Les Misérables, Volume 2 - Part 2 By: Victor Hugo

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Les Miserables, Volume 2 by Victor Hugo translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood Book 6 Le Petit Pispius Chapter 162 Rue Petit Pispiut Nothing half a century ago more resembled every other carriage gate than the carriage gate of no. 62, Rue Petit Pispiu. This entrance, which usually stood ajar in the most inviting fashion, permitted a view of two things, neither of which have anything very funereal about them. A courtyard surrounded by walls hung with vines and the face of a lounging porter. Above the wall at the bottom of the court, tall trees were visible. One ray of sunlight enlivened the courtyard when a glass of wine cheered up the porter. It was difficult to pass no. 62, Little Pisview street without carrying away a smiling impression of it. Nevertheless, it was a sombre place of which one had had a glimpse. The threshold smiled, the house prayed and wept. If one succeeded in passing the porter, which was not easy, which was even nearly impossible for everyone, for there was an open sesame which it was necessary to know. If the porter Once passed, one entered a little vestibule on the right, on which opened a staircase shut in between two walls and so narrow that only one person could ascend it at a time. If one did not allow oneself to be alarmed by a daubing of canary yellow with a dado of chocolate, which clothed this staircase. If one ventured to ascend it, one crossed a first landing, then a second, and arrived on the first story at a corridor where the yellow wash and the chocolate hued plinth pursued one with a peaceable persistency. Staircase and corridor were lighted by two beautiful windows. The corridor took a turn and became dark. If one doubled this cape, one arrived a few paces further on, in front of a door, which was all the more mysterious because it was not fastened if one opened it. One found oneself in a little chamber, about six feet square, tiled, well scrubbed clean, cold, and hung with nankin paper with green flowers at 15 sous the roll. A white dull light fell from a large window with tiny panes on the left, which usurped the whole width of the room. One gazed about but saw no one. One listened. One heard neither a footstep nor a human murmur. The walls were bare, the chamber was not furnished. There was not even a chair. One looked again and beheld on the wall facing the door a quadrangular hole about a foot square, with a grating of interlacing iron bars, black, knotted, solid, which formed squares, I had almost said meshes of less than an inch and a half in diagonal length the little green flowers of anankin paper ran in a calm and orderly manner to those iron bars without being startled or thrown into confusion by their funereal contact, supposing that a living thing had been so wonderfully thin as to essay an entrance or an exit through the square hole this grating would have prevented did not allow the passage of the body, but it did allow the passage of the eyes, that is to say, of the mind. This seems to have occurred to them, for it had been reinforced by a sheet of tin inserted in the wall a little in the rear, and pierced with a thousand holes more microscopic than the holes of a strainer. At the bottom of this plate an aperture had been pierced exactly similar to the orifice of a letter box. A bit of tape attached to a bell wire hung at the right of the grated opening. If the tape was pulled, a bell rang, and one heard a voice very near at hand, which made one start. Who is there? The voice demanded. It was a woman's voice, a gentle voice, so gentle that it was mournful. Here again there was a magical word, which it was necessary to know. If one did not know it, the voice ceased. The wall became silent once more, as though the terrified obscurity of the sepulchre had been on the other side of it. If one knew the password, the voice resumed. Enter on the right. One then perceived on the right, facing the window, a glass door surmounted by a frame, glazed and painted gray. On raising the latch and crossing the threshold, one experienced precisely the same impression as when one enters at the theater into a grated bachelor before the grating is lowered and the chandeliers lighted. One was, in fact in a sort of theater box, narrow, furnished with two old chairs and a much frayed straw matting, sparely illuminated by the vague light from the glass door, a regular box with its front just of a height to lean upon, bearing a tablet of black wood. This box was grated. Only the grating of it was not of gilded wood as at the opera. It was a monstrous lattice of iron bars, hideously interlaced and riveted to the wall by enormous fastenings which resembled clenched fists. The first minutes passed when one's eyes began to grow used to this cellar like half twilight. One tried to pass the grating, but got no further than six inches beyond it. There he encountered a barrier of black shutters, reinforced and fortified with transverse beams of wood painted a gingerbread yellow. These shutters were divided into long narrow slats, and they masked the entire length of the grating. They were always closed. At the expiration of a few moments, one heard a voice proceeding from behind these shutters and saying, I am here. What do you wish with me? It was a beloved, sometimes an adored voice. No one was visible. Hardly the sound of a breath was audible. It seemed as though it were a spirit which had been evoked that was speaking to you across the walls of the tomb. If one chanced to be within certain prescribed and very rare conditions, the slat of one of the shutters opened opposite you. The evoked spirit became an apparition behind the grating. Behind the shutter, one perceived, so far as the grating permitted sight, a head of which only the mouth and the chin were visible. The rest was covered with a black veil. One caught a glimpse of a black gimp and a form that was barely defined, covered with a black shroud. That head spoke with you, but did not look at you and never smiled at you. The light which came from behind you was adjusted in such a manner that you saw her in the white and she saw you in the black. This light was symbolical. Nevertheless, your eyes plunged eagerly through that opening which was made in that place, shut off from all glances. A profound vagueness enveloped that form. Clad in mourning, your eyes searched that vagueness and sought to make out the surroundings of the apparition. At the expiration of a very short time, you discovered that you could see nothing. What you beheld was night, emptiness, shadows, a wintry mist mingled with a vapor from the tomb. A sort of terrible peace, a. A silence from which you could gather nothing, not even sighs, a gloom in which you could distinguish nothing, not even phantoms. What you beheld was the interior of a cloister. It was the interior of that severe and gloomy edifice which was called the Convent of the Bernadines of the Perpetual Adoration. The box in which you stood was the parlor. The first voice which had addressed you was that of the portress, who always sat motionless and silent. On the other side of the wall, near the square opening, screened by the iron grating and the plate with its thousand holes as by a double visor. The obscurity which bathed the grated box arose from the fact that the parlor, which had a window on the side of the world, had none on the side of the convent. Profane eyes must see nothing of that sacred place. Nevertheless, there was something beyond that shadow. There was a light. There was life in the midst of that death. Although this was the most strictly walled of all convents, we shall endeavor to make our way into it, and to take the reader in and to say, without transgressing proper bounds, things which storytellers have never seen and have therefore never described. End of book 6 chapter 1. [00:09:06] Speaker B: Les Miserables, volume 2 by Victor Hugo Translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood Book VI Le petit picpus chapter 2 the obedience of Martin Verga this convent, which in 1824 had already existed for many a long year in the Rue Petit Picpus, was a community of Bernardines in the Obedience of Martin Verrat. These Bernardines were attached in consequence, not to Clairvaux, like the Bernardine monks, but to Citeaux, like the Benedictine monks. In other words, they were the subjects not of St. Bernard, but of St. Benoit. Anyone who has turned over old folios to any extent knows that Martin verga founded in 1425 a congregation of Bernardines Benedictines, with Salamanca for the head of the order and Alcala as the branch establishment. This congregation had sent out branches throughout all the Catholic countries of Europe. There is nothing unusual in the Latin Church in these grafts of one order on another, to mention only a single order of Sainte Benoit, which is here in question. There are attached to this order, without counting the Obedience of Martin Verga, four congregations, two in Italy, Montcassant and St Justine of Padua, two in France, Cluny and St Maur, and nine, Vallombrosa, Gramont, the Celestins, the Camadours, the Carthusians, the Humilies, the Olivetures, the Silvestrans, and lastly Citeaux. For Citeaux, itself a trunk for other orders, is only an offshoot of Saint Benoit. Citeaux dates from Saint Robert Abbey de Molesme in the diocese of Langres, in 1098. Now it was in 529 that the devil, having retired to the desert of Subiaco, he was old, had he turned hermit, was chased from the ancient temple of Apollo, where he dwelt by Saint Benoit, then aged 17, after the rule of the Carmelites, who go barefoot, wear a bit of willow on their throats, and never sit