Les Miserables (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (58 page)

“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 a seat, sprang up as if a firecracker had burst under his chair.

“You!”

“Why not?”

Jean Valjean had one of those rare smiles which came over him like the aurora in a winter sky.

“You know, Fauchelevent, that you said: Mother Crucifixion is dead, and that I added: and Father Madeleine is buried. It will be so.”

“Ah! good, you are laughing, you are not talking seriously.”

“Very seriously. I must get out!”

“Undoubtedly.”

“And I told you to find a basket and a cover for me also.”

“Well!”

“The basket will be of pine, and the cover will be of black cloth.”

“In the first place, a white cloth. The nuns are buried in white.”

“Well, a white cloth.”

“You are not like other men, Father Madeleine.”

To see such devices, which are nothing more than the savage and fool-hardy inventions of the galleys, appear in the midst of the peaceful things that surrounded him and mingled with what he called the “little jog-jog of the convent,” was to Fauchelevent an astonishment comparable to that of a person who should see a seagull fishing in the gutter in the Rue St. Denis.

Jean Valjean continued:

“The question is, how to get out without being seen. This is the means. But in the first place tell me, how is it done? where is this coffin?”

“The empty one?”

“Yes.”

“Down in what is called the dead-room. It is on two sawhorses and under the pall.”

“How long is the coffin?”

“Six feet.”

“What is the dead-room?”

“It is a room on the ground floor, with a grated window towards the garden, closed on the outside with a shutter, and two doors; one leading to the convent, the other to the church.”

“What church?”

“The church on the street, the church for everybody.”

“Have you the keys of those two doors?”

“No. I have the keys of the door that opens into the convent; the porter has the key of the door that opens into the church.”

“When does the porter open that door?”

“Only to let in the undertaker’s helpers, who come after the coffin; as soon as the coffin goes out, the door is closed again.”

“Who nails up the coffin?”

“I do.”

“Who puts the cloth on it?”

“I do.”

“Are you alone?”

“No other man, except the police physician, can enter the dead-room. That is even written upon the wall.”

“Could you, to-night, when all are asleep in the convent, hide me in that room?”

“No. But I can hide you in a little dark closet which opens into the dead-room, where I keep my burial tools, and of which I have the care and the key.”

“At what hour will the hearse come after the coffin to-morrow?”

“About three o‘clock in the afternoon. The burial takes place at the Vaugirard cemetery, a little before night. It is not very near.”

“I shall remain hidden in your tool-closet all night and all the morning. And about eating? I shall be hungry.”

“I will bring you something.”

“You can come and nail me up in the coffin at two o‘clock.”

Fauchelevent started back, and began to snap his fingers.

“But it is impossible!”

“Pshaw! to take a hammer and drive some nails into a board?”

What seemed unheard-of to Fauchelevent was, we repeat, simple to Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean had been in worse straits. He who has been a prisoner knows the art of making himself small according to the dimensions of the place for escape. The prisoner is subject to flight as the sick man is to the crisis which cures or kills him. An escape is a cure. What does not one undergo to be cured? To be nailed up and carried out in a chest like a bundle, to live a long time in a box, to find air where there is none, to economise the breath for entire hours, to know how to be stifled without dying—that was one of the somber talents of Jean Valjean.

Moreover, a coffin in which there is a living being, that convict’s expedient, is also an emperor’s expedient. If we can believe the monk Austin Castillejo, this was the means which Charles V, desiring after his abdication to see La Plombes again a last time, employed to bring her into the monastery of St. Juste and to take her out again.

Fauchelevent, recovering a little, exclaimed:

“But how will you manage to breathe?”

“I shall breathe.”

“In that box? Only to think of it suffocates me.”

“You surely have a drill, you can make a few little holes about the mouth here and there, and you can nail it without drawing the upper board tight.”

“Good! But if you happen to cough or sneeze?”

“He who is escaping never coughs and never sneezes.”

