PART TWO
CEMETERIES TAKE WHAT THEY ARE GIVEN
I. IN WHICH THE WAY TO ENTER A CONVENT IS DEALT WITH
It is into this house that Jean Valjean had, as Fauchelevent said, “fallen from the sky.”
He had climbed over the garden wall at the rue Polonceau corner, the hymn of angels that he had heard in the middle of the night was the nuns singing matins; the room he had glimpsed in the dark was the chapel; the ghost he had seen stretched out on the ground was a sister making atonement; the little bell whose ringing had so strangely startled him was the gardener’s bell tied around father Fauchelevent’s knee.
Once Cosette had been put to bed, Jean Valjean and Fauchelevent had, as we saw, made a meal of a glass of wine and a lump of cheese in front of a good blazing fire; then, the only bed in the shed being occupied by Cosette, they had each thrown themselves on a bale of straw. Before shutting his eyes, Jean Valjean had said: “I have to stay here from now on.”
Fauchelevent had not been able to get those words out of his head all night. To tell the truth, neither of them got any sleep.
Jean Valjean, feeling that he’d been seen and that Javert was on his trail, realized that Cosette and he were finished if they went back to Paris. Since this latest blast of wind to blow over him had just swept him into this cloister, Jean Valjean had only one thought, to stay put. Now, for an unhappy man in his position, the convent was at once the most dangerous and the safest place to be; the most dangerous, because no man could get into it, so if he were discovered there, it would be in flagrante delicto, and being caught in the act for Jean Valjean meant just a skip and a jump from the convent to the clink; the safest, because if he managed to get himself accepted and to stay, who would think of looking for him there? To live in a place that was out of bounds—that was salvation.
Fauchelevent also racked his brains. He started out by telling himself he just didn’t get it. How come Monsieur Madeleine had managed to get in, with the walls that were there? You don’t just step over cloister walls. How come he managed to get in with a kid? You don’t just scale a high wall with a kid in your arms. Who the hell was this kid, anyway? Where had they both sprung from?
Since Fauchelevent had been at the convent, he hadn’t heard another word about Montreuil-sur-mer and he knew nothing about what had happened. Father Madeleine had that look that discourages questions and, anyway, Fauchelevent told himself that you don’t question a saint. For him Monsieur Madeleine had kept all his prestige. Only, from a few words Jean Valjean had let slip, the gardener thought he gathered that Monsieur Madeleine had gone bankrupt on account of the hard times and that he was being pursued by his creditors, or else that he had been compromised in some political affair and had gone into hiding; which did not at all worry Fauchelevent who, like a lot of our northern peasants, was an old Bonapartist at heart. Being in hiding, Monsieur Madeleine holed up in the convent and it was only natural that he wanted to stay there. But the thing Fauchelevent couldn’t explain, and that he kept going back to and was racking his brains over, was that Monsieur Madeleine was there, and that he was there with this little girl. Fauchelevent saw them, touched them, spoke to them, and didn’t believe it. The incomprehensible had just made its entrance in Fauchelevent’s shack. Fauchelevent was madly groping around in surmise and there was only one thing he could see clearly anymore: “Monsieur Madeleine saved my life.” This single certainty was enough and made up his mind for him. He took himself aside and said to himself: “Now it’s my turn.” In his conscience, he added: “Monsieur Madeleine didn’t spend much time making up his mind when it was a question of getting under the cart to pull me out.” So he decided he’d save Monsieur Madeleine.
And yet he put various questions to himself and gave himself various answers.
“After all he’s meant to me, if he was a thief, would I save him? I would. If he was a murderer, would I save him? I would. Since he’s a saint, would I save him? I would.”
But to somehow keep him in the convent, now that was a problem! Faced with this almost fantastic prospect, Fauchelevent did not back down; this poor peasant from Picardy, with no ladder other than his devotion, his goodwill, and a bit of good old country cunning placed, for once, at the service of a generous intention, undertook to scale the impossibilities of the cloister and the craggy escarpments of the rule of Saint Benedict. Father Fauchelevent was an old man who had been selfish all his life but who, at the end of his days, lame, infirm, and with no further interest in the world, found it sweet to be grateful, and seeing a virtuous deed to be done, threw himself into it like a man about to die who suddenly sees a glass of good wine he’s never tasted within reach and tosses it back with relish. We might add that the air he had been breathing for the past few years in the convent had already destroyed his personality and ended up making a good deed necessary to him, whatever it might be.
So he formed his resolution; to devote himself to Monsieur Madeleine.