down. The harshest rule is that of the Bernardine Benedictines of Martin Verga. They are clothed in black with a gimp which, in accordance to the express command of Saint Benoit, mounts to the chin. A robe of Serge with large sleeves, a woolen veil, the gimp which mounts to the chin, cut square on the breast, the band which descends over their brow to their eyes, this is their dress. All is black except the band, which is white. The novices wear the same habit, but all in white. The professed nuns also wear a rosary at their side. The Bernardine Benedictines of Martin Verga practice the perpetual adoration, like the Benedictines called ladies of the Holy Sacrament, who at the beginning of this century had two houses in Paris, one at the Temple, the other in the Rue Navs St. Genevieve. However, the Bernardine Benedictines of the Petit Picpus, of whom we are speaking, were a totally different order from the ladies of the Holy Sacrament cloistered in the ruin of Sainte Genevieve and at the Temple. There were numerous differences in their rule. There were some in their costume. The Bernardine Benedictine of the Petit Picpus wore the black kemp, and the Benedictine of the Holy Sacrament of the Rune of Sainte Genevieve wore a white one, and had besides on their breasts a Holy Sacrament about 3 inches long in silver, gilt or gilded copper. The nuns of the Petit Pip did not wear this holy Sacrament. The perpetual adoration, which was common to the house of the Petit Picpus and to the house of the Temple, leaves those two orders perfectly distinct. Their only resemblance lies in this practice of the ladies of the Holy Sacrament and the Bernardines of Martin Vergas, just as there existed a similarity in the study and the glorification of all the mysteries relating to the infancy, the life and the death of Jesus Christ and the Virgin between the two orders, which were nevertheless widely separated and on occasion even hostile. The Oratory of Italy, established at Florence by Philip de Neri, and the Oratory of France, established by Pierre de Beru. The oratory of France claimed the precedence, since Philip de Neri was only a saint, while Berul was a cardinal. Let us return to the harsh Spanish rule of Martin Verga. The Bernardine Benedictines of this obedience fast all the year round, abstain from meat, fast in Lent, and on many other days which are peculiar to them, rise from their first sleep from 1 to 3 o' clock in the morning to read their breviary and to chant mountains sleep in all seasons between serge sheets and on straw. Make no use of the bath, never light a fire, scourge themselves. Every Friday observe the rule of silence, speak to each other only during the recreation hours, which are very brief, and wear Drugget chemises for six months in the year from September 14, which is the exaltation of the Holy Cross until Easter. These six months are a modification. The rule says all the year. But this dress, drugged chemise, intolerable in the heat of summer, produced fevers and nervous spasms. The use of it had to be restricted. Even with this palliation, when the nuns Put on this chemise on the 14th of September. They suffer from fever for three or four days. Obedience, poverty, chastity, perseverance in their seclusion. These are their vows, which the rule greatly aggravates. The prioress is elected for three years by the mothers, who are called mervokale because they have a voice in the chapter. A prioress can only be re elected twice, which fixes the longest possible reign of a prioress at nine years. They never see the officiating priest, who is always hidden from them by a serge curtain 9ft in height. During the sermon, when the preacher is in the chapel, they drop their veils over their faces. They must always speak low, walk with their eyes on the ground and their heads bowed. One man only is allowed to enter the convent, the Archbishop of the diocese. There is really one other, the gardener. But he is always an old man, and in order that he may always be alone in the garden, and that the nuns may be warned to avoid him, a bell is attached to his knee. Their submission to the prioress is absolute and passive. It is the canonical subjection in the full force of its abnegation, as at the voice of Christ ut voci Christi, at a gesture, at the first sign, ad nutum, ad primum signum, immediately, with cheerfulness, with perseverance, with a certain blind obedience, prompte ilariteriter perseveranter, et cecca qualdam obedientia, as in the file in the hand of the workman. Quasi limam in manibus fabri, without power to read or to write without express permission, Legere velscribere non arischerit sine expressad superioris licentia. Each one of them in turn, makes what they call reparation. The reparation is the prayer for all the sins, for all the faults, for all the dissensions, for all the violations, for all the iniquities, for all the crimes committed on earth. For the space of 12 consecutive hours, from 4 o' clock in the afternoon till 4 o' clock in the morning, or from 4 o' clock in the morning until 4 o' clock in the afternoon. The sister who is making reparation remains on her knees on the stone before the Holy Sacrament, with hands clasped, a rope around her neck. When her fatigue becomes unendurable, she prostrates herself flat on her face against the earth, with her arms outstretched in the form of a cross. This is her only relief. In this attitude she prays for all the guilty in the universe. This is great to sublimity. [00:18:20] Speaker C: As this. [00:18:20] Speaker B: Act is performed in front of a post on which burns a candle, it is called without distinction, to make reparation or to be at the post. The nuns even prefer out of humility. This last expression, which contains an idea of torture and abasement, to make reparation is a function in which the whole soul is absorbed. The sister at the post would not turn round were a thunderbolt to fall directly behind her. Besides this, there is always a sister kneeling before the Holy Sacrament. This station lasts an hour. They relieve each other like soldiers on guard. This is the perpetual adoration. The prioresses and the mothers almost always bear names stamped with peculiar solemnity, recalling not the saints and martyrs, but moments in the life of Jesus Christ as Mother Nativity, Mother Conception, Mother Presentation, Mother Passion. But the names of saints are not interdicted when one sees them. One never sees anything but their mouths. All their teeth are yellow. No toothbrush ever entered that convention. Brushing one's teeth is at the top of a ladder, at whose bottom is the loss of one's soul. They never say my. They possess nothing of their own, and they must not attach themselves to anything. They call everything our, thus our veil, our chaplet. If they were speaking of their chemise, they would say, our chemise. Sometimes they grow attached to some petty object, to a book of hours, a relic, a medal that has been blessed. As soon as they become aware that they are growing attached to this object, they must give it up. They recall the words of St. Therese, to whom a great lady said as she was on the point of entering her order. Permit me, Mother, to send for a Bible to which I am greatly attached. Ah, you are attached to something. In that case, do not enter our order. Every person, whatever, is forbidden to shut herself up to have a place of her own, a chamber. They live with their cells open. When they meet, one says, blessed and adored be the most holy Sacrament of the altar. The other responds forever. The same ceremony when one taps at the other's door. Hardly has she touched the door. When a soft voice on the other side is heard to say hastily, forever. Like all practices, this becomes mechanical by force of habit, and one sometimes says forever before the other has had time to say the rather long sentence, Praised and adored be the most holy Sacrament of the altar. Among the visitandines, the one who enters says Ave Maria, and the one whose cell is entered says Gratia plena. It is their way of saying Good day, which is in fact full of grace. At each hour of the day, three supplementary strokes sound from the church bell of the convent. At this signal, prioress, vocal mothers, professed nuns, lay sisters, novices, postulants, interrupt what they are saying, what they are doing, or what they are thinking, and all say in unison, if it is 5 o', clock, for instance, at 5 o', clock, and at all hours, praised and adored be the most holy sacrament of the altar. If it is 8 o', clock, at 8 o', clock, and at all hours, and so on according to the hour. This custom, the object of which is to break the thread of thought and to lead it back constantly to God, exists in many communities. The formula alone varies. Thus, at the infant Jesus they say, at this hour and at every hour, May the love of Jesus kindle my heart. The Bernardine Benedictines of Martin Verga, cloistered 50 years ago at Petit Picp, chant the offices to a solemn psalmody, a pure Gregorian chant, and always with full voice during the whole course of the office. Everywhere in the missal where an asterisk occurs, they pause and say in a low voice, jesus, Marie, Joseph. For the office of the dead. They adopted tone so low that the voices of women can hardly descend to such a depth. The. The effect produced is striking and tragic. The nuns of the Petit Picpio had made a vault under their grand altar for the burial of their community. The government, as they say, does not permit this vault to receive coffins, so they leave the convent when they die. This is an affliction to them and causes them consternation. As an infraction of the rules, they had obtained a mediocre consolation, at best, permission to be interred at a