And Jean Valjean added:

“Father Fauchelevent, I must decide: either to be arrested here, or to be willing to go out in the hearse.”

Everybody has noticed the taste which cats have for stopping and loitering in a half-open door. Who has not said to a cat: Why don’t you come in? There are men who, with an opportunity half-open before them, have a similar tendency to remain undecided between two resolutions, at the risk of being crushed by destiny abruptly closing the opportunity. The overly prudent, cats as they are, and because they are cats, sometimes run more danger than the bold. Fauchelevent was of this hesitating nature. However, Jean Valjean’s coolness won him over in spite of himself. He grumbled:

“It is true, there is no other way.”

Jean Valjean resumed:

“The only thing that I am anxious about, is what will be done at the cemetery.”

“That is just what does not embarrass me,” exclaimed Fauchelevent. “If you are sure of getting yourself out of the coffin, I am sure of getting you out of the grave. The gravedigger is a drunkard and a friend of mine. He is Father Mestienne. An old son of the old vine. The gravedigger puts the dead in the grave, and I put the gravedigger in my pocket. I will tell you what will take place. We shall arrive a little before dusk, three-quarters of an hour before the cemetery gates are closed. The hearse will go to the grave. I shall follow: that is my business. I will have a hammer, a chisel, and some pincers in my pocket. The hearse stops, the bearers tie a rope around your coffin and let you down. The priest says the prayers, makes the sign of the cross, sprinkles the holy water, and is off. I remain alone with Father Mestienne. He is my friend, I tell you. One of two things; either he will be drunk, or he will not be drunk. If he is not drunk, I say to him: come and take a drink before the
Good Quince
is shut. I get him away, I fuddle him; Father Mestienne is not long in getting fuddled, he is always half way. I lay him under the table, I take his card from him to return to the cemetery with! and I come back without him. You will have only me to deal with. If he is drunk, I say to him: be off. I’ll do your work. He goes away, and I pull you out of the hole.”

Jean Valjean extended his hand, upon which Fauchelevent threw himself with a rustic outburst of touching devotion.

“It is settled, Father Fauchelevent. All will go well.”

“Provided nothing goes amiss,” thought Fauchelevent. “How terrible that would be!”

NEXT DAY, as the sun was declining, the scattered passers-by on the Boulevard du Maine took off their hats at the passage of an old-fashioned hearse, adorned with death‘s-heads, cross-bones, and tear-drops. In this hearse there was a coffin covered with a white cloth upon which was displayed a large black cross like a great dummy with hanging arms. A draped carriage, in which might be seen a priest in a surplice, and a choir-boy in a red skullcap, followed. Two bearers in grey uniform with black trimmings walked on the right and left of the hearse. In the rear came an old man dressed like a labourer, who limped. The procession moved towards the Vaugirard cemetery.

Sticking out of the man’s pocket were the handle of a hammer, the blade of a cold chisel, and the double handles of a pair of pincers.

The Vaugirard cemetery was an exception among the cemeteries of Paris. It had its peculiar usages, as it had its porte-cochère, and its small door which, in the neighbourhood, old people faithful to archaic words called the horse-man’s door and the pedestrian door. The Bernardine-Benedictines of the Petit Picpus had obtained the right, as we have said, to be buried in a corner apart and at night, this ground having formerly belonged to their community. The gravediggers, having thus to work in the cemetery in the evening in summer, and at night in winter, were subject to a special regulation. The gates of the cemeteries of Paris closed at that epoch at sunset, and, this being a measure of municipal order, the Vaugirard cemetery was subject to it like the rest.
^bp
The gatehouse door and the pedestrian door were two contiguous gratings; near which was a pavilion built by the architect Perronet, in which the guardian of the cemetery lived. These gratings therefore inexorably turned upon their hinges the instant the sun disappeared behind the dome of the Invalides. If any gravedigger, at that moment, had lingered in the cemetery his only resource for getting out was his gravedigger’s card, given him by the administration of funeral ceremonies. A sort of letterbox was arranged in the shutter of the gate-keeper’s window. The gravedigger dropped his card into this box, the gate-keeper heard it fall, pulled the string, and the pedestrian door opened. If the gravedigger did not have his card, he gave his name; the gate-keeper, sometimes in bed and asleep, got up, went to identify the gravedigger, and open the door with the key; the gravedigger went out, but paid fifteen francs fine.

