Chapter 72 Five suitable graves

Javert sent Jean Valjean to the city jail. The news of M. Madeleine's arrest aroused in Montreuil-sur-Mer a strange feeling, it must be said, a great shock.Unfortunately we cannot hide the fact that he was almost completely discarded just because of the words "he was a convict".All the good deeds he had done in the past were all forgotten in less than two hours, and he was just a "convict".It should be pointed out that no one knew the details of what happened in Arras at that time.All day long the conversation was heard all over the town: "Don't you know? He's a freed convict!" "Who?" "Mayor." "Phew! M. Madeleine?" Yes." "Really?" "His name was not Madeleine, but his real name is ugly, Baizan, Beauzin, Bozin." "Oh, my God!" "He's under arrest." "Arrested! He's still in the city jail for now, and he'll be taken somewhere else soon." "Somewhere else!" "They're going to take him elsewhere! Where are they going to take him?" "Because he once committed a robbery on a high road, and he has to go to the high court." "That's right! I've been suspicious for a long time. This man is usually too good, too perfect, too trusting in God. He resigned He got the Cross. He always gives money to the hoodlums he meets on the road. I keep thinking he must have some dark history in him."

Especially in those "living rooms", this kind of talk is especially common. An old lady who subscribes to the White Flag had this almost unfathomable experience. "I don't think it's a pity. It's a lesson for Buwanaba's partisans!" Thus disappeared in Montreuil-sur-Mer the ghost who was once called M. Madeleine.In the whole city, only three or four people still remember him.The old housekeeper who had served him was one of them. At sunset that day, the faithful old woman was still sitting in her porter's room, feeling extremely miserable.The factory was closed for a day, the main gate was bolted, and there were few people on the street.There were only two nuns in that house, Sisters Perpedia and Sister Sanpris, who were still guarding Fantine's body.

When M. Madeleine came home on weekdays, the faithful porter stood up mechanically, took out M. Madeleine's door key from the drawer, and took up the candlestick he used every night to light the upstairs, and then She hung the key on the peg he was used to looking for, and the candlestick beside her, as if she was waiting for him, she turned back and sat on her chair thinking.The poor good old woman did not know that she had done these things herself. After more than two hours, she cried out as if waking up from a dream: "Really! My merciful God Jesus! I still have the key on a nail!"

At this moment, the glass window of the porter's room opened automatically, and a hand stretched in through the window, holding the key and candlestick, and reached another thin candle that was burning to catch the fire. The gatekeeper raised her eyes, opened her mouth, and almost cried out. She knew this hand, this arm, this dress sleeve. It was M. Madeleine. It took a few seconds before she could speak. "I was petrified," she kept saying when she told people about it later. "My God, Monsieur Mayor," she cried at last, "I thought you..." She paused because the second half of the sentence would take away the respect of the first half.Jean Valjean was always Monsieur the Mayor to her.

He finished for her: "...in prison," he said. "I've been in prison, I broke the bars on the window, I jumped off the roof, and here I am again. I'm going to my room now. Go and get the loose Sister Prism is here. She must be by the poor woman's side." The old woman hurried to find it. He didn't tell her a word, he knew very well that she would protect him more securely than he could protect himself. No one else ever knew how he was able to get into the courtyard without opening the main door.He had a key to a small side door, which he always carried with him, but he must have been searched and the key must have been confiscated.This is something no one ever wants to pass.

He went up the stairs that led to his house.On reaching the top, he put the candlestick on the top step of the stairs, opened the door softly, and, groping his way in the dark, went to close the window and shutters, then returned, took the candlestick, and went back into the house. This precaution was useful, we remember, because his windows were visible from the street. He looked around, on the table, on the chair, and on his bed that hadn't been moved in three days.The fuss of the night before did not leave the slightest trace, because the janitor mother-in-law had already tidied up the house.But she had picked up from the ashes the two iron ends of the stick and the charred piece, worth forty sous, and put them neatly on the table.

He took a piece of paper and wrote on "Here are the two iron rods I spoke of in court and the forty sous worth of money that I had snatched from little Rielve," and he took the silver coin again. Put it on paper with these two pieces of iron, so that people can see it at a glance when they walk into the house.He took an old shirt from the closet, tore it into pieces, and used it to wrap the two silver candlesticks.He was neither in a hurry nor in a panic, while he was breading the bishop's two candlesticks and biting a piece of brown bread.This is probably a piece of prisoner bread that he brought out when he escaped.

