I scribble their declarations of love to the raw soldiers. In the morning I write love letters; in the evening I dig graves. Such is life, rustic."
The hearse was still advancing.
Fauchelevent, uneasy to the last degree, was gazing about him on all sides.
Great drops of perspiration trickled down from his brow.
"But," continued the grave-digger, "a man cannot serve two mistresses. I must choose between the pen and the mattock.
The mattock is ruining my hand."
The hearse halted.
The choir boy alighted from the mourning-coach, then the priest.
One of the small front wheels of the hearse had run up a little on a pile of earth, beyond which an open grave was visible.
"What a farce this is!" repeated Fauchelevent in consternation.
BOOK EIGHTH.--CEMETERIES TAKE THAT WHICH IS COMMITTED THEM
CHAPTER VI
BETWEEN FOUR PLANKS
Who was in the coffin?
The reader knows.
Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean had arranged things so that he could exist there, and he could almost breathe.
It is a strange thing to what a degree security of conscience confers security of the rest.
Every combination thought out by Jean Valjean had been progressing, and progressing favorably, since the preceding day.
He, like Fauchelevent, counted on Father Mestienne.
He had no doubt as to the end.
Never was there a more critical situation, never more complete composure.
The four planks of the coffin breathe out a kind of terrible peace. It seemed as though something of the repose of the dead entered into Jean Valjean's tranquillity.
From the depths of that coffin he had been able to follow, and he had followed, all the phases of the terrible drama which he was playing with death.
Shortly after Fauchelevent had finished nailing on the upper plank, Jean Valjean had felt himself carried out, then driven off.
He knew, from the diminution in the jolting, when they left the pavements and reached the earth road.
He had divined, from a dull noise, that they were crossing the bridge of Austerlitz.
At the first halt, he had understood that they were entering the cemetery; at the second halt, he said to himself:--
"Here is the grave."
Suddenly, he felt hands seize the coffin, then a harsh grating against the planks; he explained it to himself as the rope which was being fastened round the casket in order to lower it into the cavity.
Then he experienced a giddiness.
The undertaker's man and the grave-digger had probably allowed the coffin to lose its balance, and had lowered the head before the foot.
He recovered himself fully when he felt himself horizontal and motionless.
He had just touched the bottom.
He had a certain sensation of cold.
A voice rose above him, glacial and solemn.
He heard Latin words, which he did not understand, pass over him, so slowly that he was able to catch them one by one:--
"Qui dormiunt in terrae pulvere, evigilabunt; alii in vitam aeternam, et alii in approbrium, ut videant semper."
A child's voice said:--
"De profundis."
The grave voice began again:--
"Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine."
The child's voice responded:--
"Et lux perpetua luceat ei."
He heard something like the gentle patter of several drops of rain on the plank which covered him.
It was probably the holy water.
He thought:
"This will be over soon now.
Patience for a little while longer.
The priest will take his departure. Fauchelevent will take Mestienne off to drink.
I shall be left. Then Fauchelevent will return alone, and I shall get out. That will be the work of a good hour."
The grave voice resumed
"Requiescat in pace."
And the child's voice said:--
"Amen."
Jean Valjean strained his ears, and heard something like retreating footsteps.
"There, they are going now," thought he.
"I am alone."
All at once, he heard over his head a sound which seemed to him to be a clap of thunder.
It was a shovelful of earth falling on the coffin.
A second shovelful fell.
One of the holes through which he breathed had just been stopped up.
A third shovelful of earth fell.
Then a fourth.
There are things which are too strong for the strongest man. Jean Valjean lost consciousness.
BOOK EIGHTH.--CEMETERIES TAKE THAT WHICH IS COMMITTED THEM
CHAPTER VII
IN WHICH WILL BE FOUND THE ORIGIN OF THE SAYING:
DON'T LOSE THE CARD
This is what had taken place above the coffin in which lay Jean Valjean.
