To behold such devices, which are nothing else than the savage and daring inventions of the galleys, spring forth from the peaceable things which surrounded him, and mingle with what he called the “petty course of life in the convent,” caused Fauchelevent as much amazement as a gull fishing in the gutter of the Rue Saint-Denis would inspire in a passer-by.
Jean Valjean went on:— “The problem is to get out of here without being seen.
This offers the means.
But give me some information, in the first place.
How is it managed?
Where is this coffin?”
“The empty one?”
“Yes.”
“Downstairs, in what is called the dead-room.
It stands on two trestles, under the pall.”
“How long is the coffin?”
“Six feet.”
“What is this dead-room?”
“It is a chamber on the ground floor which has a grated window opening on the garden, which is closed on the outside by a shutter, and two doors; one leads into the convent, the other into the church.”
“What church?”
“The church in the street, the church which any one can enter.”
“Have you the keys to those two doors?”
“No; I have the key to the door which communicates with the convent; the porter has the key to the door which communicates with the church.”
“When does the porter open that door?”
“Only to allow the undertaker’s men to enter, when they come to get the coffin.
When the coffin has been taken out, the door is closed again.”
“Who nails up the coffin?”
“I do.”
“Who spreads the pall over it?”
“I do.”
“Are you alone?”
“Not another man, except the police doctor, can enter the dead-room.
That is even written on the wall.”
“Could you hide me in that room to-night when every one is asleep?”
“No.
But I could hide you in a small, dark nook which opens on the dead-room, where I keep my tools to use for burials, and of which I have the key.”
“At what time will the hearse come for the coffin to-morrow?”
“About three o’clock in the afternoon.
The burial will take place at the Vaugirard cemetery a little before nightfall.
It is not very near.”
“I will remain concealed in your tool-closet all night and all the morning.
And how about food?
I shall be hungry.”
“I will bring you something.”
“You can come and nail me up in the coffin at two o’clock.”
Fauchelevent recoiled and cracked his finger-joints.
“But that is impossible!”
“Bah! Impossible to take a hammer and drive some nails in a plank?”
What seemed unprecedented to Fauchelevent was, we repeat, a simple matter to Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean had been in worse straits than this.
Any man who has been a prisoner understands how to contract himself to fit the diameter of the escape.
The prisoner is subject to flight as the sick man is subject to a crisis which saves or kills him.
An escape is a cure.
What does not a man undergo for the sake of a cure?
To have himself nailed up in a case and carried off like a bale of goods, to live for a long time in a box, to find air where there is none, to economize his breath for hours, to know how to stifle without dying—this was one of Jean Valjean’s gloomy talents.