Part 107 (1/2)

”You will carry her out?”

”And she will hold her tongue?”

”I answer for that.”

”But you, Father Madeleine?”

And, after a silence, fraught with anxiety, Fauchelevent exclaimed:--

”Why, get out as you came in!”

Jean Valjean, as in the first instance, contented himself with saying, ”Impossible.”

Fauchelevent grumbled, more to himself than to Jean Valjean:--

”There is another thing which bothers me. I have said that I would put earth in it. When I come to think it over, the earth instead of the corpse will not seem like the real thing, it won't do, it will get displaced, it will move about. The men will bear it. You understand, Father Madeleine, the government will notice it.”

Jean Valjean stared him straight in the eye and thought that he was raving.

Fauchelevent went on:--

”How the de--uce are you going to get out? It must all be done by to-morrow morning. It is to-morrow that I am to bring you in. The prioress expects you.”

Then he explained to Jean Valjean that this was his recompense for a service which he, Fauchelevent, was to render to the community. That it fell among his duties to take part in their burials, that he nailed up the coffins and helped the grave-digger at the cemetery. That the nun who had died that morning had requested to be buried in the coffin which had served her for a bed, and interred in the vault under the altar of the chapel. That the police regulations forbade this, but that she was one of those dead to whom nothing is refused. That the prioress and the vocal mothers intended to fulfil the wish of the deceased. That it was so much the worse for the government. That he, Fauchelevent, was to nail up the coffin in the cell, raise the stone in the chapel, and lower the corpse into the vault. And that, by way of thanks, the prioress was to admit his brother to the house as a gardener, and his niece as a pupil.

That his brother was M. Madeleine, and that his niece was Cosette. That the prioress had told him to bring his brother on the following evening, after the counterfeit interment in the cemetery. But that he could not bring M. Madeleine in from the outside if M. Madeleine was not outside.

That that was the first problem. And then, that there was another: the empty coffin.

”What is that empty coffin?” asked Jean Valjean.

Fauchelevent replied:--

”The coffin of the administration.”

”What coffin? What administration?”

”A nun dies. The munic.i.p.al doctor comes and says, 'A nun has died.'

The government sends a coffin. The next day it sends a hea.r.s.e and undertaker's men to get the coffin and carry it to the cemetery. The undertaker's men will come and lift the coffin; there will be nothing in it.”

”Put something in it.”

”A corpse? I have none.”

”No.”

”What then?”

”A living person.”

”What person?”