Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [203]
“You are benumbed,” said Fauchelevent; “and what a pity that I’m lame, or we’d run a bit.”
“No matter!” replied Jean Valjean, “a few steps will put my legs into walking order.”
They went out by the avenues the hearse had followed. When they reached the closed gate and the porter’s lodge, Fauchelevent, who had the gravedigger’s card in his hand, dropped it into the box, the porter drew the cord, the gate opened, and they went through.
“How well everything goes!” said Fauchelevent; “what a good plan that was of yours, Father Madeleine!”
They passed the Barrière Vaugirard in the easiest way in the world. In the neighbourhood of a graveyard, a pick and spade are two passports.
The Rue de Vaugirard was deserted.
“Father Madeleine,” said Fauchelevent, as he went along, looking up at the houses, “you have better eyes than mine—which is number 87?”
“Here it is, now,” said Jean Valjean.
“There’s no one in the street,” resumed Fauchelevent. “Give me the pick, and wait for me a couple of minutes.”
Fauchelevent went in at number 87, ascended to the topmost flight, guided by the instinct which always leads the poor to the garret, and knocked, in the dark, at the door of a little attic room. A voice called:
“Come in!”
It was Gribier’s voice.
Fauchelevent pushed open the door. The lodging of the gravedigger was, like all these shelters of the needy, an unfurnished but much littered loft. A packing-case of some kind—a coffin, perhaps—supplied the place of a bureau, a straw pallet the place of a bed, a butter-pot the place of water-cooler, and the floor served alike for chairs and table. In one corner, on a ragged old scrap of carpet, was a haggard woman, and a number of children were huddled together. The whole of this wretched interior bore the traces of recent overturn. One would have said that there had been an earthquake served up there “for one.” The coverlets were displaced, the ragged garments scattered about, the pitcher broken, the mother had been weeping, and the children probably beaten; all traces of a headlong and violent search. It was plain that the gravedigger had been looking, wildly, for his card, and had made everything in the attic, from his pitcher to his wife, responsible for the loss. He had a desperate appearance.
But Fauchelevent was in too great a hurry for the end of his adventure, to notice this gloomy side of his triumph.
As he came in, he said:
“I’ve brought your spade and pick.”
Gribier looked at him with stupefaction.
“What, it is you, peasant?”
“And, to-morrow morning, you will find your card with the gatekeeper of the cemetery.”
And he set down the pick and the spade on the floor.
“What does all this mean?” asked Gribier.
“Why, it means that you let your card drop out of your pocket; that I found it on the ground when you had gone; that I buried the corpse; that I filled in the grave; that I finished your job; that the porter will give you your card, and that you will not have to pay the fifteen francs. That’s what it means, recruit!”
“Thanks, villager!” exclaimed Gribier, in amazement. “The next time I will treat.”
8
SUCCESSFUL EXAMINATION
AN HOUR LATER, in the depth of night, two men and a child stood in front of No. 62, Petite Rue Picpus. The elder of the men lifted the knocker and rapped.
It was Fauchelevent, Jean Valjean, and Cosette.
The two men had gone to look for Cosette at the shop of the fruiteress of the Rue de Chemin Vert, where Fauchelevent had left her on the preceding evening. Cosette had passed the twenty-four hours wondering what it all meant and trembling in silence. She trembled so much that she had not wept, nor had she tasted food nor slept. The worthy fruit-woman had asked her a thousand questions without obtaining any other answer than a sad look that never varied. Cosette did not let a word of all she had heard and seen, in the last two days, escape her. She divined that a crisis had come. She felt, in her very heart, that she must be “good.” Who has not experienced the supreme effect of these two words