This cemetery, with its peculiar procedures, violated the symmetry of the administration. It was suppressed shortly after 1830. The Mont Par nasse Cemetery, called the Cemetery of the East, has succeeded it, and has inherited this famous drinking house let into the Vaugirard cemetery, which was surmounted by a quince painted on a board, which looked on one side upon the tables of the drinkers, and on the other upon graves, with this inscription:
The Good Quince.
^bq

The Vaugirard cemetery was what might be called a decayed cemetery. It was falling into disuse. Mould was invading it, flowers were leaving it. The well-to-do citizens little cared to be buried at Vaugirard; it sounded poor. Père Lachaise is very fine! to be buried in Père Lachaise is like having mahogany furniture. That says elegance to everyone. The Vaugirard cemetery was a venerable inclosure, laid out like an old French garden. Straight walks, box, evergreens, hollies, old tombs under old yews, very high grass. Night there was terrible. There were some very dismal outlines there.

The sun had not yet set when the hearse with the white pall and the black cross entered the avenue of the Vaugirard cemetery. The lame man who followed it was no other than Fauchelevent.

The burial of Mother Crucifixion in the vault under the altar, the departure of Cosette, the introduction of Jean Valjean into the dead-room, all had been carried out without obstruction, and nothing had gone wrong.

We will say, by the way, the inhumation of Mother Crucifixion under the convent altar is, to us, a perfectly venial thing. It is one of those faults which resemble a duty. The nuns had accomplished it, not only without discomposure, but with an approving conscience. In the cloister, what is called the “government” is only an interference with authority, an interference which is always questionable. First the rule of the order; as to the law, we will see. Men, make as many laws as you please, but keep them for yourselves. The tribute to Cæsar is never more than the remnant of the tribute to God. A prince is nothing in the presence of a principle.

Fauchelevent limped behind the hearse, very well satisfied. His two twin plots, one with the nuns, the other with M. Madeleine, one for the convent, the other against it, had succeeded equally well. Jean Valjean’s calmness had that powerful tranquillity which is contagious. Fauchelevent had now no doubt of success. What remained to be done was nothing. Within two years he had fuddled the gravedigger ten times, good Father Mestienne, a rubicund old fellow. Father Mestienne was play for him. He did what he liked with him. He controlled him at will and at his fancy. Mestienne saw through Fauchelevent’s eyes.
^br
Fauchelevent’s security was complete.

At the moment the convoy entered the avenue leading to the cemetery, Fauchelevent, happy, looked at the hearse and rubbed his big hands together, saying in an undertone:

“Here’s a farce!”

Suddenly the hearse stopped; they were at the gate. It was necessary to exhibit the burial permit. The undertaker whispered with the porter of the cemetery. During this colloquy, which always causes a delay of a minute or two, somebody, an unknown man, came and placed himself behind the hearse at Fauchelevent’s side. He was a working-man, who wore a vest with large pockets, and had a pick under his arm.

Fauchelevent looked at this unknown man.

“Who are you?” he asked.

The man answered:

“The gravedigger.”

Should a man survive a cannon-shot through his breast, he would present the appearance that Fauchelevent did.

“The gravedigger?”

“Yes.”

“You!”

“Me.”

“The gravedigger is Father Mestienne.”

“He was.”

“What! he was?”

“He is dead.”

Fauchelevent was ready for anything but this, that a gravedigger could die. It is, however, true; gravediggers themselves die. By dint of digging graves for others, they open their own.