special hour and in a special corner in the ancient Vogirard cemetery, which was made of land which had formerly belonged to the community. On Fridays the nuns hear high mass, vespers, and all the offices, as on Sunday they scrupulously observe. In addition to all the little festivals unknown to people of the world, of which the Church of France was so prodigal in the olden days, and of which it is still prodigal in Spain and Italy. Their stations in the chapel are interminable. As for the number and duration of their prayers, we can convey no better idea of them than by quoting the ingenuous remark of one of them. The prayers of the postulants are frightful. The prayers of the novices are still worse, and the prayers of the professed nuns are still worse. Once a week the chapter assembles. The prioress presides. The vocal mothers assist. Each sister kneels in turn on the stones and confesses aloud in the presence of all the faults and sins which she has committed during the week. The vocal mothers consult after each confession and inflict the penance allowed. Besides this confession and a loud tone, for which all faults in the least serious are reserved, they have for their venial offences what they call the culp. To make one's coop means to prostrate oneself flat on one's face during the office in front of the prioress, until the latter, who is never called anything. But our mother, notifies the culprit by a slight tap tap of her foot against the wood of her stall. That she can rise. The culp, or perchavi, is made, for a very small matter, a broken glass, a torn veil, an involuntary delay of a few seconds at an office, a false Note in church, etc. This suffices and the culp is made. The culp is entirely spontaneous. It is the culpable person herself. The word is etymologically in its place here, who judges herself and inflicts it on herself. On festival days and Sundays, four mother presenters intoned the offices before a large reading desk with four places. One day, one of the mother presenters intoned a psalm beginning with ecce, and instead of ecce, she uttered aloud the three notes do see soul. For this piece of absentmindedness she underwent a coup which lasted during the whole service. What rendered the fall enormous was the fact that the chapter had left. When a nun is summoned to the parlor, even word, the prioress herself, she drops her veil, as will be remembered, so that only her mouth is visible. The prioress alone can hold communication with strangers. The others can only see their immediate family, and that very rarely, if by chance, an outsider presents herself to see a nun or one whom she has known and loved in the outer world, a regular series of negotiations is required. If it is a woman, the authorization may sometimes be granted. The nun comes and they talk to her through the shutters, which are opened only for a mother or sister. It is unnecessary to say that permission is always refused to men. Such is the rule of Saint Benoit, aggravated by Martin Verga. These nuns are not gay, rosy and fresh, as the daughters of other orders often are. They are pale and grave. Between 1825 and 1830, three of them went mad. End of Book 6 Chapter 2 Les. [00:27:38] Speaker D: Miserables, Volume 2 by Victor Hugo translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood Book 6 Le Petit Piquepus Chapter 3 Austerities 1 is a postulant for two years at least, often for four, a novice for four. It is rare that the definitive vows can be pronounced earlier than the age of 23 or 24 years. The Bernardines Benedictines of Martin Werka do not admit widows to their order. In their cells they deliver themselves up to many unknown macerations, of which they must never speak. On the day when a novice makes her profession, she is dressed in her handsomest attire. She is crowned with white roses. Her hair is brushed until it shines and curled. Then she prostrates herself. A great black veil is thrown over her, and the office for the dead is sung. Then the nuns separate into two. One file passes close to her, saying in plaintive accents, our sister is dead. And the other file responds in a voice of ecstasy, our sister is alive in Jesus Christ. At the epoch when this story takes place, a boarding school was attached to the convent. A boarding school for young girls of noble and mostly wealthy families, among whom could be remarked Mademoiselle de Saint Aulaire and de Belison and an English girl bearing the illustrious Catholic name of Talbot. These young girls, reared by these nuns between four walls, grew up with a horror of the world and of the age. One of them said to us one day, the sight of the street pavement made me shudder from head to foot. They were dressed in blue, with a white cap and a Holy Spirit of silver gilt or of copper on their breasts. On certain grand festival days, particularly St. Martha's Day, they were permitted, as a high favour and a supreme happiness, to dress themselves as nuns and to carry out the offices and practice of Saint Bernois for a whole day. In the early days, the nuns were in the habit of lending them their black garments. This seemed profane, and the prioress forbade it. Only the novices were permitted to lend. It is remarkable that these performances tolerated and encouraged, no doubt in the convent, out of a secret spirit of proselytism and in order to give these children a foretaste of the holy habit, were a genuine happiness and a real recreation for the scholars they simply amused themselves with was new. It gave them a change. Candid reasons of childhood which do not, however, succeed in making us worldlings comprehend the felicity of holding a holy water sprinkler in one's hand and standing for hours together, singing hard enough for four in front of a reading desk. The pupils conformed, with the exception of the austerities, to all the practices of the Convention. There was a certain young woman who entered the world, and who, after many years of married life, had not succeeded in breaking herself of the habit of saying in great haste whenever anyone knocked at her door forever. Like the nuns, the pupils saw their relatives only in the their very mothers did not obtain permission to embrace them. The following illustrates to what a degree severity on that point was carried. One day a young girl received a visit from her mother, who was accompanied by a little sister, three years of age. The young girl wept, for she wished greatly to embrace her sister. Impossible. She begged that at least the child might be permitted to pass her little hand through the bars so that she could kiss it. This was almost indignantly refused. End of book 6 chapter 3 Les miserables volume 2 by Victor Hugo translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood book 6 Le petit picpus chapter 4 Gaieties Nonetheless, these young girls filled this grave house with charming souvenirs. At certain hours, childhood sparkled in that cloister. The recreation hour struck. A door swung on its hinges. The birds said, good, here come the children. An eruption of youth inundated that garden, intersected with a cross like a shroud. Radiant faces, white foreheads, innocent eyes full of merry light. All sorts of auroras were scattered about amid these shadows. After the psalmodys, the bells, the peals and knells and offices, the sound of these little girls burst forth on a sudden, more sweetly than the noise of bees. The hive of joy was opened, and each one brought her honey. They played, they called to each other, they formed into groups, they ran about. Pretty little white teeth chattered in the corners. The veils superintended the laughs. From a distance, shades kept watch of the sunbeams. But what mattered, it still they beamed and laughed. Those four lugubrious walls had their moment of dazzling brilliancy. They looked on vaguely, blanched with the reflection of so much joy at this sweet swarming of the hives. It was like a shower of roses falling athwart this house of mourning. The young girls frolicked beneath the eyes of the nuns. The gaze of impeccability does not embarrass innocence. Thanks to these children, there was, among so many austere hours, one hour of ingenuousness. The little ones skipped about, the elder ones danced in this cloister, play was mingled with heaven. Nothing is so delightful and so august as all these fresh, expanding young souls. Homer would have come thither to laugh with Perrot. And there was, in that black garden, youth, health, noise, cries, giddiness, pleasure, happiness enough to smooth out the wrinkles of all their ancestresses. Those of the epic as well as those of the fairy tale, those of the throne as well as those of the thatched Cottage from Hecuba to La Mer Grand. In that house, more than anywhere else, perhaps arise those children's sayings which are so graceful and which evoke a smile that is full of thoughtfulness. It was between those four gloomy walls that a child of five years exclaimed one day. Mother, one of the big girls has just told me that. That I have only nine years and 10 months longer to remain here. What happiness. It was here too that this memorable dialogue took place. Why are you weeping, my child? The child aged six. I told Alex that I knew my French history. She says that I do not know it, but I do. Alix Alex, the big girl, aged nine. No, she does not know it. How is that, my child? She told me to open the book at random and to ask her any question in the book. And she would answer it. Well, she did not answer it. Let us see about it. What did you ask her? I opened the book at random as she proposed, and I put the first question that I came across. And what was the question? It was what happened after that? It was there that that profound remark was made. Anent a