Les Misérables, page 153
CHAPTER VIII--A SUCCESSFUL INTERROGATORY
An hour later, in the darkness of night, two men and a child presentedthemselves at No. 62 Rue Petit-Picpus. The elder of the men lifted theknocker and rapped.
They were Fauchelevent, Jean Valjean, and Cosette.
The two old men had gone to fetch Cosette from the fruiterer's inthe Rue du Chemin-Vert, where Fauchelevent had deposited her on thepreceding day. Cosette had passed these twenty-four hours tremblingsilently and understanding nothing. She trembled to such a degree thatshe wept. She had neither eaten nor slept. The worthy fruit-seller hadplied her with a hundred questions, without obtaining any other replythan a melancholy and unvarying gaze. Cosette had betrayed nothing ofwhat she had seen and heard during the last two days. She divined thatthey were passing through a crisis. She was deeply conscious that it wasnecessary to "be good." Who has not experienced the sovereign powerof those two words, pronounced with a certain accent in the ear of aterrified little being: _Say nothing! _ Fear is mute. Moreover, no oneguards a secret like a child.
But when, at the expiration of these lugubrious twenty-four hours, shebeheld Jean Valjean again, she gave vent to such a cry of joy, that anythoughtful person who had chanced to hear that cry, would have guessedthat it issued from an abyss.
Fauchelevent belonged to the convent and knew the pass-words. All thedoors opened.
Thus was solved the double and alarming problem of how to get out andhow to get in.
The porter, who had received his instructions, opened the littleservant's door which connected the courtyard with the garden, and whichcould still be seen from the street twenty years ago, in the wall at thebottom of the court, which faced the carriage entrance.
The porter admitted all three of them through this door, and from thatpoint they reached the inner, reserved parlor where Fauchelevent, on thepreceding day, had received his orders from the prioress.
The prioress, rosary in hand, was waiting for them. A vocal mother, withher veil lowered, stood beside her.
A discreet candle lighted, one might almost say, made a show of lightingthe parlor.
The prioress passed Jean Valjean in review. There is nothing whichexamines like a downcast eye.
Then she questioned him:--
"You are the brother?"
"Yes, reverend Mother," replied Fauchelevent.
"What is your name?"
Fauchelevent replied:--
"Ultime Fauchelevent."
He really had had a brother named Ultime, who was dead.
"Where do you come from?"
Fauchelevent replied:--
"From Picquigny, near Amiens."
"What is your age?"
Fauchelevent replied:--
"Fifty."
"What is your profession?"
Fauchelevent replied:--
"Gardener."
"Are you a good Christian?"
Fauchelevent replied:--
"Every one is in the family."
"Is this your little girl?"
Fauchelevent replied:--
"Yes, reverend Mother."
"You are her father?"
Fauchelevent replied:--
"Her grandfather."
The vocal mother said to the prioress in a low voice
"He answers well."
Jean Valjean had not uttered a single word.
The prioress looked attentively at Cosette, and said half aloud to thevocal mother:--
"She will grow up ugly."
The two mothers consulted for a few moments in very low tones in thecorner of the parlor, then the prioress turned round and said:--
"Father Fauvent, you will get another knee-cap with a bell. Two will berequired now."
On the following day, therefore, two bells were audible in the garden,and the nuns could not resist the temptation to raise the corner oftheir veils. At the extreme end of the garden, under the trees, twomen, Fauvent and another man, were visible as they dug side by side. Anenormous event. Their silence was broken to the extent of saying to eachother: "He is an assistant gardener."
The vocal mothers added: "He is a brother of Father Fauvent."
Jean Valjean was, in fact, regularly installed; he had his belledknee-cap; henceforth he was official. His name was Ultime Fauchelevent.
The most powerful determining cause of his admission had been theprioress's observation upon Cosette: "She will grow up ugly."
The prioress, that pronounced prognosticator, immediately took a fancyto Cosette and gave her a place in the school as a charity pupil.
There is nothing that is not strictly logical about this.
It is in vain that mirrors are banished from the convent, women areconscious of their faces; now, girls who are conscious of their beautydo not easily become nuns; the vocation being voluntary in inverseproportion to their good looks, more is to be hoped from the ugly thanfrom the pretty. Hence a lively taste for plain girls.
The whole of this adventure increased the importance of good, oldFauchelevent; he won a triple success; in the eyes of Jean Valjean, whomhe had saved and sheltered; in those of grave-digger Gribier, who saidto himself: "He spared me that fine"; with the convent, which, beingenabled, thanks to him, to retain the coffin of Mother Crucifixion underthe altar, eluded Cæsar and satisfied God. There was a coffin containinga body in the Petit-Picpus, and a coffin without a body in the Vaugirardcemetery, public order had no doubt been deeply disturbed thereby, butno one was aware of it.
As for the convent, its gratitude to Fauchelevent was very great.Fauchelevent became the best of servitors and the most precious ofgardeners. Upon the occasion of the archbishop's next visit, theprioress recounted the affair to his Grace, making something of aconfession at the same time, and yet boasting of her deed. On leavingthe convent, the archbishop mentioned it with approval, and in a whisperto M. de Latil, Monsieur's confessor, afterwards Archbishop of Reimsand Cardinal. This admiration for Fauchelevent became widespread, for itmade its way to Rome. We have seen a note addressed by the then reigningPope, Leo XII., to one of his relatives, a Monsignor in the Nuncio'sestablishment in Paris, and bearing, like himself, the name of DellaGenga; it contained these lines: "It appears that there is in a conventin Paris an excellent gardener, who is also a holy man, named Fauvent."Nothing of this triumph reached Fauchelevent in his hut; he went ongrafting, weeding, and covering up his melon beds, without in the leastsuspecting his excellences and his sanctity. Neither did he suspect hisglory, any more than a Durham or Surrey bull whose portrait is publishedin the _London Illustrated News_, with this inscription: "Bull whichcarried off the prize at the Cattle Show."
