V. IT’S NOT ENOUGH TO BE A DRUNK TO BE IMMORTAL
The next day, as the sun was going down, the people going up and down the boulevard du Maine took their hats off as an old-model hearse went by, decorated with death’s-heads, crossbones, and teardrops. Inside the hearse was a coffin covered with a white sheet on which a huge black cross spread out like a great dead woman with her arms hanging out. A draped coach, in which a priest in a surplice and a choirboy in a red skullcap could be seen, followed behind. Two undertakers in gray uniforms with black trim were walking to the left and right of the hearse. Bringing up the rear came an old man in the clothes of a laborer, limping. This cortège was heading for the Vaugirard Cemetery.
You could see sticking out of the old man’s pocket the handle of a hammer, the blade of a cold chisel, and the double handle of a pair of pliers.
Vaugirard Cemetery was an exception among the cemeteries of Paris. It had its own peculiar customs, just as it had its porte cochère and its double gate that the old people in the quartier, holding fast to the old words, called the bridle gate and the pedestrian gate. The Bernardine-Benedictines of Petit-Picpus had obtained, as we said, the right to be buried apart in a corner and at night, this ground having once belonged to their community. The gravediggers accordingly had to work in the evening in summer and at night in winter and were kept to a peculiar discipline. In those days the gates of the cemeteries of Paris were shut at sunset, and, since this was a regulation made by the municipality, Vaugirard Cemetery was subject to it like the rest. The bridle gate and the pedestrian gate were two iron gates standing side by side next to a gatehouse built by the architect Perronet, where the cemetery gatekeeper lived. These gates thus turned inexorably on their hinges the instant the sun disappeared behind the dome of the Invalides. If any gravedigger was caught lagging behind at that moment, his only resort for getting out was his gravedigger’s pass, provided by the administration of the funeral parlor. A kind of letter box had been cut into the shutter of the gatekeeper’s window. The gravedigger dropped his pass into this box, the gatekeeper heard it fall, pulled the cord, and the pedestrian gate opened. If the gravedigger did not have his pass, he called out his name and the gatekeeper, who was sometimes in bed asleep, would get up, go to identify the gravedigger, and open the gate with his key; the gravedigger would then go out—after paying a fifteen-franc fine.
This cemetery, with its novel practices outside the general run of things, disturbed the symmetry of the administration. It was closed down soon after 1830. Montparnasse Cemetery, known as the East Cemetery, has taken over from it, inheriting the famous watering hole bordering the Vaugirard Cemetery that used to have a wooden signboard over it with a quince painted on it; it had an L-shaped bar, with the tables of drinkers on one side and the graves on the other, and this sign: AU BON COING—At the Good Quince.
Vaugirard Cemetery was what we might describe as a cemetery that had lost its bloom. It was falling into decay. Mold was invading it, the flowers were departing. Well-heeled bourgeois didn’t think much of being buried in Vaugirard; it reeked of poverty. Père-Lachaise, and don’t spare the horses! To be buried at Père-Lachaise was like having mahogany furniture. It was a sign of elegance for all to see. Vaugirard Cemetery was a venerable paddock, planted in the style of an old French garden. Straight paths, box hedges, cedars, holly, old graves under old yews, very tall grass. Night there was dramatic. There were some very lugubrious shapes and shadows there.
The sun had not yet set when the hearse with the white sheet and the black cross turned into the avenue that led to the Vaugirard Cemetery. The lame old man who was following it was, of course, none other than Fauchelevent.
The burial of Mother Crucifixion in the vault under the altar, the removal of Cosette, the smuggling of Jean Valjean into the room of the dead—all had gone smoothly and without a snag.
We might note in passing that the inhumation of Mother Crucifixion under the convent altar is a perfectly venial sin to our way of thinking. It is one of those sins that look very much like a duty. The nuns had carried it off, not only without any qualms but to the applause of their consciences. In the cloister, what is known as “the government” is merely an interference with their authority, an interference that was always questionable. The rule comes first; as for the civil code, we’ll see. Men, you can make as many laws as you like, but keep them to yourselves. Caesar’s toll is never anything more than what is left over from God’s toll. A prince is nothing next to a principle.