rather greedy parroquet which belonged to a lady Border. How well bred it eats the top of the slice of bread and butter, just like a person. It was on one of the flagstones of this cloister that there was once picked up a confession which had been written out in advance in order that she might not forget it by a sinner of seven years. Father, I accuse myself of having been avaricious. Father, I accuse myself of having been an adulteress. Father, I accuse myself of having raised my eyes to the gentleman. It was on one of the turf benches of this garden that a rosy mouth, six years of age, improvised the following tale, which was listened to by blue eyes aged four and five years. There were three little cocks who owned a country where there were a great many flowers. They plucked the flowers and put them in their pockets. After that they plucked the leaves and put them in their playthings. There was a wolf in that country. There was a great deal of forest. And the wolf was in the forest and he ate the little cocks. And this other poem. There came a blow with a stick. It was Punchinello who bestowed it on the cat. It was not good for her. It hurt her. Then a lady put Punchinello in prison. It was there that a little abandoned child, a foundling whom the convent was bringing up out of charity, uttered this sweet and heartbreaking saying. She heard the others talking of their mothers and she murmured in her, as for me, my mother was not there when I was born. There was a stout portress who could always be seen hurrying through the corridors with her bunch of keys, and whose name was Sister Agatha. The big, big girls, those over 10 years of age, called her Agathocles. The refectory, a large apartment of an oblong square form, which received no light except through a vaulted cloister on a level with the garden, was dark and damp, and, as the children say, full of beasts. All the places round about furnished their contingent of insects. Each of its four corners had received, in the language of the pupils, a special and expressive there was Spider corner, Caterpillar corner, Woodlouse corner, and Cricket corner. Cricket corner was near the kitchen and was highly esteemed. It was not so cold there as elsewhere. From the refectory the names had passed to the boarding school, and there served as in the old college Mazarin, to distinguish four nations. Every pupil belonged to one of these four nations, according to the corner of the refectory in which she sat at meals. One day, Monseigneur the Archbishop, while making his pastoral visit, saw a pretty little rosy girl with beautiful golden hair enter the classroom through which he was passing. He inquired of another pupil, a charming brunette with rosy cheeks, who stood near him. Who is that? She is a spider, Monseigneur. [00:40:27] Speaker A: Bah. [00:40:28] Speaker D: And that one yonder? She is a cricket. And that one? She is a caterpillar. Really? And yourself? I am a wood louse, Monseigneur. Every house of this sort has its own peculiarities. At the beginning of this century, Ecouen was one of those strict and graceful places where young girls pass their childhood in a shadow that is almost August. At Ecouen, in order to take rank in the procession of the Holy Sacrament, a distinction was made between virgins and florists. There were also the dais and the censors, the first who held the cords of the dais and the others who carried incense before the Holy Sacrament. The flowers belonged by right to the four virgins walked in advance on the morning of that great day. It was no rare thing to hear the question put in the dormitory who is a virgin? Madame Campon used to quote this saying of a little one of seven years to a big girl of 16 who took the head of the procession, while she, the little one, remained at the are a virgin. But I am not. End of Book 6 Chapter 4 Les Miserables, Volume 2 by Victor Hugo translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood Book 6 Le Petit Picpus Chapter 5 Distractions above the Door of the refectory. This prayer, which was called the White Paternoster, and which possessed the property of bearing people straight to paradise, was inscribed in large black letters, little white Paternoster. Which God made, which God said, which God placed in Paradise. In the evening when I went to bed, I found three angels sitting on my bed, one at the foot, two at the head, the good Virgin Mary in the middle, who told me to lie down without. The good God is my father, the good Virgin is my mother. The three apostles are my brothers, the three virgins are my sisters. The shirt in which God was born envelops my body. St. Margaret's Cross is written on my breast. Madame, the Virgin was walking through the meadows, weeping for God, when she met Monsieur St John. Monsieur St John, whence come you? I come from Ave Salus. You have not seen the good God. Where is he? He is on the tree of the cross, his feet hanging his hands, nailed a little cap of white thorns on his head. Whoever shall say this thrice at eventide, thrice in the morning, shall win paradise at the last. In 1827, this characteristic orison had disappeared from the wall under a triple coating of daubing paint. At the present time it is finally disappearing from the memories of several who were young girls then and who are old women now. A large crucifix fastened to the wall completed the decoration of this refectory, whose only door, as we think we have mentioned, opened on the garden. Two narrow tables, each flanked by two wooden benches, formed two long parallel lines from one end to the other of the refectory. The walls were white, the tables were black. These two morning colours constitute the only variety in convents. The meals were plain and the food of the children themselves severe. A single dish of meat and vegetables combined or salt fish, such was their luxury. This meagre fare, which was reserved for the pupils alone, was nevertheless an exception. The children ate in silence under the eye of the mother, whose turn it was, who, if a fly took a notion to fly or to hum against the rule, opened and shut a wooden book. From time to time this silence was seasoned with the lives of the saints read aloud from a little pulpit with a desk which was situated at the foot of the crucifixion. The reader was one of the big girls. In weekly turn, at regular distances, on the bare tables there were large varnished bowls in which the pupils washed their own silver cups and knives and forks, and into which they sometimes threw some scrap of tough meat or spoiled fish. This was punished these Bowls were called ronde d'. Eau. The child who broke the silence made a cross with her tongue, where on the ground she licked the pavement. The dust, that end of all joys, was charged with the chastisement of those poor little rose leaves which had been guilty of chirping. There was in the convent a book which has never been printed except as a unique copy, and which it is forbidden to read. It is the rule of Saint Bernois, an arcanum which no profane eye must penetrate. Nemo regulas siu Constitutiones nostras externis communicabit. The pupils one day succeeded in getting possession of this book and set to reading it with avidity, a reading which was often interrupted by the fear of being caught, which caused them to close the volume precipitately. From the great danger thus incurred they derived but a very moderate amount of pleasure. The most interesting thing they found were some unintelligible pages about the sins of young boys. They played in an alley of the garden bordered with a few shabby fruit trees. In spite of the extreme surveillance and the severity of the punishments administered, when the wind had shaken the trees, they sometimes succeeded in picking up a green apple or a spoiled apricot or an inhabited pear on the sly. I will now cede the privilege of speech to a letter which lies before a letter written five and 20 years ago by an old pupil, now Madame la Duchesse de one of the most elegant women in Paris. I quote, literally, one hides one's pear or one's apple as best one may. When one goes upstairs to put the veil on the bed before supper, one stuffs them under one's pillow, and at night one eats them in bed, and when one cannot do that, one eats them in the closet. That was one of their greatest luxuries. Once it was at the epoch of the visit from the Archbishop to the convent. One of the young girls, Mademoiselle Bouchard, who was connected with the Montmorency family, laid a wager that she would ask for a day's leave of absence, an enormity in so austere a community. The wager was accepted, but not one of those who bet believed that she would do it. When the moment came, as the Archbishop was passing in front of the pupils, Mademoiselle Bouchard, to the indescribable terror of her companions, stepped out of the ranks and said, monseigneur, a day's leave of absence. Mademoiselle Bouchard was tall, blooming, with the prettiest Little rosy face in the world. Monsieur de Caelain smiled and said, what, my dear child? A day's leave of absence. Three days, if you like. I grant you three days. The prioress could do nothing. The archbishop had spoken. Horror of the convent, but joy of the pupil. The effect may be imagined. This stern cloister was not so well walled off, however, but that the life of the passions of the outside world, drama and even romance, did not make their way in. To prove this, we will confine ourselves to recording here and to briefly mentioning a real and incontestable fact, which, however, bears no reference in itself to, and is not connected by any thread whatever with the story which we are relating. We mention the fact that, for the sake of completing the physiognomy of the convent, in the reader's mind