When the hearse had driven off, when the priest and the choir boy had entered the carriage again and taken their departure, Fauchelevent, who had not taken his eyes from the grave-digger, saw the latter bend over and grasp his shovel, which was sticking upright in the heap of dirt.
Then Fauchelevent took a supreme resolve.
He placed himself between the grave and the grave-digger, crossed his arms and said:--
"I am the one to pay!"
The grave-digger stared at him in amazement, and replied:--
"What's that, peasant?"
Fauchelevent repeated:--
"I am the one who pays!"
"What?"
"For the wine."
"What wine?"
"That Argenteuil wine."
"Where is the Argenteuil?"
"At the Bon Coing."
"Go to the devil!" said the grave-digger.
And he flung a shovelful of earth on the coffin.
The coffin gave back a hollow sound.
Fauchelevent felt himself stagger and on the point of falling headlong into the grave himself. He shouted in a voice in which the strangling sound of the death rattle began to mingle:--
"Comrade!
Before the Bon Coing is shut!"
The grave-digger took some more earth on his shovel. Fauchelevent continued.
"I will pay."
And he seized the man's arm.
"Listen to me, comrade.
I am the convent grave-digger, I have come to help you.
It is a business which can be performed at night. Let us begin, then, by going for a drink."
And as he spoke, and clung to this desperate insistence, this melancholy reflection occurred to him:
"And if he drinks, will he get drunk?"
"Provincial," said the man, "if you positively insist upon it, I consent.
We will drink.
After work, never before."
And he flourished his shovel briskly.
Fauchelevent held him back.
"It is Argenteuil wine, at six."
"Oh, come," said the grave-digger, "you are a bell-ringer. Ding dong, ding dong, that's all you know how to say.
Go hang yourself."
And he threw in a second shovelful.
Fauchelevent had reached a point where he no longer knew what he was saying.
"Come along and drink," he cried, "since it is I who pays the bill."
"When we have put the child to bed," said the grave-digger.
He flung in a third shovelful.
Then he thrust his shovel into the earth and added:--
"It's cold to-night, you see, and the corpse would shriek out after us if we were to plant her there without a coverlet."
At that moment, as he loaded his shovel, the grave-digger bent over, and the pocket of his waistcoat gaped.
Fauchelevent's wild gaze fell mechanically into that pocket, and there it stopped.
The sun was not yet hidden behind the horizon; there was still light enough to enable him to distinguish something white at the bottom of that yawning pocket.
The sum total of lightning that the eye of a Picard peasant can contain, traversed Fauchelevent's pupils.
An idea had just occurred to him.
He thrust his hand into the pocket from behind, without the grave-digger, who was wholly absorbed in his shovelful of earth, observing it, and pulled out the white object which lay at the bottom of it.
The man sent a fourth shovelful tumbling into the grave.
Just as he turned round to get the fifth, Fauchelevent looked calmly at him and said:--
"By the way, you new man, have you your card?"
The grave-digger paused.
"What card?"
"The sun is on the point of setting."
"That's good, it is going to put on its nightcap."
"The gate of the cemetery will close immediately."
"Well, what then?"
"Have you your card?"
"Ah! my card?" said the grave-digger.
And he fumbled in his pocket.
Having searched one pocket, he proceeded to search the other. He passed on to his fobs, explored the first, returned to the second.
"Why, no," said he, "I have not my card.
I must have forgotten it."
"Fifteen francs fine," said Fauchelevent.
The grave-digger turned green.
Green is the pallor of livid people.
"Ah!
Jesus-mon-Dieu-bancroche-a-bas-la-lune!"[17] he exclaimed. "Fifteen francs fine!"
[17] Jesus-my-God-bandy-leg--down with the moon!
"Three pieces of a hundred sous," said Fauchelevent.
The grave-digger dropped his shovel.
Fauchelevent's turn had come.
"Ah, come now, conscript," said Fauchelevent, "none of this despair. There is no question of committing suicide and benefiting the grave. Fifteen francs is fifteen francs, and besides, you may not be able to pay it.