Later, the court came to check and found some bread crumbs on the floor, which proved that the bread he ate was indeed prison bread. Someone knocked lightly on the door twice. "Come in," he said. It was Sister Sanpris. She was pale, her eyes were red, and she was trembling with a candle in her hand.Dramatic changes in destiny often have such a characteristic: no matter how detached and indifferent we are usually, once we encounter drastic changes, the original human nature will inevitably be touched and revealed from the depths of our hearts.After the day's excitement, the nun became a woman again, and she wept bitterly for a while, and she was still trembling.

Jean Valjean was writing a few lines on a piece of paper, which he handed to the nun, saying: "My sister, please give it to the curate Monsieur." The paper is unfolded.She glanced up there. "You can watch," he said. She read: "I ask the curate priest to take care of everything I leave here, and use it to pay my legal fees and the funeral expenses of the woman who died today. The rest will be donated to the poor." Mumu wanted to speak, but could not speak.She barely said: "Mr. Mayor, don't you want to see that poor wretch again?" "No," he said, "my captors are coming after me, and they're going to get me in her house, and she'll have no peace."

He had just finished speaking when there was a great commotion downstairs. He heard the footsteps of many people coming up the stairs, and he heard the old doorkeeper say in her highest and sharpest voice: "My dear sir, I swear to you before the merciful God that no one has been here, nor have I left the gate, all day and all night today!" Someone replied: "But there's a light in that room." They recognized Javert's voice. When the door of the house is opened, it covers the corner on the right.Jean Valjean blew out the candle, and hid himself in this corner.

Sister Sanpris knelt by the table. The door opened by itself.Javert came in. There were many voices and arguments from the porter's woman in the passage. The nun is praying with her eyes down. A thin candle shimmered on the mantelpiece. Seeing Mumu, Javert stopped, not daring to make things difficult. We remember that Javert's nature, his temperament, and his breath are all respect for power.He was rigid, he tolerated no opposition, and he could not accommodate.In his view, the power of the church is above all else.He was a believer, and he was as shallow and orderly in that respect as in any other.In his eyes, the priest is a kind of god without fault, and the nun is a kind of pure creature.They were all souls cut off from the world, as if there were a wall between their souls and the world, and there was only one door on the wall, which was never opened unless it told the truth. When he saw Mumu, the first thing he did was to back away. But there is another kind of task that binds him and pushes him hard.His second action was to stop, at least he had to risk asking a word. This was Sister Sanpris who never lied in her life.Javert knew it, and therefore had special respect for her. "My sister," he said, "are you alone in this room?" The poor concierge was so frightened that she thought something was wrong. Mumu raised her eyes and replied: "yes." "In that case," continued Javert, "forgive me for talking too much, it is my duty, and you have not seen a single person today, a man. He has escaped, and we are looking for him. That is Jean Valjean." Jean, did you not see him?" "No." She lied.Twice in a row, sentence after sentence, without hesitation, straight up telling lies, as if forgetting herself. "Excuse me," said Javert, and he withdrew with a deep salute. O saint!You have been above the world for many years, and you have been close to your virgin sisters and your angel brothers in the light, may your lie this time reach heaven. The Sister's words sounded so reliable to Javert that he did not notice the intriguing candle, which had just been blown out and was still smoking on the table. At the end of an hour a man was striding away from Montreuil-sur-Mer through the woods and the mist, heading for Paris.This man was Jean Valjean.Two or three coachmen who drove a coach met him and saw him carrying a bundle and wearing a cloth smock.Where did he get that cloth blouse?No one ever knew.And in the convalescent room of that factory, an old worker died a few days ago, leaving only a cloth smock.Maybe it's this one. A few last words on Fantine. We all have one loving mother—the earth.Fantine returned to the loving mother's arms. The curé thought it was right, and perhaps he was, to leave to the poor as much as Jean Valjean had left him.Besides, who is involved in this matter?A convict and a whore were involved.So he simplified Fantine's funeral, cut costs as much as possible, and sent her to a cemetery. So Fantine was buried in the cemetery, in the common land that belongs to everyone and not to any private person, and where the poor are buried forever.Fortunately God knows where to find her soul.They hid Fantine among the piles of bones that littered the ground, and she was thrown into the public mud.Her grave is like her bed.