about this time there was in the convent a mysterious person who was not a nun, who was treated with great respect, and who was addressed as Madame Albertine. Nothing was known about her, save that she was mad and that in the world she passed for dead. Beneath this history, it was said, there lay the arrangements of fortune necessary for a great marriage. This woman, hardly 30 years of age, of dark complexion and tolerably pretty, had a vague look in her large black eyes. Could she see? There was some doubt about this. She glided rather than walked. She never spoke. It was not quite known whether she breathed. Her nostrils were livid and pinched, as after yielding up their last sigh to touch her hand was like touching snow. She possessed a strange spectral grace. Wherever she entered, people felt cold. What one day a sister, on seeing her pass, said to another, she passes for a dead woman. Perhaps she is one, replied the other. A hundred tales were told of Madame Albertine. This arose from the eternal curiosity of the pupils. In the chapel there was a gallery called l' Oeil de Boeuf. It was in this gallery, which had only a circular bay, an oeil de Boeuf, that Madame Albertine listened to the offices. She always occupied it alone, because this gallery being on the level of the first storey, the preacher or the officiating priest could be seen, which was interdicted to the nuns. One day the pulpit was occupied by a young priest of high rank, Monsieur le Duc de Rohan, peer of France, Officer of the red musketeers. In 1815, when he was Prince de Leon and who died afterward, in 1830, as cardinal and Archbishop of Besancon, it was the first time that Monsieur de Rohan had preached at the Petit Picpuse convent. Madame Albertine usually preserved perfect calmness and complete immobility. During the sermons and services that day, as soon as she caught sight of M. De Rohan, she half rose and said in a loud voice amid the silence of the chapel, ah, Auguste. The whole community turned their heads in amazement. The preacher raised his eyes, but Madame Albertine had relapsed into her immobility, a breath from the outer world. A flash of life had passed for an instant across that cold and lifeless face and had then vanished, and the mad woman had become a corpse again. Those two words, however, had set everyone in the convent who had the privilege of speech to chattering. How many things were contained in that? Ah, Auguste. What revelations. M. De Rohan's name really was Auguste. It was evident that Madame Albertine belonged to the very highest society since she knew Monsieur de Rohan, and that her own rank there was of the highest, since she spoke thus familiarly of so great a lord and that there existed between them some connection of relationship perhaps, but a very close one. In any case, since she knew his pet name, two very severe duchesses, Mesdames de Choiseul and de Serent, often visited the community whither they penetrated, no doubt in virtue of the privilege magnates mulieres and caused great consternation in the boarding schools. When these two old ladies passed by, all the poor young girls trembled and dropped their eyes. Moreover, M. De Rohan, quite unknown to himself, was an object of attention to the schoolgirls at that epoch. He had just been made while waiting for the episcopate, Vicar general of the Archbishop of Paris. It was one of his habits to come tolerably often to celebrate the offices in the chapel of the nuns of the Petit Picpus. Not one of the young recluses could see him because of the serge curtain, but he had a sweet and rather shrill voice, which they had come to know and to distinguish he had been a mousquetaire. And then he was said to be very coquettish, that his handsome brown hair was very well dressed in a roll around his head, and that he had a broad girdle of magnificent moir, and that his black cassock was of the most elegant cut in the world. He held a great place in all these imaginations of 16 years. Not a sound from without made its way into the convent, but there was one year when the sound of a flute penetrated thither. This was an event, and the girls who were at school there at the time still recall was a flute which was played in the neighbourhood. This flute always played the same air, an air which is Very far away nowadays. My zetilbe come rain, O my soul. And it was heard two or three times a day. The young girls passed hours in listening to it. The vocal mothers were upset by it. Brains were busy. Punishments descended in showers. This lasted for several months. The girls were all more or less in love with the unknown musician. Each one dreamed that she was z tilbe. The sound of the flute proceeded from the direction of the Rue Droit Mur. And they would have given anything, compromised everything, attempted anything, for the sake of seeing, of catching a glance, if only for a second, of the young man who played that flute so deliciously and who no doubt played on all these souls at the same time. There were some who made their escape by a back door and ascended to the third storey on the Rue Droit Mur side in order to attempt to catch a glimpse through the gaps. Impossible. One even went so far as to thrust her arm through the grating and to wave her white handkerchief. Two were still bolder. They found means to climb on a roof and risk their lives there, and succeeded at last in seeing the young man. He was an old emigre gentleman, blind and penniless, who was playing his flute in his attic in order to pass the time. Chapter 5. [00:58:28] Speaker E: Les Miserables, Volume 2 by Victor Hugo translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood Book 6 Le Petit Picpus Chapter 6 The Little Convent. In this enclosure of the Petit Picpus there were three perfectly distinct buildings. The great convent inhabited by the nuns, the boarding school where the scholars were lodged, and lastly, what was called the little convent. It was a building with a garden in which lived all sorts of aged nuns of various orders, the relics of cloisters destroyed in the Revolution, a reunion of all the black, grey and white medleys of all communities and all possible varieties. What might be called, if such a coupling of words is permissible, a sort of harlequin convent. When the Empire was established, all those poor, old, dispersed and exiled women had been accorded permission to come and take shelter under the wings of the Bernardine Benedictines. The government paid them a small pension. The ladies of the Petit Picpu received them cordially. It was a singular pell meo. Each followed her own rule. Sometimes the pupils of the boarding school were allowed, as a great recreation, to pay them a visit. The result is that all those young memories have retained, amongst other souvenirs, that of Mother Saint Basile, Mother Saint Scholastique and Mother Jacob. One of these refugees found herself almost at home. She was a nun of St. Aure, the only One of her order who had survived the ancient convent of the ladies of Saint Aux occupied at the beginning of the 18th century this very house of the Petit Picpu, which belonged later to the Benedictines of Martin Vergaard. This holy woman, too poor to wear the magnificent habit of her order, which was a white robe with a scarlet scapulary, had piously put adorn a little mannequin, which she exhibited with complacency and which she bequeathed to the house at her death in 1824. Only one nun of this order remained. Today there remains only a doll. In addition to these worthy mothers, some old society women had obtained permission of the prioress, like Madame Albertine, to retire into the little convention. Among the number were Madame Beaufort d' Hot Poo and Marquise Dufresne. Another was never known in the convent, except by the formidable noise which she made when she blew her nose. The pupils called her Madame vacamini. Hubbub about 1820 or 1821, Madame de Genlis, who was at that time editing a little picture periodical publication called l', Entrepride, asked to be allowed to enter the convent of the Petit Picpus as lady resident. The Duke d' Orleans recommended her. UPROAR in the hive. The vocal mothers were all in a flutter. Madame de Genlis had made romances, but she declared that she was the first to detest them. And then she had reached her fierce stage of devotion. With the aid of God and of the Prince, she entered. She departed at the end of six or eight months, alleging as a reason that there was no shade in the garden. The nuns were delighted. Although very old, she still played the harp and did it very well. When she went away, she left her mark in her cell. Madame de Genlis was superstitious and a Latinist. These two words furnish a tolerably good profile of her. A few years ago there was still to be seen, pasted in the inside of a little cupboard in her cell, which she locked up her silverware and her jewels, these five lines in Latin, written with her own hand in. In red ink on yellow paper, and which in her opinion possessed the property of frightening away robbers. Imparibus merites pendentria corporamis dismas mediae divina potestas alta pit dismas in female nos et res nostras conservet summa potestas os versus dicas netu furto tua perdas. These verses in 6th century Latin raise the question whether the two thieves of Calgary were named, as is commonly believed, dimagistas or Dismas Higismas. This autography might have confounded the pretensions put forward in the last century by the Vicomte de Gistas, of a descent from the wicked thief. However, the useful virtue attached to these verses forms an article of faith in the order of the Hospitalier. The church of the house, constructed in such a manner as to separate the great convent from the boarding school, like