? For all this must be done to-morrow. To-morrow I am to bring you in. The prioress expects you.”
Then he explained to Jean Valjean that this was a reward for a service that he, Fauchelevent, was rendering to the community. That it was a part of his duties to assist in burials, that he nailed up the coffins, and attended the grave-digger at the cemetery. That the nun who died that morning had requested to be buried in the coffin which she had used as a bed, and interred in the vault under the altar of the chapel. That this was forbidden by the regulations of the police, but that she was one of those departed ones to whom nothing is refused. That the prioress and the vocal mothers intended to carry out the will of the deceased. So much the worse for the government. That he, Fauchelevent, would nail up the coffin in the cell, raise the stone in the chapel, and let down the body into the vault. And that, in return for this, the prioress would admit his brother into the house as gardener and his niece as boarder. That his brother was M. Madeleine, and that his niece was Cosette. That the prioress had told him to bring his brother the next evening, after the fictitious burial at the cemetery. But that he could not bring M. Madeleine from the outside, if M. Madeleine were not outside. That that was the first difficulty. And then that he had another difficulty; the empty coffin.
“What is the empty coffin?” asked Jean Valjean.
Fauchelevent responded:
“The coffin from the administration.”
“What coffin? and what administration?”
“A nun dies. The municipality physician comes and says: there is a nun dead. The government sends a coffin. The next day it sends a hearse and some bearers to take the coffin and carry it to the cemetery. The bearers will come and take up the coffin; there will be nothing in it.”
“Put somebody in it.”
“A dead body? I have none.”
“No.”
“What then?”
“A living body.”
“What living body?”
“Me,” said Jean Valjean.
Fauchelevent, who had taken