Fauchelevent limped along behind the hearse, happy as can be. His two mysteries, his two twin plots, one in league with the nuns, the other with Monsieur Madeleine, one for the convent, the other against, had succeeded together, one after the other. Jean Valjean’s calmness was one of those powerful tranquilizers that are contagious. Fauchelevent was no longer worried about whether they would bring it off. What remained to be done was nothing. For the past two years, he had got the gravedigger, good old father Mestienne, drunk a dozen times. He could do what he liked with him. The man was putty in his hands. Mestienne’s head changed shape to fit Fauchelevent’s cap. Fauchelevent felt completely secure.
As the convoy entered the avenue leading to the cemetery, Fauchelevent looked at the hearse, happy, and rubbed his big hands together, muttering to himself: “Not a bad joke!”
Suddenly the hearse stopped; they had reached the gate. The burial permit had to be shown. The man from the funeral parlor went and had a word with the cemetery gatekeeper. During this conversation, which always involves a wait of one or two minutes, someone, a stranger, came and stood behind the hearse next to Fauchelevent. He was some sort of laborer in a jacket with big pockets and a pick under his arm.
Fauchelevent looked at the stranger.
“Who are you?” he asked.
The man replied: “The gravedigger.”
If you’d survived a cannon blast full in the chest, you’d look like Fauchelevent.
“The gravedigger!”
“Yep.”
“You!”
“Me.”
“Father Mestienne is the gravedigger.”
“Was.”
“What do you mean, was?”
“He’s dead.”
Fauchelevent had been ready for anything, except that, that a gravedigger could die. And yet it is true; gravediggers themselves die. By dint of digging the graves of others, they open up their own.
Fauchelevent remained speechless. He barely had the strength to stammer: “But he can’t be!”
“He is.”
“But,” he repeated feebly, “father Mestienne is the gravedigger.”
“After Napoléon, Louis XVIII. After Mestienne, Gribier. Peasant, my name is Gribier.”
Fauchelevent, white as a sheet, studied this Gribier.
He was a long, skinny, pallid man, perfectly dismal. He looked like a doctor who had missed his calling and turned to gravedigging.
Fauchelevent burst out laughing.
“Ah, it’s funny, the things that happen! Father Mestienne is dead. Little father Mestienne is dead, but long live little father Lenoir! You know what little father Lenoir is? It’s the small jug of red at six a shot. It’s the jug of Suresnes, for heaven’s sake! Real Paris Suresnes! Ah, old Mestienne’s dead, eh! I’m sorry to hear that; he was a real bon vivant. But you’re a bon vivant, too. Isn’t that right, friend? We’ll go and have a drink together, in a sec.”
The man replied: “I’ve been to school; I’ve done third year. I never drink.”
The hearse had started off again and was rolling along down the main path of the cemetery.
Fauchelevent had slackened his pace. He was limping, even more from anxiety than infirmity.
The gravedigger was walking ahead of him.
Fauchelevent was giving the unexpected Gribier the once-over again.
He was one of those men who look old when they’re still young and who are skinny but very strong.
“Hey, friend!” cried Fauchelevent.
The man turned round.
“I’m the gravedigger from the convent.”
“My colleague,” said the man.
Fauchelevent was illiterate but sharp as a tack and he knew right away that he was dealing with a formidable species, a smooth talker.
He grumbled: “So father Mestienne died, just like that.”
The man replied: “Exactly. The good Lord consulted his book of due dates. It was father Mestienne’s turn. So father Mestienne died.”
Fauchelevent repeated mechanically: “The good Lord …”
“The good Lord,” said the man with authority. “For the philosophers, the Eternal Father; for the Jacobins, the Supreme Being.”
“Aren’t we going to get to know each other?” stammered Fauchelevent.
“We already do. You’re a peasant, I’m a Parisian.”
“We don’t know each other until we’ve drunk together. The man who empties his glass, empties his heart. You’ll come and have a drink with me. You can’t refuse.”
“The job comes first.”
Fauchelevent thought: “I’m finished. We were only a few turns of the wheel from the little path that leads to the nuns’ corner.”
The gravedigger went on: “Peasant, I’ve got seven little nippers to feed. Since they have to eat, I can’t drink.”
And he added with the satisfaction of a serious soul, pontificating: “Their hunger is the enemy of my thirst.”
The hearse turned past a stand of cypresses, left the main path, took a small path, drove into the grounds, and bored into a thicket. This indicated the immediate proximity of the sepulchre. Fauchelevent slowed down again but could not slow down the hearse. Luckily the ground was loose and wet with all the winter rains and it stuck to the wheels, bogging the wheels down and making the going hard.
He caught up with the gravedigger.
“They have such a good little Argenteuil wine,” mumured Fauchelevent.