a veritable entrenchment, was of course common to the boarding school, the great convent, and the little convent. The public was even admitted by a sort of lazaretto entrance on the street. But all was so arranged that none of the inhabitants of the cloister could see a face from the outside world. Suppose a church whose choir is grasped in a gigantic hand and folded in such a manner as to form, not as in ordinary churches, a prolongation behind the altar, but a sort of hall or obscure cellar to the right of the officiating priest. Suppose this hall to be shut off by a curtain 7ft in height of which we have already spoken. In the shadow of that curtain pile up on wooden stalls, the nuns in the choir on the left, the school girls on the right, the lay sisters and the novices at the bottom, and you will have some idea of the nuns of the Petit Picpus assisting at divine service. That cavern, which was called a choir, communicated with the cloister by a lobby. The church was lighted from the garden. When the nuns were present at services where their rule enjoined silence, the public was warned of their presence only by the folding seats of the stalls noisily rising and falling. End of book 6 chapter 6 Les Miserables, volume 2 by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book 6 Le Petit Pique p. Chapter 7. Some silhouettes of this darkness during the six years which separate 1819 from 1825. The prioress of the Petit Picpus was Mademoiselle de Blemer, whose name in religion was Mother Innocent. She came of the family of Marguerite de Blemer, author of Lives of the Saints of the Order of Saint Benoit. She had been re elected. She was a woman about 60 years of age, short, thick, singing like a cracked pot, says the letter which we have already quoted. An excellent woman, moreover, and the only merry one in the whole convent, and for that reason adored. She was learned, erudite, wise, competent, curiously professional, crammed with Latin, stuffed with Greek, full of Hebrew, and more of a Benedictine monk than a Benedictine nun. The sub prioress was an old Spanish man, Mother Cineres who was almost blind. The most esteemed among the vocal mothers was Mother Saint Honorine, the Treasure Mother Sint Gertrude, Chief Mistress of the Novices. Mother Saint Ange, the assistant Mistress Mother Annunciation, the Sacristan Mother Saint Augustine, the Nurse, the only one in the convent who was malicious. Then Mother Sainte Mersch Tilde, Mademoiselle Govan, very young and with a beautiful voice Mother des Anges Mademoiselle Drouet, who had been in the convent of the Fil Dieu and in the Convent du Tresor between Gisart and Magny Mother St Joseph Mademoiselle de Cogoludoux, Mother St Adelaide Mademoiselle d', Auvernet, Mother Misericord Mademoiselle de Cifointe, who could not resist austerities Mother Compassion, Mademoiselle de la Metier, received at the age of 60, in defiance of the rule and very wealthy Mother Providence. Mademoiselle de Laudonnire, Mother Presentation, Mademoiselle de Sigense, who was prioress in 1847 and finally mother saint Celine, sister of the sculptor who went mad. Mother Saint Chantal Mademoiselle de Suzon, who went mad. There was also among the prettiest of them, a charming girl of 3 and 20 who was from the Isle de Bourbon, a descendant of the Chevalier Rose, whose name had been Mademoiselle Rose and who was called Mother Assumption. Mother Saint Michtil, entrusted with the singing in the choir, was fond of making use of the pupils in this quarter. She usually took a complete scale of them, that is to say 7 from 10 to 16 years of age, inclusive of assorted voices and sizes, whom she made sing, standing drawn up in a line side by side, according to age, from the smallest to the largest. This presented to the eye something in the nature of a reed pipe of young girls, a sort of living panpipe made of angels. Those of the Lave sisters whom the scholars loved most were Sister Euphrasie, Sister Saint Marguerite, Sister Saint Amart, who was in her dotage, and Sister Sainte Michel, whose long nose made them laugh. All these women were gentle with the children. The nuns were severe only towards themselves. No fire was lighted except in the school, and the food was choice compared to that in the convent. Moreover, they lavished a thousand cares on their scholars. Only when a child passed near a nun and addressed her, the none ever replied. This rule of silence had had this effect that throughout the whole convent speech had been withdrawn from human creatures and bestowed on inanimate objects. Now it was the church bell which spoke. Now it was the gardener's bell, a very sonorous bell, placed beside the portress, and which was audible through throughout the house, indicated by its varied peals, which formed a sort of acoustic telegraph. All the actions of material life which were to be performed and summoned to the parlour in case of need. Such or such an inhabitant of the house. Each person, each thing had its own peal. The prioress had 1 and 1, the sub prioress 1 and 2, 6, 5 announced lessons, so that the pupils never said go to lessons, but to go to 6, 5, 4, 4 was Madame de Genlis signal. It was very often heard. C' est les diables quatre. It's the very deuce said the uncharitable tene strokes announced a great event. It was the opening of the door of seclusion, a frightful sheet of iron bristling with bolts, which only turned on its hinges. In the presence of the Archbishop, with the exception of the archbishop and the gardener, no man entered the convent, as we have already said. The school girl saw two others. One, the chaplain, the Abbe Bain, old and ugly, whom they were permitted to contemplate in the choir through a grating. The other, the drawing master, Monsieur Anchiou, whom the latter of which we have perused a few lines, calls Monsieur Ansieu and describes as a frightful old hunchback. It will be seen that all these men were carefully chosen. Such was this curious house. End of book 6 chapter 7 Les. [01:12:41] Speaker D: Miserables, volume 2 by Victor Hugo Translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood Book VI Le petit Picpus, chapter 8 post Corda Lapides after having sketched its moral face, it will not prove unprofitable to point out in a few words its material configuration. The reader already has some idea of it. The convent of the Petit Picpus Saint Antoine filled almost the whole of the vast trapezium, which resulted from the intersection of the Rue Polenso, the Rue Droit Mur, the Rue Petit Picpus, and the unused lane called Rue au Marais. On old plans, these four streets surrounded this trapezium like a moat. The convent was composed of several buildings and a garden. The principal building, taken in its entirety, was a juxtaposition of hybrid constructions which, viewed from a bird's eye view, outlined with considerable exactness, a gibbet laid flat on the ground. The main arm of the gibbet occupied the whole of the fragment of the Rue Droit Mur, comprised between the Rue Petit Picpus and the Rue Polonceau. The lesser arm was A lofty, grey, severe grated facade, which faced the rue Petit Picpus. The carriage entrance number 62, marked its extremity. Towards the centre of this facade was a low arched door, whitened with dust and ashes, where the spiders wove their webs, and which was open only for an hour or two on Sundays and on rare occasions when the coffin of a nun left the Convention. This was the public entrance of the church. The elbow of the gibbet was a square hall which was used as the servants hall, and which the nuns called the Buttery. In the main arm were the cells of the mothers, the sisters and the novices. In the lesser arm lay the kitchens, the refectory, backed up by the cloisters and the church. Between the door number 62 and the corner of the closed lane Aumares was the school, which was not visible from without. The remainder of the trapezium formed the garden, which was much lower than the level of the rue Polonceau, which caused the walls to be very much higher on the inside than on the outside. The garden, which was slightly arched, had in its centre, on the summit of a hillock, a fine pointed and conical fir tree, whence ran, as from the peaked boss of a shield, four grand alleys, and ranged by twos in between the branchings of these eight small ones, so that if the enclosure had been circular, the geometrical plan of the alleys would have resembled a cross superposed on a wheel. As the alleys all ended in the very irregular walls of the the garden, they were of unequal they were bordered with currant bushes. At the bottom, an alley of tall poplars ran from the ruins of the old convent, which was at the angle of the rue Droit Mur, to the house of the little convent, which was at the angle of the Aumares lane. In front of the little convent was what was called the little garden. To this whole let the reader add a courtyard, all sorts of varied angles formed by the interior buildings, prison walls, the long black line of roofs which bordered the other side of the rue Polenso for its sole perspective and neighbourhood. And he will be able to form for himself a complete image of what the house of the Bernardin of the Petit Picpus was 40 years ago. This holy house had been built on the precise site of a famous tennis ground of the 14th to the 16th century, which was called the tennis ground of the 11,000 devils. All these streets, moreover, were more ancient than Paris. These names, Droit Mur and Aumarez, are very ancient. The streets which bear Them are very much more ancient still. Aumarez Lane was called Maugou Lane. The Rue Droit Mur was called the Rue des Eglantiers. For God opened flowers before man cut stones. End of Book 6 Chapter 8 Les. [01:17:34] Speaker C: Miserables, Volume 