We have just described him as a poor peasant from Picardy. The description is fair, but incomplete. At the point in the story where we now are, a glimpse of father Fauchelevent’s makeup might come in handy. He was a peasant, but he had been a tabellion,1 a scrivener, which added a bit of chicanery to his cunning and perspicacity to his gullibility. Having for various reasons failed in his affairs, he had fallen from being a scrivener to a carter and laborer. But despite the cursing and cracks of the whip that horses need, it seems he remained something of a lawyer deep down. He had some natural wit; he did not say “I is,” or “I has” either; he spoke well, which was a rare thing in the village; and the other peasants said of him: “He talks just like a gent with a hat.” Fauchelevent belonged, in fact, to that breed that the impertinent and flippant vocabulary of last century termed “half burgher, half boor,” and that metaphors raining down from the château onto the humble thatched cottage labeled, in the pigeonhole of commoner, “a bit of a hick, a bit of a city slicker”; or “salt and pepper.” Though badly used and abused by fate and showing the wear and tear, Fauchelevent was nevertheless an impulsive man and incredibly spontaneous—a precious quality that stops you from ever being bad. His defects and his vices, for he had a few, were entirely superficial; in short, his physiognomy was of the kind that passes the test up close to the observer. That old face had none of those unfortunate wrinkles at the top of the forehead that signify meanness or stupidity.
At daybreak, having racked his brains, father Fauchelevent opened his eyes and saw Monsieur Madeleine sitting on his bale of straw watching Cosette sleep. Fauchelevent sat up and said: “Now you’re here, how are you going to get in?”
This question summed up the situation and woke Jean Valjean out of his reverie.
The two good old codgers put their heads together.
“First,” said Fauchelevent, “you’ll begin by not setting foot outside this room. Neither the little girl nor you. One step in the garden and we’ve had it.”
“Fair enough.”
“Monsieur Madeleine,” Fauchelevent went on, “you arrived at a good moment, I mean a very bad moment, one of the ladies is very sick. That means no one will be taking much notice of what’s going on over our way. It appears she’s dying. They’re saying the forty-hour prayers. The whole community’s worked up. It keeps them busy. The one who’s about to fly off is a saint. Actually, they’re all saints here. The whole difference between them and me is that they say ‘our cell’ and I say ‘my digs.’ There’s going to be the prayer for the dying and then the prayer for the dead. For today we’ll be all right here; but I can’t say what’ll happen tomorrow.”
“But,” observed Jean Valjean, “this old shack is in the recess in the wall, it’s hidden by a kind of ruin, there are trees, you can’t see it from the convent.”
“And I might add that the nuns never come near it.”
“Well, then?” said Jean Valjean.
The question mark that underlined that “well, then?” signified: It seems to me that a person could live hidden here. It is to this question mark that Fauchelevent responded: “There are the little girls.”
“What little girls?” asked Jean Valjean.
As Fauchelevent opened his mouth to explain what he meant, a bell rang suddenly.
“The nun’s dead,” he said. “That’s the death knell.”
And he signaled Jean Valjean to listen.
The bell rang for the second time.
“That is the death knell, Monsieur Madeleine. The bell will go on tolling every minute on the dot for the next twenty-four hours until the body’s taken from the church. You see, they come out to play. At playtime, all it takes is for a ball to roll over this way and over they come, despite the ban, to look for it and they poke around here everywhere. They’re little devils, those cherubs.”
“Who?” asked Jean Valjean.
“The little girls. You’d be spotted in no time, you know. They’d sing out: ‘Look! A man!’ But there’s no danger today. There won’t be any playtime. The day’ll be all taken up with prayers. You hear the bell. As I told you, one ring a minute. That’s the death knell.”
“I understand, father Fauchelevent. There are boarders.”
And Jean Valjean thought to himself: “Look no further for Cosette’s education.”
Fauchelevent cried out: “Lord! You wouldn’t believe how many little girls there are! Twittering all around a person! And then skedaddling! Here, being a man is like having the plague. You see how they’ve stuck a bell on my shank as if I was some kind of wild beast.”
Jean Valjean was more and more pensive.
“This convent will be our salvation,” he murmured. Then he raised his voice: “Yes, the hard thing is staying in.”
“No,” said Fauchelevent, “it’s getting out.”
Jean Valjean felt the blood rush to his heart.
“Getting out!”
“Yes, Monsieur Madeleine, to come back in, you have to get out.”
And after waiting while the knell sounded again, Fauchelevent went on: “They can’t find you here like this. Where did you come from? For me, you fell out of the sky, because I know you; but the nuns, they need you to come through the door.”