“Villager,” the man resumed, “I really should not be a gravedigger. My father was a porter at the Prytanée. He intended me for Literature. But he had a run of bad luck. He lost money on the stock exchange. I was forced to give up the profession of author. But I am still a public letter-writer.”
“So you’re not a gravedigger, then?” Fauchelevent shot back, clutching at straws, however weak.
“One doesn’t rule out the other. I’m holding two jobs concurrently.”
Fauchelevent did not understand this last word.
“Let’s go and have a drink,” he said.
Here, an observation is necessary. Fauchelevent, whatever his anguish, was proposing a drink but forgot to say who was paying. Normally, Fauchelevent made the proposal, and father Mestienne paid. The offer of a drink was obviously the result of the new situation created by the new gravedigger and this offer had to be made, but the old gardener, not unintentionally, had left the proverbial hour of reckoning in the dark. When it came down to it, he, Fauchelevent, however nervous he might be, was not keen to cough up the money.
The gravedigger went on with a superior smile: “You’ve got to eat. I agreed to take on father Mestienne’s obligations. When you’ve almost finished school, you are a philosopher. On top of working with my hands, I have added working with my arms. I have my writer’s stall in the market in the rue de Sèvres. You know? The Marché-aux-Parapluies. All the women who are cooks in the Croix-Rouge6 turn to me. I tart up their declarations to their true loves. In the morning I write love letters, in the afternoon I dig graves. That’s life, hayseed.”
The hearse advanced. Fauchelevent, at the peak of anxiety, looked all around him. Great beads of sweat were running down his forehead.
“Yet,” the gravedigger continued, “you cannot serve two mistresses. I have to choose between the pen and the pick. The pick is ruining my hands.”
The hearse pulled up. The choirboy got down from the draped car, followed by the priest. One of the small front wheels was up a bit on a pile of dirt beyond which an open grave could be seen.
“Not a bad joke!” Fauchelevent repeated, aghast.
VI. BETWEEN FOUR PLANKS
Who was in the coffin? We know. Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean had arranged himself to stay alive in there and he was more or less still breathing.
It is a funny thing how a secure conscience makes everything else secure. The whole scheme Jean Valjean had cooked up beforehand was working, and working well, from the start the night before. He was counting, like Fauchelevent, on father Mestienne. He had no doubt about the end result. Never was there a more critical situation, never more complete calm.
The four planks of the coffin gave off a kind of terrible peace. It was as though something of the repose of the dead had entered into Jean Valjean’s tranquillity. From the depths of this bier he had been able to follow and was following all the phases of the formidable drama that he was playing with death.
Not long after Fauchelevent had finished nailing on the top plank, Jean Valjean felt himself being carted out, then rolling along. At the decrease in jolts, he felt that they had gone from the cobblestones to hard ground, that is, that they were leaving the streets and getting onto the boulevards. At a dull thump, he guessed they were crossing the pont d’Austerlitz. At the first stop, he had understood they were going into the cemetery; at the second stop, he said to himself: “Here’s the grave.”
Suddenly he felt hands grabbing the coffin, then a harsh scraping against the planks; he realized that this was a rope being tied around the coffin to lower it down into the freshly dug hole. Then he had a kind of dizzy spell. The undertakers and the gravedigger had probably tipped the coffin and let it down headfirst. He swiftly got his bearings back, feeling himself to be horizontal again and immobile. He had just touched bottom. He felt a certain chill.
A voice rose above him, icy and solemn. He heard, so slowly he could grasp them one after the other, Latin words that he could not understand rising and falling away: “Qui dormiunt terrae pulvere, evigilabunt; alii in vitam aeternam, et alii in opprobrium, ut videant semper.”
A child’s voice said: “De profundis.”
The grave voice started again: “Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine.”
The child’s voice responded: “Et lux perpetua luceat ei.”
He heard something like the gentle patter of a few drops of rain on the plank that covered him. It was probably holy water. He thought: “This will soon be over. Hang on a bit longer. The priest is going to go away. Fauchelevent will take Mestienne for a drink. They’ll leave me alone. Then Fauchelevent will come back alone, and I’ll get out of here. This will all take a good hour.”
The grave voice resumed: “Requiescat in pace.”
And the child’s voice said: “Amen.”
Jean Valjean cocked an ear and heard something like footsteps receding.
“There they go,” he thought. “I’m on my own.”
Suddenly he heard over his head a noise that sounded like a clap of thunder. It was a shovelful of dirt falling on the coffin.
