Part 92 (1/2)
”Ah, goodness! there are only women in this house--many young girls. It appears that I should be a dangerous person to meet. The bell gives them warning. When I come, they go.”
”What house is this?”
”Come, you know well enough.”
”But I do not.”
”Not when you got me the place here as gardener?”
”Answer me as though I knew nothing.”
”Well, then, this is the Pet.i.t-Picpus convent.”
Memories recurred to Jean Valjean. Chance, that is to say, Providence, had cast him into precisely that convent in the Quartier Saint-Antoine where old Fauchelevent, crippled by the fall from his cart, had been admitted on his recommendation two years previously. He repeated, as though talking to himself:--
”The Pet.i.t-Picpus convent.”
”Exactly,” returned old Fauchelevent. ”But to come to the point, how the deuce did you manage to get in here, you, Father Madeleine? No matter if you are a saint; you are a man as well, and no man enters here.”
”You certainly are here.”
”There is no one but me.”
”Still,” said Jean Valjean, ”I must stay here.”
”Ah, good G.o.d!” cried Fauchelevent.
Jean Valjean drew near to the old man, and said to him in a grave voice:--
”Father Fauchelevent, I saved your life.”
”I was the first to recall it,” returned Fauchelevent.
”Well, you can do to-day for me that which I did for you in the olden days.”
Fauchelevent took in his aged, trembling, and wrinkled hands Jean Valjean's two robust hands, and stood for several minutes as though incapable of speaking. At length he exclaimed:--
”Oh! that would be a blessing from the good G.o.d, if I could make you some little return for that! Save your life! Monsieur le Maire, dispose of the old man!”
A wonderful joy had transfigured this old man. His countenance seemed to emit a ray of light.
”What do you wish me to do?” he resumed.
”That I will explain to you. You have a chamber?”
”I have an isolated hovel yonder, behind the ruins of the old convent, in a corner which no one ever looks into. There are three rooms in it.”
The hut was, in fact, so well hidden behind the ruins, and so cleverly arranged to prevent it being seen, that Jean Valjean had not perceived it.
”Good,” said Jean Valjean. ”Now I am going to ask two things of you.”
”What are they, Mr. Mayor?”