2 by Victor Hugo translated by Isabel F. Hapgood Chapter 9 A Century Under A GIMP since we are engaged in giving details as to what the convent of the Petit Picpus was in former times, and since we have ventured to open a window on that discreet retreat, the reader will permit us one other little digression, utterly foreign to this book, but characteristic and useful, since it shows that the cloister even has its original figures. In the little convent there was a centenarian who came from the abbey of Fontreval. She had even been in society before the Revolution. She talked a great deal of MD Miramasnel, keeper of the seals under Louis 16, and of a Presidentis Duplat, with whom she had been very intimate. It was her pleasure and her vanity to drag in these names on every pretext. She told wonders of the abbey of Fontrevel, that it was like a city and that there were streets in the monastery. She talked with a Picard accent, which amused the peoples. Every year she solemnly renewed her vows, and at the moment of taking the oath, she said to the priest, Monsignor St Francois gave it to Monsignor St Julian. Monsignor St Julian gave it to Monsignor St Eusebius. Monsignor St. Eusebius gave it to Monsignor St. Procopius, etc. Etc. And thus I give it to you, Father. And the schoolgirls would begin to laugh, not in their sleeves, but under the veils, charming little stifled laughs which made the vocal mothers frown. On another occasion the centenarian was telling stories. She said that in her youth the Bernardine monks were every wit as good as the musketeers. It was a century which spoke through her, but it was the 18th century. She told about the custom of the four wines which existed before the revolution in Champagne and Bogonia. When a great personage, a Marshal of France, a prince, a duke and a peer, traversed a town in Burgundy or Champagne, the city fathers came out to harangue him and presented him with four silver gondolas into which they had poured four different sorts of wine. On the first goblet this inscription could be read Monkey wine. On the second, lion wine. On the third, sheep wine. On the fourth, Hogwine. These four legends express the four stages descended by the drunkard. The first, intoxication which enlivens, the second, that which irritates, the third, that which dulls, and the fourth, that which brutalizes. In a cupboard, under lock and key, she kept a mysterious object, of which she thought a great deal. The rule of Font Travolt did not forbid this. She would not show this object to anyone. She shut herself up, which her rule allowed her to do, and hit herself every time that she desired to contemplate it. If she heard a footstep in the corridor, she closed the cupboard again as hastily as it was possible, with her aged hands. As soon as it was mentioned to her, she became silent. She was so fond of talking. The most curious were baffled by her silence, and the most tenacious by her obstinacy. Thus it furnished a subject of comment for all those who were unoccupied or bored in the convent. What could that treasure of the centenarian be which was so precious and so secret? Some holy book, no doubt. Some unique chaplet, some authentic relic. They lost themselves in conjectures. When the poor old woman died, they rushed to her cupboard, more hastily than was fitting, perhaps, and opened it. They found the object beneath a triple linen cloth, like some consecrated patent. It was a faenza platter, representing little loves flitting away, pursued by apothecary lads armed with enormous syringes. The chase abounds in grimaces and in comical postures. One of the charming little loves is already fairly spitted. He is resisting, fluttering his tiny wings and still making an effort to fly. But the dancers laughing with a satanical air, moral love conquered by the colic. This platter, which is very curious, and which had possibly the honor of furnishing Moliere with an idea, was still in existence. In September 1845 it was for sale by a bric, a brac merchant, in the Boulevard Beaumarchais. This good old woman would not receive any visits from outside, because, said she, the parlor is too gloomy. End of Chapter 9. [01:22:16] Speaker D: Les Miserables Volume 2 by Victor Hugo translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood Book 6 Le Petit Picpus Chapter 10 Origin of the Perpetual Adoration however, this almost sepulchral parlour, of which we have sought to convey an idea, is a purely local trait, which is not reproduced with the same severity in other convents. At the convent of the Rue du Temple in particular, which belonged in truth to another order, the black shutters were replaced by brown curtains, and the parlour itself was a salon with a polished wood floor, whose windows were draped in white muslin curtains, and whose walls admitted all sorts of frames, a portrait of a Benedictine nun with unveiled face, painted bouquets, and even the head of a Turk. It is in that garden of the Temple convent that stood that famous chestnut tree, which was renowned as the finest and the largest in France, and which bore the reputation among the good people of the 18th century of being the father of all the chestnut trees of the realm. As we have said, this convent of the Temple was occupied by Benedictines of the Perpetual Adoration. Benedictines quite different from those who depended on Citeau. This Order of the Perpetual Adoration is. Is not very ancient and does not go back more than 200 years. In 1649, the Holy Sacrament was profaned on two occasions a few days apart, in two churches in Paris, at Saint Sulpice and at Saint Jean. En a rare and frightful sacrilege which set the whole town in an uproar. Monsieur the Prior and Vicar General of Saint Germain des Prestresses ordered a solemn procession of all his clergy, in which the Pope's nuncio officiated. But this expiation did not satisfy two sainted women, Madame Cortin, Marquise de Buxe and the Comtesse de Chateauvieu. This outrage, committed on the most Holy Sacrament of the altar, though but temporary, would not depart from these holy souls, and it seemed to them that it could only be extenuated by a perpetual adoration in some female monastery. Both of them, one in 1652, the other in 1653, made donations of notable sums to Mother Catherine de Barre, called of the Holy Sacrament a Benedictine nun, for the purpose of founding to this pious end a monastery of the Order of Saint Bernois. The first permission for this foundation was given to Mother Catherine de Barre by Monsieur de Metz, abbe of Saint Germain, on condition that no woman could be received unless she contributed 300 livres income, which amounts to 6,000 livres to the principal. After the Abbey of Saint Germain, the king accorded letters patent and all the rest abbatial charter and royal letters, was confirmed in 1654 by the chamber of Accounts and the Parliament. Such is the origin of the legal consecration of the establishment of the Benedictines of the Perpetual Adoration of the Holy Sacrament at Paris. Their first convent was a new building in the Rue Cassette, out of the contributions of Mesdames de Bux and de Chateauvieu. This order, as it will be seen, was not to be confounded with the Benedictine nuns of it, mounted back to The Abbey of St. Germain des Pres. In the same manner that the ladies of the Sacred Heart go back to the General of the Jesuits and the Sisters of Charity to the General of the Lazarists. It was also totally different from the Bernardines of the Petit Picpus, whose interior we have just shown. In 1657, Pope Alexander VII had authorised by a special brief the Bernardines of the rue Petit Picpus to practise the perpetual adoration, like the Benedictine nuns of the Holy sacrament. But the two orders remained distinct nonetheless. End of Book 6 Chapter 10 Les. [01:27:10] Speaker F: Miserables, Volume 2 by Victor Hugo translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood Book 6 Le Petit Picpous, Chapter 11 End of the Petit Picpou at the beginning of the Restoration, the convent of the Petite Pipu was in its decay. This forms a part of the general death of the order, which, after the 18th century, has been disappearing like all the religious orders. Contemplation is like prayer, one of humanity's needs. But like everything which the Revolution touched, it will be transformed and from being hostile to social progress, it will become favorable to it. The house of the Petite Picpu was becoming rapidly depopulated. In 1840, the little convent had disappeared. The school had disappeared. There were no longer any old women, nor young girls. The first were dead. The latter had taken their departure. The rule of the Perpetual Adoration is so rigid in its nature that it alarms vocations, recoil before it. The order receives no recruits. In 1845 it still obtained lay sisters here and there, but of professed nuns, none at all. Forty years ago, the nuns numbered nearly a hundred. Fifteen years ago, there were not more than 28 of them. How many are there today? In 1847, the prioress was young, a sign that the circle of choice was restricted. She was not 40 years old. In proportion as the number diminishes, the fatigue increases, the service of each becomes more painful. The moment could then be seen drawing near, when there would be but a dozen bent and aching shoulders to bear the heavy rule of Sam Benoit. The burden is implacable and remains the same for the few as for the many. It weighs down, it crushes. Thus they die. At the period when the author of this book still lived in Paris, two died. One was 25 years old, the other 23. This latter can say, like Julia Alpinola, Hiccio, Vixi annus, viginti et tres. It is in consequence of this decay that the convent gave up the education of