A second shovelful of dirt fell. One of the holes through which he was breathing blocked up. A third shovelful of dirt fell. Then a fourth. Some things are stronger than the strongest of men. Jean Valjean passed out.
VII. IN WHICH WE FIND THE ORIGINS OF THE SAYING: DON’T LOSE YOUR PASS
Here is what happened above the coffin in which Jean Valjean lay.
When the hearse had driven away, when the priest and the choirboy had climbed back into the carriage and gone, Fauchelevent, who didn’t take his eyes off the gravedigger, saw him bend down and grab hold of his shovel, which was sticking straight up in the pile of dirt.
So then Fauchelevent made an extreme resolution.
He stood between the grave and the gravedigger, crossed his arms, and said: “I’m paying!”
The gravedigger looked at him in amazement and replied: “What’s that, peasant?”
Fauchelevent repeated: “I’m paying!”
“What for?”
“The wine.”
“What wine?”
“The Argenteuil.”
“Where is this Argenteuil?”
“Au Bon Coing.”
“Leave it alone!” said the gravedigger.
And he threw another shovelful of dirt on the coffin.
The coffin made a hollow sound. Fauchelevent felt himself teeter and almost fell into the grave himself. In a voice in which the rattling sound of choking could be heard, he yelled: “Come on, friend, before the Bon Coing closes!”
The gravedigger filled his shovel with another load of dirt. Fauchelevent went on: “I’m paying!”
And he grabbed the gravedigger’s arm.
“Listen to me, friend. I’m the convent gravedigger. I’m here to help you. It’s a job that can be done at night. So let’s start by having a drink.”
And while he continued to talk, while he clung to this desperate gambit, he had a gloomy thought: “And what happens even if he does have a drink? Will he even get tipsy?”
“Provincial,” said the gravedigger, “if you insist, I consent. We’ll have a drink. After the work’s done, not a moment before.”
And he set his shovel in motion once more. Fauchelevent held him back.
“It’s Argenteuil at six sous a pop!”
“For heaven’s sake,” said the gravedigger, “you’re like a bell-ringer. Dingdong, ding-dong; same thing over and over. Shove off, will you.”
And he launched a second shovelful.
Fauchelevent had reached the point where you no longer have a clue what you are saying.
“Oh, come on! Come and have a drink,” he yelled, “since I’m the one that’s paying!”
“When we’ve put the baby to bed,” said the gravedigger.
He chucked in the third shovelful.
Then he stuck the shovel in the ground and added: “You see, it’s going to be a cold night tonight and the dead woman’s going to give us a piece of her mind if we plant her here without a cover.”
At that moment, while he loaded his shovel, the gravedigger bent down and the pocket of his jacket gaped wide open.
Fauchelevent’s wild eyes went automatically to this pocket and stayed there.
The sun was not yet hidden below the horizon; there was enough light to make out something white at the bottom of this gaping pocket.
The entire load of lightning that the eyes of a peasant from Picardy can hold flashed in Fauchelevent’s pupils. An idea had just occurred to him.
Without the gravedigger’s noticing, busy as he was with his shovelful of dirt, he slipped his hand in the pocket from behind and withdrew the white thing at the bottom.
The gravedigger sent the fourth shovelful into the grave.
The moment he turned back to get a fifth shovelful, Fauchelevent gave him a profoundly calm look and said: “By the way, newcomer, have you got your pass?”
The gravedigger stopped in his tracks.
“What pass?”
“The sun’s going down.”
“Good for him, let him put his nightcap on.”
“The cemetery gate’s about to shut.”
“So what?”
“Have you got your pass?”
“Ah, my pass!” said the gravedigger.
And he fumbled in his pocket.
When he’d fumbled in one pocket, he fumbled in the other. He went on to his watch pockets, explored the first, turned the second inside out.
“Oh, no!” he said, “I don’t have my card. I must have forgotten it.”
“Fifteen francs fine,” said Fauchelevent.
The gravedigger turned green. Green is what pallid people turn when they go pale.
“Jesus wept!” he cried. “Fifteen francs fine!”
“Three hundred sous,” said Fauchelevent.
The gravedigger dropped his shovel.
Fauchelevent’s turn had come.
“Oh, well,” said Fauchelevent, “despair not, conscript. No need to slit your wrists and put the grave to use. Fifteen francs is fifteen francs and besides, you can always not pay. I’m an old hand, you’re new. I know the tricks of the trade, the traps, the ins and outs. Let me give you a word of friendly advice. One thing is clear, and that is that the sun’s going down, it’s hit the dome, the cemetery is going to close in five minutes.”
