|
DEPOSIT YOUR MONEY IN A FOREST RATHER THAN WITH A NOTARY
The reader has, no doubt, understood, without necessitating
a lengthy explanation, that Jean Valjean, after the Champmathieu
affair, had been able, thanks to his first escape of a few days'
duration, to come to Paris and to withdraw in season, from the
hands of Laffitte, the sum earned by him, under the name of Monsieur
Madeleine, at Montreuil-sur-Mer; and that fearing that he might
be recaptured,-- which eventually happened--he had buried and
hidden that sum in the forest of Montfermeil, in the locality
known as the Blaru-bottom. The sum, six hundred and thirty thousand
francs, all in bank-bills, was not very bulky, and was contained
in a box; only, in order to preserve the box from dampness, he
had placed it in a coffer filled with chestnut shavings.
In the same coffer he had placed his other treasures, the
Bishop's candlesticks.
It will be remembered that he had carried off the candlesticks
when he made his escape from Montreuil-sur-Mer. The man seen one
evening for the first time by Boulatruelle, was Jean Valjean.
Later on, every time that Jean Valjean needed money, he went
to get it in the Blaru-bottom. Hence the absences which we have
mentioned.
He had a pickaxe somewhere in the heather, in a hiding-place
known to himself alone.
When he beheld Marius convalescent, feeling that the hour
was at hand, when that money might prove of service, he had gone
to get it; it was he again, whom Boulatruelle had seen in the
woods, but on this occasion, in the morning instead of in the
evening.
Boulatreulle inherited his pickaxe.
The actual sum was five hundred and eighty-four thousand,
five hundred francs.
Jean Valjean withdrew the five hundred francs for himself.--"We
shall see hereafter," he thought.
The difference between that sum and the six hundred and thirty
thousand francs withdrawn from Laffitte represented his expenditure
in ten years, from 1823 to 1833.
The five years of his stay in the convent had cost only five
thousand francs.
Jean Valjean set the two candlesticks on the chimney-piece,
where they glittered to the great admiration of Toussaint.
Moreover, Jean Valjean knew that he was delivered from Javert.
The story had been told in his presence, and he had verified the
fact in the Moniteur, how a police inspector named Javert had
been found drowned under a boat belonging to some laundresses,
between the Pont au Change and the Pont-Neuf, and that a writing
left by this man, otherwise irreproachable and highly esteemed
by his superiors, pointed to a fit of mental aberration and a
suicide.--"In fact," thought Jean Valjean, "since
he left me at liberty, once having got me in his power, he must
have been already mad."
|
