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IN WHICH THE READER WILL PERUSE TWO VERSES, WHICH ARE OF THE
DEVIL'S COMPOSITION, POSSIBLY
Before proceeding further, it will be to the purpose to narrate
in some detail, a singular occurrence which took place at about
the same epoch, in Montfermeil, and which is not lacking in coincidence
with certain conjectures of the indictment.
There exists in the region of Montfermeil a very ancient superstition,
which is all the more curious and all the more precious, because
a popular superstition in the vicinity of Paris is like an aloe
in Siberia. We are among those who respect everything which is
in the nature of a rare plant.
Here, then, is the superstition of Montfermeil: it is thought
that the devil, from time immemorial, has selected the forest
as a hiding-place for his treasures.
Goodwives affirm that it is no rarity to encounter at nightfall,
in secluded nooks of the forest, a black man with the air of a
carter or a wood-chopper, wearing wooden shoes, clad in trousers
and a blouse of linen, and recognizable by the fact, that, instead
of a cap or hat, he has two immense horns on his head.
This ought, in fact, to render him recognizable.
This man is habitually engaged in digging a hole. There are
three ways of profiting by such an encounter.
The first is to approach the man and speak to him.
Then it is seen that the man is simply a peasant, that he
appears black because it is nightfall; that he is not digging
any hole whatever, but is cutting grass for his cows, and that
what had been taken for horns is nothing but a dung-fork which
he is carrying on his back, and whose teeth, thanks to the perspective
of evening, seemed to spring from his head. The man returns home
and dies within the week.
The second way is to watch him, to wait until he has dug his
hole, until he has filled it and has gone away; then to run with
great speed to the trench, to open it once more and to seize the
"treasure" which the black man has necessarily placed
there.
In this case one dies within the month.
Finally, the last method is not to speak to the black man,
not to look at him, and to flee at the best speed of one's legs.
One then dies within the year.
As all three methods are attended with their special inconveniences,
the second, which at all events, presents some advantages, among
others that of possessing a treasure, if only for a month, is
the one most generally adopted.
So bold men, who are tempted by every chance, have quite frequently,
as we are assured, opened the holes excavated by the black man,
and tried to rob the devil. The success of the operation appears
to be but moderate.
At least, if the tradition is to be believed, and in particular
the two enigmatical lines in barbarous Latin, which an evil Norman
monk, a bit of a sorcerer, named Tryphon has left on this subject.
This Tryphon is buried at the Abbey of Saint-Georges de Bocherville,
near Rouen, and toads spawn on his grave.
Accordingly, enormous efforts are made.
Such trenches are ordinarily extremely deep; a man sweats,
digs, toils all night-- for it must be done at night; he wets
his shirt, burns out his candle, breaks his mattock, and when
he arrives at the bottom of the hole, when he lays his hand on
the "treasure," what does he find? What is the devil's
treasure?
A sou, sometimes a crown-piece, a stone, a skeleton, a bleeding
body, sometimes a spectre folded in four like a sheet of paper
in a portfolio, sometimes nothing. This is what Tryphon's verses
seem to announce to the indiscreet and curious:--"Fodit,
et in fossa thesauros condit opaca,
As, nummas, lapides, cadaver, simulacra, nihilque."
It seems that in our day there is sometimes found a powder-horn
with bullets, sometimes an old pack of cards greasy and worn,
which has evidently served the devil.
Tryphon does not record these two finds, since Tryphon lived
in the twelfth century, and since the devil does not appear to
have had the wit to invent powder before Roger Bacon's time, and
cards before the time of Charles VI.
Moreover, if one plays at cards, one is sure to lose all that
one possesses! and as for the powder in the horn, it possesses
the property of making your gun burst in your face.
Now, a very short time after the epoch when it seemed to the
prosecuting attorney that the liberated convict Jean Valjean during
his flight of several days had been prowling around Montfermeil,
it was remarked in that village that a certain old road-laborer,
named Boulatruelle, had "peculiar ways" in the forest.
People thereabouts thought they knew that this Boulatruelle
had been in the galleys. He was subjected to certain police supervision,
and, as he could find work nowhere, the administration employed
him at reduced rates as a road-mender on the cross-road from Gagny
to Lagny.
This Boulatruelle was a man who was viewed with disfavor by
the inhabitants of the district as too respectful, too humble,
too prompt in removing his cap to every one, and trembling and
smiling in the presence of the gendarmes,--probably affiliated
to robber bands, they said; suspected of lying in ambush at verge
of copses at nightfall. The only thing in his favor was that he
was a drunkard.