“That’s true,” replied the gravedigger.
“Five minutes starting from now is not enough time for you to fill up the grave—it’s as deep as the devil, this hole—and get out before they shut the gates.”
“You’re right.”
“In which case, there’s the fifteen-franc fine.”
“Fifteen francs.”
“But you have time—where do you live?”
“A stone’s throw from the barrière. A quarter of an hour from here, rue de Vaugirard, number eighty-seven.”
“You have time, if you run as fast as your pins will go, to get out now.”
“Quite right.”
“Once you’re through the gate, you scurry home, grab your pass, come back, the cemetery gatekeeper’ll open up for you and then you won’t have to pay, because you’ll have your pass. And then you can bury your dead. Me, I’ll keep an eye on her for you to make sure she doesn’t run away.”
“I owe you my life, peasant!”
“Get cracking,” said Fauchelevent.
The gravedigger, overcome with gratitude, shook his hand and turned on his heel and ran.
When the gravedigger had disappeared through the bushes, Fauchelevent listened until his footsteps died away, then he bent over the grave and said in a low voice: “Father Madeleine!”
No answer.
Fauchelevent gave a shudder. He rolled into the grave more than he scrambled down into it, threw himself at the head of the coffin and cried: “Are you there?”
Silence in the coffin.
Fauchelevent could no longer breathe he was shaking so hard; he took his cold chisel and his hammer and wrenched the top plank off. Jean Valjean’s face appeared in the twilight, eyes closed, pale.
Fauchelevent’s hair stood on end, he shot to his feet, then fell with his back against the wall of the grave, ready to collapse on top of the coffin. He looked at Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean lay there lifeless, ashen and still.
Fauchelevent murmured in a voice so low it was barely a breath: “He’s dead!”
He straightened himself up, crossed his arms so violently he whacked his shoulders with his clenched fists and cried: “This is how I save him!”
Then the poor man began to sob. Carrying on a monologue, for it is a mistake to think the monologue is not a natural phenomenon. Extreme emotions often speak out loud.
“It’s all father Mestienne’s fault. Why did he have to die, the idiot? Why did he croak the very moment we weren’t expecting it? He’s the one who’s killed Monsieur Madeleine. Father Madeleine! He’s in the coffin. He’s already been carted here. It’s all over … But, things like this just don’t make any sense, do they? God Almighty! He’s dead! And what about the little girl? What am I to do with her? What’s the fruit-hawker woman going to say? How in Christ’s name can a man like that die like this? When I think how he got under my cart! Father Madeleine! Father Madeleine! Of course, he suffocated, I told him he would. He wouldn’t listen. Here’s a pretty turnup for you, indeed! He’s dead, that good man, the best man there was of all the good ones God made! What about his little girl! Ah! To start with, I’m not going back there. I’m staying put. Imagine pulling a stunt like this! A lot of good it’s done being two old men if all we are is two old lunatics. But to start with, how did he manage to get into the convent? That was how it all started. You’re not supposed to do that sort of thing. Father Madeleine! Father Madeleine! Father Madeleine! Madeleine! Monsieur Madeleine! Monsieur le maire! He can’t hear me. How are you going to get yourself out of this one, I ask you!”
And he tore his hair.
In the distance, a harsh grating sound could be heard. It was the cemetery gates closing.
Fauchelevent leaned over Jean Valjean, and suddenly he sort of bounced up and leaped back—as far as you can leap back in a grave. Jean Valjean had his eyes open and was looking at him.
To see a dead person is frightening, to see a person resurrected is almost as bad. Fauchelevent turned to stone, pale, wild-eyed, overwhelmed by all these extreme emotions, not knowing whether he was dealing with the living or the dead, looking at Jean Valjean who was looking back at him.
“I almost went to sleep,” said Jean Valjean.
And he sat up.
Fauchelevent fell on his knees.
“Holy Mother of God! You gave me a fright!”
Then he stood up and shouted: “Thank you, father Madeleine!”
Jean Valjean had merely passed out. The open air had revived him.
Joy is the backward surge of terror. Fauchelevent had almost as much work to do as Jean Valjean to recover.
