Chapter 143 4 Jean Valjean seems to have read the works of Austin Gastillejo

A cripple walks like a one-eyed man looking at him, but he cannot reach his destination directly.Besides, Fauchelevent was in a state of disquiet.It took him almost a quarter of an hour to get back to the hut in the garden.Cosette was already awake.Jean Valjean made her sit by the fire.When Fauchelevent entered the house, Jean Valjean was showing her the basket that the gardener had hung on the wall, and saying: "Listen well, my little Cosette. We must leave this place, but we will come back, so that we can live here well. The old man here will let you stay in that thing Here, take you away. You wait for me at a lady's house. I will look for you. Above all, if you don't want Madame Thenardier to take you back again, you must obey me. If you don't, you can't say anything!"

Cosette nodded solemnly. Jean Valjean turned his head when he heard Fauchelevent opening the door. "how was it?" "Everything is arranged, and nothing is arranged," said Fauchelevent. "I have permission to let you in, but before I can bring you in, I must first take you out. That is the troublesome point. As for the little boy." Girl, it's easy to handle." "Will you promise to carry her out?" "Did she promise not to speak?" "I promise." "But what about you, Grandpa Madeleine?" After an anxious silence, Fauchelevent exclaimed:

"Go out the way you came in, or it's over!" Jean Valjean, like the first, simply replied: "Impossible." Fauchelevent murmured, not to Jean Valjean, but to himself: "There's one more thing that kept me thinking. I said, put some dirt in it. But I thought, if you put mud there, it won't be like pretending to be a person. That thing can run and move. Others will notice it. Do you understand, Grandpa Madeleine, that the government will notice." Jean Valjean kept looking at him with straight eyes, thinking that he was talking nonsense. Fauchelevent continued:

"Can't you get out of this... hell? The problem is: everything has to be done tomorrow! I have to bring you in tomorrow. The dean is waiting for you." At this moment, he explained to Jean Valjean that this was due to him, Fauchelevent, being paid for doing something for the convent; it was also his duty to take care of the funeral, he had to nail the coffin, and he was also given the cemetery. Go help the burial worker.The nun who died that morning had asked to be buried in the coffin she usually used for her bed, and to be buried in the cellar under the altar, which the police regulations forbid, and which The deceased was such an unyielding nun.The abbot and the nuns of the senate have all decided to take the vows of the dead, and leave the government alone; he, Fauchelevent, will go to the low room to nail the coffin, and to the altar to unscrew the slabs, and he must Send the dead man down to the cellar.In order to reward him, the abbot agreed to let his brother come to the monastery as a gardener, and let his niece come to study. His brother is M. Madeleine, and his niece is Cosette.The superintendent had said that he would bring his brother to-morrow evening, after the false burial in the cemetery had been done.But he could not bring M. Madeleine in without first being outside.This is the first difficulty encountered, and there is another layer of difficulty, which is the empty coffin.

"What empty coffin?" asked Jean Valjean. Fauchelevent replied: "The coffin of the governing body." "What coffin? What management agency?" "A nun died. The city doctor came and said, 'A nun has died.' The government sent a coffin. The next day, a funeral car and undertakers came to take the coffin. Take it to the cemetery. The undertakers come and lift the coffin, but there's nothing in it." "Put something in there." "Leave a dead man? I can't find it." "no." "So, what?" "Let someone live."

"What living person?" "I," said Jean Valjean. Fauchelevent, who was sitting down, stood up suddenly, as if a firecracker had gone off under his chair. "you!" "Why not?" Jean Valjean smiled a rare smile, like that gleam in the winter sky. "You know, Fauchelevent, that you said first: the Sister Suffering is dead, and I add that M. Madeleine is buried. That is the way it is." "Oh, well, you're joking. You're not serious." "Absolutely serious. Don't I have to get out of here first?" "certainly."

"I told you earlier that I wanted you to find me a back basket and an oilcloth." "So what?" "Just a fir basket and a piece of black cloth." "First of all, there is only white cloth. The nuns are buried in white." "White cloth is fine too." "You are not like other people, Grandpa Madeleine." Such fantasies, too, were nothing but a wild and daring invention of the prison. Fauchelevent, who had always been confined in peaceful things, saw, according to him, "only a few tortures in the convent." The dawdling thing", and now suddenly in his quiet surroundings, and to be involved with the convent, his horror at that time was comparable to that of a seagull in the stream beside the Rue Saint-Denis. Compared with the expressions of the pedestrians fishing in the river.

Jean Valjean continued: "The problem is to sneak out of here. Now that's the way. But first you must tell me everything. How is it going? Where is the coffin?" "The empty mouth?" "right." "Below, in the so-called mortuary. On two wooden frames, covered with a coffin." "How long is the coffin?" "Six feet." "What's the morgue like?" "It's a room on the ground floor, with a window looking out on the garden, with bars on the window, and a shutter that opens and closes from the outside, and two doors: one leads to the monastery, the other to the chapel."