This is what people thought they had noticed:--
Of late, Boulatruelle had taken to quitting his task of stone-breaking
and care of the road at a very early hour, and to betaking himself
to the forest with his pickaxe.
He was encountered towards evening in the most deserted clearings,
in the wildest thickets; and he had the appearance of being in
search of something, and sometimes he was digging holes.
The goodwives who passed took him at first for Beelzebub;
then they recognized Boulatruelle, and were not in the least reassured
thereby.
These encounters seemed to cause Boulatruelle a lively displeasure.
It was evident that he sought to hide, and that there was
some mystery in what he was doing.
It was said in the village:
"It is clear that the devil has appeared. Boulatruelle
has seen him, and is on the search.
In sooth, he is cunning enough to pocket Lucifer's hoard."
The Voltairians added, "Will Boulatruelle catch the devil,
or will the devil catch Boulatruelle?"
The old women made a great many signs of the cross.
In the meantime, Boulatruelle's manoeuvres in the forest ceased;
and he resumed his regular occupation of roadmending; and people
gossiped of something else.
Some persons, however, were still curious, surmising that
in all this there was probably no fabulous treasure of the legends,
but some fine windfall of a more serious and palpable sort than
the devil's bank-bills, and that the road-mender had half discovered
the secret.
The most "puzzled" were the school-master and Thenardier,
the proprietor of the tavern, who was everybody's friend, and
had not disdained to ally himself with Boulatruelle.
"He has been in the galleys," said Thenardier.
"Eh!
Good God! no one knows who has been there or will be there."
One evening the schoolmaster affirmed that in former times
the law would have instituted an inquiry as to what Boulatruelle
did in the forest, and that the latter would have been forced
to speak, and that he would have been put to the torture in case
of need, and that Boulatruelle would not have resisted the water
test, for example.
"Let us put him to the wine test," said Thenardier.
They made an effort, and got the old road-mender to drinking.
Boulatruelle drank an enormous amount, but said very little. He
combined with admirable art, and in masterly proportions, the
thirst of a gormandizer with the discretion of a judge. Nevertheless,
by dint of returning to the charge and of comparing and putting
together the few obscure words which he did allow to escape him,
this is what Thenardier and the schoolmaster imagined that they
had made out:--
One morning, when Boulatruelle was on his way to his work,
at daybreak, he had been surprised to see, at a nook of the forest
in the underbrush, a shovel and a pickaxe, concealed, as one might
say.
However, he might have supposed that they were probably the
shovel and pick of Father Six-Fours, the water-carrier, and would
have thought no more about it.
But, on the evening of that day, he saw, without being seen
himself, as he was hidden by a large tree, "a person who
did not belong in those parts, and whom he, Boulatruelle, knew
well," directing his steps towards the densest part of the
wood.
Translation by Thenardier:
A comrade of the galleys. Boulatruelle obstinately refused
to reveal his name.
This person carried a package--something square, like a large
box or a small trunk. Surprise on the part of Boulatruelle.
However, it was only after the expiration of seven or eight
minutes that the idea of following that "person" had
occurred to him.
But it was too late; the person was already in the thicket,
night had descended, and Boulatruelle had not been able to catch
up with him.
Then he had adopted the course of watching for him at the
edge of the woods. "It was moonlight."
Two or three hours later, Boulatruelle had seen this person
emerge from the brushwood, carrying no longer the coffer, but
a shovel and pick.
Boulatruelle had allowed the person to pass, and had not dreamed
of accosting him, because he said to himself that the other man
was three times as strong as he was, and armed with a pickaxe,
and that he would probably knock him over the head on recognizing
him, and on perceiving that he was recognized. Touching effusion
of two old comrades on meeting again.
But the
shovel and pick had served as a ray of light to Boulatruelle;
he had hastened to the thicket in the morning, and had found neither
shovel nor pick.
From this he had drawn the inference that this person, once
in the forest, had dug a hole with his pick, buried the coffer,
and reclosed the hole with his shovel.
Now, the coffer was too small to contain a body; therefore
it contained money.
Hence his researches. Boulatruelle had explored, sounded,
searched the entire forest and the thicket, and had dug wherever
the earth appeared to him to have been recently turned up.
In vain.
He had "ferreted out" nothing.
No one in Montfermeil thought any more about it.
There were only a few brave gossips, who said, "You may
be certain that the mender on the Gagny road did not take all
that trouble for nothing; he was sure that the devil had come."
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