All of a sudden, they heard the rather complicated ringing of another bell.
“Ah!” said Fauchelevent. “They’re ringing for the vocal mothers. They’re going in to the chapter. They always hold a chapter when someone’s died. She died at daybreak. It’s usually daybreak that you die. But can’t you get out the way you got in? Look, I don’t mean to ask, but where did you get in?”
Jean Valjean went white. The very idea of going back down into that dreadful street made him shudder. Imagine getting out of a forest full of tigers and then, once you are out, a friend advises you to steel yourself and go back in. Jean Valjean conjured up all the police still swarming over the area, officers on the lookout, sentries all over the place. Hideous fists reaching for his collar, maybe Javert at the corner of the square.
“Not possible!” he said. “Father Fauchelevent, let’s just say I fell from on high.”
“But I believe you, I believe you,” Fauchelevent replied. “You don’t need to tell me that. The good Lord would’ve taken you in hand to get a closer look at you and then let go his hold. Only, he meant to put you in a convent for men and he got it wrong. There, another ring. This one’s to alert the porter to go and notify the mairie so they can go and alert the doctor of the dead and he can come and see that there is a dead woman. All that, that’s the ceremony of dying. They don’t much like that visit, these good ladies. A doctor, he doesn’t believe in anything. He lifts the veil. Sometimes he even lifts something else. They’ve certainly been in a hurry to notify the doctor this time! What’s up, I wonder? Your little girl is still asleep. What’s her name?”
“Cosette.”
“Is she your little girl? What I mean is, are you her grandfather?”
“Yes.”
“For her, getting out of here will be easy. I’ve got my tradesman’s entrance that opens onto the courtyard. I knock. The porter opens. I have my basket on my back, the little one’s inside. Out I go. Father Fauchelevent’s off with his basket, it’s as simple as that. You tell the little one to stay nice and quiet. She’ll be under the lid. I’ll drop her off as fast as I can at a good old friend of mine’s, a woman who sells fruit in the rue du Chemin-Vert, who’s hard of hearing and who’s got a little bed at her place. I’ll shout in the fruit seller’s ear that it’s one of my nieces and to mind her for me till tomorrow. Then the little one can come back with you. For I’ll get you back in. I have to. But what about you, how are you going to get out?”
Jean Valjean nodded.
“No one must see me. That’s the rub, father Fauchelevent. Find a way of getting me out like Cosette in a basket and under a lid.”
Fauchelevent scratched his earlobe with the middle finger of his left hand, a sure sign of serious confusion.
A third ring of the bell offered a diversion.
“That’s the death doctor leaving,” said Fauchelevent. “He’s looked and he’s said: ‘She’s dead, too right.’ When the doctor has stuck a visa for paradise in the passport, the undertakers send in a coffin. If it’s a mother, the mothers lay her out; if it’s a sister, the sisters lay her out. After that, I nail it up. It’s all part of my gardening. A gardener is a bit of a gravedigger. They put her in a low room in the church where there’s a connecting door with the street and where the only man who can go in is the doctor of the dead. I don’t count the undertaker’s assistants or myself as men. It’s in that room that I nail the coffin. The undertaker’s assistants come and pick it up and Bob’s your uncle! That’s how you go off to heaven. They bring a box with nothing in it and they take it away with something in it. That’s what a funeral’s all about. De profundis.”
A horizontal ray of sunlight brushed the face of the sleeping Cosette, who opened her mouth a little and looked like an angel drinking the light. Jean Valjean was watching her again. He had stopped listening to Fauchelevent.
Not being listened to is no reason to keep quiet. The good old gardener went on calmly repeating himself: “They dig the hole at the Vaugirard Cemetery. They say they’re going to get rid of it, this Vaugirard Cemetery. It’s an old cemetery that’s in breach of the regulations, it doesn’t have the uniform and it’s going to take retirement. It’s a shame because it’s nice and handy. I’ve got a friend there, old father Mestienne, the gravedigger. The nuns from here have a special privilege, which is being carted off to the cemetery at nightfall. There is a decree of the prefecture, just for them. But what a lot has happened since yesterday! Mother Crucifixion is dead and father Madeleine—”
“Is buried,” said Jean Valjean, with a sad smile.
Fauchelevent made the word ricochet.
“Buried—! Christ! If you were here for good it would be a real burial.”
The bell rang out for the fourth time. Fauchelevent swiftly grabbed the knee pad with the little bell and buckled it round his knee again.
“This time, it’s me. The mother prioress is asking for me. Don’t move, Monsieur Madeleine. Wait for me. Something’s happened. If you’re hungry, there’s wine and bread and cheese.”
