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IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO BE DRUNK IN ORDER TO BE IMMORTAL
On the following day, as the sun was declining, the very rare
passers-by on the Boulevard du Maine pulled off their hats to
an old-fashioned hearse, ornamented with skulls, cross-bones,
and tears. This hearse contained a coffin covered with a white
cloth over which spread a large black cross, like a huge corpse
with drooping arms. A mourning-coach, in which could be seen a
priest in his surplice, and a choir boy in his red cap, followed.
Two undertaker's men in gray uniforms trimmed with black walked
on the right and the left of the hearse.
Behind it came an old man in the garments of a laborer, who
limped along.
The procession was going in the direction of the Vaugirard
cemetery.
The handle of a hammer, the blade of a cold chisel, and the
antennae of a pair of pincers were visible, protruding from the
man's pocket.
The Vaugirard cemetery formed an exception among the cemeteries
of Paris.
It had its peculiar usages, just as it had its carriage entrance
and its house door, which old people in the quarter, who clung
tenaciously to ancient words, still called the porte cavaliere
and the porte pietonne.[16] The Bernardines-Benedictines of the
Rue Petit-Picpus had obtained permission, as we have already stated,
to be buried there in a corner apart, and at night, the plot of
land having formerly belonged to their community.
The grave-diggers being thus bound to service in the evening
in summer and at night in winter, in this cemetery, they were
subjected to a special discipline. The gates of the Paris cemeteries
closed, at that epoch, at sundown, and this being a municipal
regulation, the Vaugirard cemetery was bound by it like the rest.
The carriage gate and the house door were two contiguous grated
gates, adjoining a pavilion built by the architect Perronet, and
inhabited by the door-keeper of the cemetery.
These gates, therefore, swung inexorably on their hinges at
the instant when the sun disappeared behind the dome of the Invalides.
If any grave-digger were delayed after that moment in the
cemetery, there was but one way for him to get out-- his grave-digger's
card furnished by the department of public funerals. A sort of
letter-box was constructed in the porter's window. The grave-digger
dropped his card into this box, the porter heard it fall, pulled
the rope, and the small door opened.
If the man had not his card, he mentioned his name, the porter,
who was sometimes in bed and asleep, rose, came out and identified
the man, and opened the gate with his key; the grave-digger stepped
out, but had to pay a fine of fifteen francs.
[16] Instead of porte cochere and porte batarde.
This cemetery, with its peculiarities outside the regulations,
embarrassed the symmetry of the administration.
It was suppressed a little later than 1830.
The cemetery of Mont-Parnasse, called the Eastern cemetery,
succeeded to it, and inherited that famous dram-shop next to the
Vaugirard cemetery, which was surmounted by a quince painted on
a board, and which formed an angle, one side on the drinkers'
tables, and the other on the tombs, with this sign: Au Bon Coing.
The Vaugirard cemetery was what may be called a faded cemetery.
It was falling into disuse.
Dampness was invading it, the flowers were deserting it.
The bourgeois did not care much about being buried in the
Vaugirard; it hinted at poverty.
Pere-Lachaise if you please! to be buried in Pere-Lachaise
is equivalent to having furniture of mahogany.
It is recognized as elegant.
The Vaugirard cemetery was a venerable enclosure, planted
like an old-fashioned French garden.
Straight alleys, box, thuya-trees, holly, ancient tombs beneath
aged cypress-trees, and very tall grass. In the evening it was
tragic there.
There were very lugubrious lines about it.
The sun had not yet set when the hearse with the white pall
and the black cross entered the avenue of the Vaugirard cemetery.
The lame man who followed it was no other than Fauchelevent.
The interment of Mother Crucifixion in the vault under the
altar, the exit of Cosette, the introduction of Jean Valjean to
the dead-room,-- all had been executed without difficulty, and
there had been no hitch.
Let us remark in passing, that the burial of Mother Crucifixion
under the altar of the convent is a perfectly venial offence in
our sight.
It is one of the faults which resemble a duty. The nuns had
committed it, not only without difficulty, but even with the applause
of their own consciences.
In the cloister, what is called the "government"
is only an intermeddling with authority, an interference which
is always questionable.
In the first place, the rule; as for the code, we shall see.
Make as many laws as you please, men; but keep them for yourselves.
The tribute to Caesar is never anything but the remnants of
the tribute to God. A prince is nothing in the presence of a principle.
Fauchelevent limped along behind the hearse in a very contented
frame of mind.
His twin plots, the one with the nuns, the one for the convent,
the other against it, the other with M. Madeleine, had succeeded,
to all appearance.
Jean Valjean's composure was one of those powerful tranquillities
which are contagious. Fauchelevent no longer felt doubtful as
to his success.
What remained to be done was a mere nothing.
Within the last two years, he had made good Father Mestienne,
a chubby-cheeked person, drunk at least ten times.
He played with Father Mestienne.
He did what he liked with him.
He made him dance according to his whim. Mestienne's head
adjusted itself to the cap of Fauchelevent's will. Fauchelevent's
confidence was perfect.
At the moment when the convoy entered the avenue leading to
the cemetery, Fauchelevent glanced cheerfully at the hearse, and
said half aloud, as he rubbed his big hands:--
"Here's a fine farce!"
All at once the hearse halted; it had reached the gate.
The permission for interment must be exhibited.