“So you’re not dead! Oh, you’ve got your wits about you! I called out to you so much that you came back. When I saw your eyes closed, I said: ‘That’s it! He’s suffocated.’ I’d have gone stark raving mad, mad enough for a straitjacket. They’d have stuck me in Bicêtre. What was I supposed to do if you had died? What about your little girl! The barrow woman would never have been able to make head or tail of it! There is the kid, plonked in her arms, and then the grandfather ups and dies! What a turnup for the books! By all the saints above, what a turnup for the books! Ah, but you’re alive—that’s the best part about it!”
“I’m cold,” said Jean Valjean.
Those words brought Fauchelevent completely back to reality, and to its urgency. Both these men, even when they had fully recovered, felt troubled in their souls without realizing it, along with something strange inside that was the sinister wildness of the place creeping in.
“Let’s get out of here, and fast,” said Fauchelevent.
He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a flask he had packed.
“But first, a little drop!” he said.
The flask finished off what the unfettered air had started. Jean Valjean took a swig of brandy and felt thoroughly restored.
He climbed out of the coffin and helped Fauchelevent nail the lid back on. Three minutes later, they were out of the grave.
After that, Fauchelevent was calm. He took his time. The cemetery was closed. There was no need to fear that Gribier, the gravedigger, would pop up. That “conscript” was at home, busy hunting around for his pass and not very likely to find it, since it was in Fauchelevent’s pocket. Without a pass, he could not get back into the cemetery.
Fauchelevent grabbed the shovel and Jean Valjean the pick and together they buried the empty coffin.
When the grave was filled in, Fauchelevent said to Jean Valjean: “Come on and we’ll get going. I’ll keep the shovel and you take the pick.”
Night was falling.
Jean Valjean had some trouble moving and walking. He had gone stiff in the coffin and turned into a bit of a corpse. The numbness of death had taken hold of him between those four planks. He needed, so to speak, to thaw out of the sepulchre.
“You’re stiff,” said Fauchelevent. “What a shame I’m lame, we’d step up the pace, otherwise.”
“Bah!” replied Jean Valjean, “I’ll soon get my legs loosened up.”
They walked off down the paths the hearse had taken. When they got to the closed gate and the gatekeeper’s pavilion, Fauchelevent, who was holding the gravedigger’s pass in his hand, dropped it into his box; the gatekeeper pulled the cord, the gate opened and they walked through.
“That was a breeze!” said Fauchelevent. “What a brainwave you had, father Madeleine!”
They got past the barrière Vaugirard without any trouble. In the neighborhood of a cemetery, a pick and a shovel are a couple of passports.
The rue de Vaugirard was deserted.
“Father Madeleine,” said Fauchelevent as he trotted along, glancing up at the houses, “your eyes are better than mine. Show me where number eighty-seven is.”
“Right here, actually,” said Jean Valjean.
“There’s no one around,” Fauchelevent went on. “Give me the pick and let me have a couple of minutes.”
Fauchelevent went into no. 87, climbed to the top of the stairs, guided by the instinct that always leads the poor man to the attic, and knocked in the gloom on the door of a garret. A voice answered: “Come in.”
It was the voice of Gribier.
Fauchelevent pushed the door open. The gravedigger’s dwelling was, like all such downtrodden abodes, a dump, unfurnished and cluttered. A packing case—perhaps a coffin—served as a console, a butter pot served as a drinking fountain, a straw mat served as a bed, the tiles served as table and chairs. In a corner, on top of a ragged scrap of old carpet, a thin woman and any number of children were huddled in a heap. The whole destitute interior showed traces of being turned inside out. You’d have said that it was the site of a one-man earthquake. Lids were thrown around, rags scattered, a pitcher broken, the mother had been in tears, the children had probably been beaten—traces of a furious and relentless search. It was clear that the gravedigger had desperately tried to track down his pass and had taken his frustration at losing it out on everything in the dump, including his pitcher and his wife. He looked utterly distraught.
But Fauchelevent was racing too fast toward the episode’s denouement to notice this sad side to his triumph.
He stepped in and said: “I thought I’d bring back your pick and shovel.”
Gribier watched him, stunned.
“And tomorrow morning at the cemetery gatekeeper’s you’ll find your pass.”
With that, he put the pick and the shovel down on the tiles.
“What’s the meaning of this?” asked Gribier.
“What the meaning of this is, is that you dropped your pass out of your pocket and I found it on the ground after you’d gone. I buried the dead woman, I filled in the grave, I did your work for you, the gatekeeper will give you back your pass, and you won’t have to pay fifteen francs. There you go, conscript.”
“Thank you, villager!” cried Gribier, dazed. “Next time, it’s my treat.”