And he beetled out of the shack, saying: “I’m coming! I’m coming!” Jean Valjean saw him running across the garden, as fast as his bad leg would let him, all the while casting sidelong glances at his melon beds.
Less than ten minutes later, father Fauchelevent, whose bell put the nuns to flight as he passed, knocked softly on a door and a soft voice answered: “Forever. Forever.” That is, “Come in.”
The door was the one in the visitors’ room reserved for the gardener in the course of his duties. The visitors’ room was adjacent to the chapter hall. The prioress was sitting on the only chair in the visitors’ room, waiting for Fauchelevent.
II. FAUCHELEVENT CONFRONTED WITH A PROBLEM
To look both agitated and grave in critical situations is peculiar to certain personalities and certain professions, notably priests and nuns. The moment Fauchelevent came in, this dual sign of preoccupation was stamped on the physiognomy of the prioress, who was the charming and learned Mademoiselle de Blemeur, Mother Innocent, normally so gay.
The gardener gave a frightened bow and remained standing at the threshold of the cell. The prioress, who was saying her rosary, looked up and said: “Ah, it’s you, father Fauvent.”
This abbreviation had been adopted in the convent.
Fauchelevent began to bow once more.
“Father Fauvent, I had you called.”
“Here I am, Reverend Mother.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“And I, for my part,” said Fauchelevent with a recklessness that frightened him inside, “I have something to say to the most reverend mother.”
The prioress looked at him.
“Ah, you have some communication to make to me.”
“A request.”
“Well, then, speak.”
The good Fauchelevent, ex-scrivener, belonged to that category of peasants who have aplomb. A certain canny ignorance is a strength; you don’t suspect it and it grabs you. For a little over two years, since he had lived in the convent, Fauchelevent had done well in the community. Always on his own, even while he went about his business in the garden, he scarcely had anything else to do but be curious. At a remove as he was from all these veiled women coming and going, he scarcely saw anything before him but bustling shadows. By dint of attention and perspicacity, he had managed to put some flesh back into all these phantoms, and for him these dead women were alive. He was like a deaf man whose sight is enhanced or like a blind man whose hearing is sharpened. He had applied himself to unraveling the meaning of all the different bells and he had managed to do so, to the point where this enigmatic and glum cloister held no secrets for him; it was a sphinx that blurted out all its secrets in his ear. Knowing everything, Fauchelevent hid everything. That was his art. The whole convent thought he was stupid. A great merit in religion. The vocal mothers prized Fauchelevent. He was a curious mute. He inspired confidence. On top of this, he was regular in his habits, and went out only for the demonstrable necessities of the orchard and the vegetable garden. This discretion in his conduct was chalked up to his credit. Though that had not stopped him from getting two men to spill the beans: in the convent, the porter, who knew all about the peculiarities of the visitors’ room; and, in the cemetery, the gravedigger, who knew all about the singularities of the sepulchre; accordingly, when it came to the nuns, he was doubly informed, about their lives, on the one hand, and on the other, about their deaths. But he did not abuse this knowledge in any way. The congregation thought a lot of him. Old, lame, blind as a bat, probably a bit deaf—so many good qualities! He’d have been hard to replace.
So, with the assurance of a man who feels himself to be appreciated, the dear old man stood before the reverend prioress and launched into a bucolic address that was fairly rambling and extremely deep. He went on at length about his age, his infirmities, the weight of the years now bearing down on him. The growing demands of his work, the size of the garden, nights to be spent, like last night for instance, when he had had to put straw mats over the melon beds because of the moon … And he finished off by saying: that he had a brother (the prioress gave a start)—a brother who was not young (second start of the prioress, but a reassured start)—that, if they liked, this brother could come and move in with him and help him, that he was an excellent gardener, that the community would get good work out of him, much more than he himself could give; and that, otherwise, if his brother was not accepted, as he, the eldest, felt himself to be broken down and no longer up to the job, he would be obliged, with much regret, to pack up and go … And that his brother had a little girl he would bring with him, who would be raised in God here in the house and who might, who knows? one day make a nun.
When he had finished speaking, the prioress interrupted the slipping of her rosary beads through her fingers and said to him: “Can you, between now and this evening, get hold of a strong iron bar?”
“What for?”
“To be used as a lever.”
“Yes, Reverend Mother,” answered Fauchelevent.
The prioress got up without saying another word and walked into the neighboring room, which was the chapter hall where the vocal mothers were probably assembled. Fauchelevent was left to his own devices.