There is no danger to-day.
There will be no recreation hour.
The day will be entirely devoted to prayers.
You hear the bell.
As I told you, a stroke each minute.
It is the death knell.”
“I understand, Father Fauchelevent.
There are pupils.”
And Jean Valjean thought to himself:—
“Here is Cosette’s education already provided.”
Fauchelevent exclaimed:— “Pardine! There are little girls indeed!
And they would bawl around you!
And they would rush off!
To be a man here is to have the plague.
You see how they fasten a bell to my paw as though I were a wild beast.”
Jean Valjean fell into more and more profound thought.—“This convent would be our salvation,” he murmured.
Then he raised his voice:—
“Yes, the difficulty is to remain here.”
“No,” said Fauchelevent, “the difficulty is to get out.”
Jean Valjean felt the blood rush back to his heart.
“To get out!”
“Yes, Monsieur Madeleine. In order to return here it is first necessary to get out.”
And after waiting until another stroke of the knell had sounded, Fauchelevent went on:—
“You must not be found here in this fashion.
Whence come you?
For me, you fall from heaven, because I know you; but the nuns require one to enter by the door.”
All at once they heard a rather complicated pealing from another bell.
“Ah!” said Fauchelevent, “they are ringing up the vocal mothers.
They are going to the chapter.
They always hold a chapter when any one dies.
She died at daybreak.
People generally do die at daybreak.
But cannot you get out by the way in which you entered?
Come, I do not ask for the sake of questioning you, but how did you get in?”
Jean Valjean turned pale; the very thought of descending again into that terrible street made him shudder.
You make your way out of a forest filled with tigers, and once out of it, imagine a friendly counsel that shall advise you to return thither!
Jean Valjean pictured to himself the whole police force still engaged in swarming in that quarter, agents on the watch, sentinels everywhere, frightful fists extended towards his collar, Javert at the corner of the intersection of the streets perhaps.
“Impossible!” said he. “Father Fauchelevent, say that I fell from the sky.”
“But I believe it, I believe it,” retorted Fauchelevent. “You have no need to tell me that.
The good God must have taken you in his hand for the purpose of getting a good look at you close to, and then dropped you.
Only, he meant to place you in a man’s convent; he made a mistake.
Come, there goes another peal, that is to order the porter to go and inform the municipality that the dead-doctor is to come here and view a corpse.
All that is the ceremony of dying.
These good ladies are not at all fond of that visit.
A doctor is a man who does not believe in anything.
He lifts the veil.
Sometimes he lifts something else too.
How quickly they have had the doctor summoned this time!
What is the matter?
Your little one is still asleep.