I am an old hand, you are a new one.
I know all the ropes and the devices.
I will give you some friendly advice. One thing is clear, the sun is on the point of setting, it is touching the dome now, the cemetery will be closed in five minutes more."
"That is true," replied the man.
"Five minutes more and you will not have time to fill the grave, it is as hollow as the devil, this grave, and to reach the gate in season to pass it before it is shut."
"That is true."
"In that case, a fine of fifteen francs."
"Fifteen francs."
"But you have time.
Where do you live?"
"A couple of steps from the barrier, a quarter of an hour from here. No. 87 Rue de Vaugirard."
"You have just time to get out by taking to your heels at your best speed."
"That is exactly so."
"Once outside the gate, you gallop home, you get your card, you return, the cemetery porter admits you.
As you have your card, there will be nothing to pay.
And you will bury your corpse. I'll watch it for you in the meantime, so that it shall not run away."
"I am indebted to you for my life, peasant."
"Decamp!" said Fauchelevent.
The grave-digger, overwhelmed with gratitude, shook his hand and set off on a run.
When the man had disappeared in the thicket, Fauchelevent listened until he heard his footsteps die away in the distance, then he leaned over the grave, and said in a low tone:--
"Father Madeleine!"
There was no reply.
Fauchelevent was seized with a shudder.
He tumbled rather than climbed into the grave, flung himself on the head of the coffin and cried:--
"Are you there?"
Silence in the coffin.
Fauchelevent, hardly able to draw his breath for trembling, seized his cold chisel and his hammer, and pried up the coffin lid.
Jean Valjean's face appeared in the twilight; it was pale and his eyes were closed.
Fauchelevent's hair rose upright on his head, he sprang to his feet, then fell back against the side of the grave, ready to swoon on the coffin.
He stared at Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean lay there pallid and motionless.
Fauchelevent murmured in a voice as faint as a sigh:--
"He is dead!"
And, drawing himself up, and folding his arms with such violence that his clenched fists came in contact with his shoulders, he cried:--
"And this is the way I save his life!"
Then the poor man fell to sobbing.
He soliloquized the while, for it is an error to suppose that the soliloquy is unnatural. Powerful emotion often talks aloud.
"It is Father Mestienne's fault.
Why did that fool die?
What need was there for him to give up the ghost at the very moment when no one was expecting it?
It is he who has killed M. Madeleine. Father Madeleine!
He is in the coffin.
It is quite handy. All is over.
Now, is there any sense in these things? Ah! my God! he is dead!
Well! and his little girl, what am I to do with her?
What will the fruit-seller say?
The idea of its being possible for a man like that to die like this! When I think how he put himself under that cart!
Father Madeleine! Father Madeleine!
Pardine!
He was suffocated, I said so. He wouldn't believe me.
Well!
Here's a pretty trick to play! He is dead, that good man, the very best man out of all the good God's good folks!
And his little girl!
Ah!
In the first place, I won't go back there myself.
I shall stay here.
After having done such a thing as that!
What's the use of being two old men, if we are two old fools!
But, in the first place, how did he manage to enter the convent?
That was the beginning of it all. One should not do such things.
Father Madeleine!
Father Madeleine! Father Madeleine!
Madeleine!
Monsieur Madeleine!
Monsieur le Maire! He does not hear me.
Now get out of this scrape if you can!"
And he tore his hair.
A grating sound became audible through the trees in the distance. It was the cemetery gate closing.
Fauchelevent bent over Jean Valjean, and all at once he bounded back and recoiled so far as the limits of a grave permit.
Jean Valjean's eyes were open and gazing at him.
To see a corpse is alarming, to behold a resurrection is almost as much so.
Fauchelevent became like stone, pale, haggard, overwhelmed by all these excesses of emotion, not knowing whether he had to do with a living man or a dead one, and staring at Jean Valjean, who was gazing at him.
"I fell asleep," said Jean Valjean.
And he raised himself to a sitting posture.