"What chapel?" "The house of worship in the street, the house of worship of the people." "Have you the keys to those two doors?" "No. I have only the key to the door to the monastery, and the key to the door to the chapel is in the porter's hand." "When will the porter open that door?" "He only opened the door when the undertaker was going in to carry the coffin. The coffin went out and the door had to be closed again." "Who nailed the coffin?" "I nailed." "Who covered that cloth?"

"I cover." "Are you alone?" "No man is allowed in the morgue except the police doctor. It's written on the wall." "Tonight, when everyone in the convent is asleep, will you hide me in that room?" "No. But I can hide you in a little dark room leading from the mortuary. That's where I keep the burial instruments. I'm in charge, and I have the key." "What time will the hearse come to pick up the coffin tomorrow?" "Around three o'clock in the afternoon. Burial at the Vaugirard cemetery, which is not very near as it gets dark."

"I'll hide all night and half the day in the hut where you keep your tools. But what about food? I'll be hungry." "Eat, I'll bring it to you." "At two o'clock you come and nail me in the coffin." Fauchelevent took a step back and rattled the knuckles of his hands. "I can't do this." "What is that! Take a hammer and drive a few nails into the board!" What seemed absurd to Fauchelevent was, we repeat, ordinary to Jean Valjean.Jean Valjean had traveled more perilous paths than this.Anyone who has been a prisoner has the art of reducing his body to the size of his escape route.A prisoner wants to flee for his life, just like a sick person seeks a doctor, regardless of whether he lives or dies.To escape is to heal the sick.What is unacceptable in order to cure the disease?Let others nail themselves in a box and ship them out as a package, struggle for life slowly in the box, find air where there is none, save your own breath for several hours in a row, know that you can hold your breath without dying, This was one of Jean Valjean's many tragic talents. In fact, hiding living people in coffins, the emergency method adopted by convicts, was also adopted by emperors.If the account of Austin Gastillejo is to be believed, Charles V, after his abdication, wanted to have a final meeting with Bloomberg, and in this way carried her into the Abbey of Saint-Just, and continued He carried her out again. Fauchelevent, having calmed down a little, asked aloud: "But how can you breathe?" "I can breathe." "In that box! I can't breathe, just thinking about it." "You must have a corkscrew. You can tap a few small holes near the mouth. Don't nail the wooden board too tightly." "Good! What if you should cough or sneeze?" "The one who ran for his life never coughed or sneezed." Jean Valjean added: "Master Fauchelevent, you have to make up your mind: either wait for someone to catch you here, or accept the method of being taken out by a hearse." Everyone has seen that cats have a habit of lingering by half-open doors.No one can say to a cat: "Come in!" Some people will also stagnate in the performance of two decisions in the face of half-open opportunities, risking being crushed under the fate of suddenly cutting off their way of life.Those who are too cautious are feline, and because they are cats, they are sometimes in greater danger than the bold.Fauchelevent was just the kind of person who had a temperament of thinking before and after.But Jean Valjean's calm attitude won him over involuntarily.He muttered: "In short, there is no other way than this." Jean Valjean continued: "The only thing that worries me is not knowing what to do when we get to the cemetery." "That is exactly what I am sure of," cried Fauchelevent. "If you are sure of getting yourself out of the coffin, I am sure of getting you out of the grave. The burialist is a drunkard, and a friend of mine. Grandpa Mace. An old man who likes to drink. The burial workers put the dead in the graves, and I, I can put the burial workers in my pocket. Let me tell you what to do when we get to the cemetery. We When we got there, it was still dark, and there were still three quarters of an hour before the iron fence of the cemetery was closed. The hearse had to roll all the way to the edge of the grave. I followed, that was my task. I had a hammer and a hammer in my pocket. Take a chisel and a nail-pliers. The hearse stops, the undertakers tie a rope around your coffin and hang you down. The priest comes and says some prayers, makes the sign of the sign of the cross, sprinkles holy water, and slips away. I stayed alone with Grandpa Mace. That's my friend, I tell you. It's always two things, either he's drunk or he's not. If he's not, I'm right He said, 'Let's have a drink while the Papaya's is still open. Kind of drunk, I made him lie under the table for you, took his cemetery pass, threw him off, and I came back by myself. You've got me alone. If he's drunk I said to him, 'Fuck you, let me do your work.' He went, and I dragged you out of the hole." Jean Valjean held out a hand to him, and Fauchelevent jumped forward to grasp it, and the enthusiasm of the peasants was indeed very touching. "I agree, Lord Fauchelevent. All is well." "As long as nothing happens," thought Fauchelevent, "what a risk it is!"