The undertaker's man addressed himself to the porter of the
cemetery.
During this colloquy, which always is productive of a delay
of from one to two minutes, some one, a stranger, came and placed
himself behind the hearse, beside Fauchelevent.
He was a sort of laboring man, who wore a waistcoat with large
pockets and carried a mattock under his arm.
Fauchelevent surveyed this stranger.
"Who are you?" he demanded.
"The man replied:--
"The grave-digger."
If a man could survive the blow of a cannon-ball full in the
breast, he would make the same face that Fauchelevent made.
"The grave-digger?"
"Yes."
"You?"
"I."
"Father Mestienne is the grave-digger."
"He was."
"What!
He was?"
"He is dead."
Fauchelevent had expected anything but this, that a grave-digger
could die.
It is true, nevertheless, that grave-diggers do die themselves.
By dint of excavating graves for other people, one hollows
out one's own.
Fauchelevent stood there with his mouth wide open.
He had hardly the strength to stammer:--
"But it is not possible!"
"It is so."
"But," he persisted feebly, "Father Mestienne
is the grave-digger."
"After Napoleon, Louis XVIII.
After Mestienne, Gribier. Peasant, my name is Gribier."
Fauchelevent, who was deadly pale, stared at this Gribier.
He was a tall, thin, livid, utterly funereal man.
He had the air of an unsuccessful doctor who had turned grave-digger.
Fauchelevent burst out laughing.
"Ah!" said he, "what queer things do happen!
Father Mestienne is dead, but long live little Father Lenoir!
Do you know who little Father Lenoir is?
He is a jug of red wine.
It is a jug of Surene, morbigou! of real Paris Surene?
Ah!
So old Mestienne is dead! I am sorry for it; he was a jolly
fellow.
But you are a jolly fellow, too.
Are you not, comrade?
We'll go and have a drink together presently."
The man replied:--
"I have been a student.
I passed my fourth examination. I never drink."
The hearse had set out again, and was rolling up the grand
alley of the cemetery.
Fauchelevent had slackened his pace.
He limped more out of anxiety than from infirmity.
The grave-digger walked on in front of him.
Fauchelevent passed the unexpected Gribier once more in review.
He was one of those men who, though very young, have the air
of age, and who, though slender, are extremely strong.
"Comrade!" cried Fauchelevent.
The man turned round.
"I am the convent grave-digger."
"My colleague," said the man.
Fauchelevent, who was illiterate but very sharp, understood
that he had to deal with a formidable species of man, with a fine
talker. He muttered:
"So Father Mestienne is dead."
The man replied:--
"Completely.
The good God consulted his note-book which shows when the
time is up.
It was Father Mestienne's turn.
Father Mestienne died."
Fauchelevent repeated mechanically:
"The good God--"
"The good God," said the man authoritatively.
"According to the philosophers, the Eternal Father; according
to the Jacobins, the Supreme Being."
"Shall we not make each other's acquaintance?" stammered
Fauchelevent.
"It is made.
You are a peasant, I am a Parisian."
"People do not know each other until they have drunk
together. He who empties his glass empties his heart.
You must come and have a drink with me.
Such a thing cannot be refused."
"Business first."
Fauchelevent thought:
"I am lost."
They were only a few turns of the wheel distant from the small
alley leading to the nuns' corner.
The grave-digger resumed:--
"Peasant, I have seven small children who must be fed.
As they must eat, I cannot drink."
And he added, with the satisfaction of a serious man who is
turning a phrase well:--
"Their hunger is the enemy of my thirst."
The hearse skirted a clump of cypress-trees, quitted the grand
alley, turned into a narrow one, entered the waste land, and plunged
into a thicket.
This indicated the immediate proximity of the place of sepulture.
Fauchelevent slackened his pace, but he could not detain the
hearse.
Fortunately, the soil, which was light and wet with the winter
rains, clogged the wheels and retarded its speed.
He approached the grave-digger.
"They have such a nice little Argenteuil wine,"
murmured Fauchelevent.
"Villager," retorted the man, "I ought not
be a grave-digger. My father was a porter at the Prytaneum [Town-Hall].
He destined me for literature.
But he had reverses.
He had losses on 'change. I was obliged to renounce the profession
of author.
But I am still a public writer."
"So you are not a grave-digger, then?" returned
Fauchelevent, clutching at this branch, feeble as it was.
"The one does not hinder the other.
I cumulate."
Fauchelevent did not understand this last word.
"Come have a drink," said he.
Here a remark becomes necessary.
Fauchelevent, whatever his anguish, offered a drink, but he
did not explain himself on one point; who was to pay?
Generally, Fauchelevent offered and Father Mestienne paid.
An offer of a drink was the evident result of the novel situation
created by the new grave-digger, and it was necessary to make
this offer, but the old gardener left the proverbial quarter of
an hour named after Rabelais in the dark, and that not unintentionally.
As for himself, Fauchelevent did not wish to pay, troubled as
he was.
The grave-digger went on with a superior smile:--
"One must eat.
I have accepted Father Mestienne's reversion. One gets to
be a philosopher when one has nearly completed his classes.
To the labor of the hand I join the labor of the arm. I have
my scrivener's stall in the market of the Rue de Sevres. You know?
the Umbrella Market.
All the cooks of the Red Cross apply to me.
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.
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