girls. We have not felt able to pass before this extraordinary house without entering it, and without introducing the minds which accompany us and which are Listening to our tale, to the profit of some, perchance, of the melancholy history of Jean Valjean, we have penetrated into this community full of those old practices which seem so novel today. It is the closed garden, hortus conclusus. We have spoken of the singular place in detail, but with respect. Insofar at least as detail and respect are compatible, we do not understand all, but we insult nothing. We are equally far removed from the Ozana of Joseph de Mestre, who wound up by anointing the executioner, and from the sneer of Voltaire, who even goes so far as to ridicule the cross. An illogical act on Voltaire's part, we may remark, by the way, for Voltaire would have defended Jesus as he defended Calas. And even for those who deny superhuman incarnations, what does the crucifix represent? The assassinated Sage in this 19th century, the religious idea is undergoing a crisis. People are unlearning certain things, and. And they do well, provided that while unlearning them, they learn there is no vacuum in the human heart. Certain demolitions take place, and it is well that they do, but on condition that they are followed by reconstructions. In the meantime, let us study things which are no more. It is necessary to know them, if only for the purpose of avoiding them. The counterfeits of the past assume false names and gladly call themselves the future. This specter, this past, is given to falsifying its own passport. Let us inform ourselves of the trap. Let us be on our guard. The past has a visage, superstition and a mask, hypocrisy. Let us denounce the visage and let us tear off the mask. As for convents, they present a complex problem. A question of civilization which condemns them, a question of liberty which protects them. End of book 6 chapter 11. [01:32:43] Speaker D: Les Miserables, volume 2 by Victor Hugo translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood book 7th parenthesis chapter 1 the Convent as an abstract idea, this book is a drama whose leading personage is the infinite. Man is the second such being the case, and a convent having happened to be on our road, it has been our duty to enter it. Why? Because the convent, which is common to the Orient as well as to the Occident, to antiquity as well as to modern times, to paganism, to Buddhism, to Mahometanism as well as to Christianity, is one of the optical apparatuses applied by man to the infinite. This is not the place for enlarging disproportionately on certain ideas. Nevertheless, while absolutely maintaining our reserves, our restrictions and even our indignations. We must say that every time we encounter man in the infinite, either well or ill understood, we feel ourselves overpowered with respect. There is in the synagogue, in the mosque, in the pagoda, in the wigwam, a hideous side which we execrate, and a sublime side which we adore. What a contemplation for the mind and what endless food for thought is the reverberation of God upon the human wall. End of book 7th Chapter 1 Les. [01:34:27] Speaker G: Miserables, Volume 2 by Victor Hugo translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood Book 7, Chapter 2 the Convent as an historical fact from the point of view of history, of reason and of truth, monasticism is condemned. Monasteries, when they abound in a nation, are clogs in its circulation, cumbrous establishments, centers of idleness where centers of labor should exist. Monastic communities are to the great social community what the mistletoe is to the oak, what the wort is to the human body. Their prosperity and their fatness mean the impoverishment of the country. The monastic domestic regime, good at the beginning of civilization, useful in the reduction of the brutal by the spiritual, is bad when peoples have reached their manhood. Moreover, when it becomes relaxed and when it enters into its period of disorder, it becomes bad for the very reasons which rendered it salutary in its period of purity, because it still continues to set the example has had its day. Cloisters, useful in the early education of modern civilization, have embarrassed its growth and are injurious to its development so far as institution and formation with relation to man are concerned. Monasteries which were good in the 10th century, questionable in the 15th, are detestable in the 19th. The leprosy of monasticism has gnawed nearly to a skeleton two wonderful nations, Italy and Spain. The one the light, the other the splendor of Europe. For centuries, and at the present day, these two illustrious peoples are but just beginning to convalesce, thanks to the healthy and vigorous hygiene of 1789 alone. The convent, the ancient female convent in particular, such as it still presents itself on the threshold threshold of this century, in Italy, in Austria, in Spain, is one of the most sombre concretions of the Middle Ages. The cloister. That cloister is the point of intersection of horrors. The Catholic cloister, properly speaking, is wholly filled with the black radiance of death. The Spanish convent is the most funereal of all. There rise in obscurity, beneath vaults filled with gloomy, beneath domes vague with shadow, massive altars of Babel as high as Cathedrals. Their immense white crucifixes hang from chains. In the dark there are extended, all nude on the ebony, great Christs of ivory, more than bleeding, bloody, hideous and magnificent, with their elbows displaying the bones, their knee pants showing their integuments, their wounds showing their flesh crowned with silver thorns, nailed with nails of gold, with blood drops of rubies on their brows and diamond tears in their eyes. The diamonds and rubies seem wet and make veiled beings in the shadow below weep, their sides bruised with the hair shirt and their iron tipped scourges, their breasts crushed with wicker hurdles, their knees excoriated with prayer. Women who think themselves wives, specters who think themselves seraphim. Do these women think? No. Have they any will? No. Do they love? No. Do they live? No. Their nerves have turned to bone, their bones have turned to stone. Their veil is of woven night. Their breath under their veil resembles the indescribably tragic respiration of death. The abyss. A specter sanctifies them and terrifies them. The Immaculate One is there and very fierce. Such are the ancient monasteries of Spain. Liars of terrible devotion. Caverns of virgins, ferocious places. Catholic Spain is more Roman than Rome herself. The Spanish convent was above all others, the Catholic convent. There was a flavor of the Orient about it. The Archbishop, the Kislar Aga of Heaven, locked up and kept watch over the seraglio of souls reserved for God. The nun was the odalisque, the priest was the eunuch. The fervent were chosen in dreams and possessed Christ. At night, the beautiful nude young man descended from the cross. Cross and became the ecstasy of the cloistered one. Lofty walls guarded the mystic Sultana who had the crucified for her sultan. From all living distraction a glance in the outer world was infidelity. The impace replaced the leather sack. That which was cast into the sea in the east was thrown into the ground in the west. In both quarters, women wrung their hands. The women waves. For the first, the grave for the last. Here the drowned, there the buried, monstrous parallel. Today the upholders of the past, unable to deny these things, have adopted the expedient of smiling at them. There has come into fashion a strange and easy manner of suppressing the revelations of history, of invalidating the commentaries of philosophy, of eliding all embarrassing facts and all gloomy questions. A matter for declamations, say the clever declamations repeat the foolish Jean Jacques, a declaimer Diderot, a declaimer Voltaire on Colosse La Barre and Sirvan declaimers I know not who has recently discovered that Tacitus was a declaimer, that Nero was a victim, and that pity is decidedly do to that poor Holofernes. Facts, however, are awkward things to disconcert, and they are obstinate. The author of this book has seen with his own eyes. Eight leagues distant from Brussels there are relics of the Middle Ages there which are attainable for everybody. At the abbey of Villars, the whole of the oubliettes, in the middle of the field which was formerly the courtyard of the cloister, and on the banks of the till, four stone dungeons, half underground, half under the water. They were in pace. Each of these dungeons has the remains of an iron door, a vault and a grated opening, which on the outside is 2ft above the level of the river, and on the inside, six feet above the level of the ground. Four feet of the river flow past along the outside wall. The ground is always soaked. The occupant of the in pace had the wet so for his bed. In one of these dungeons there is a fragment of an iron necklet riveted to the wall. In another there can be seen a square box made of four slabs of granite, too short for a person to lie down in, too low for him to stand upright in. A human being was put inside with a cover lid of stone on top. This exists, it can be seen, it can be touched. These in paste, these dungeons, these iron hinges, these necklets, that lofty peep hole on a level with the river's current, that box of stone closed with a lid of granite, like a tomb, with this difference that the dead man here was a living being. That soil which is but mud, that vault hole, those oozing walls, what declaimers? End of book 7 chapter 2. [01:42:08] Speaker F: Les miserables, volume 2 by Victor Hugo translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood book 7 parenthesis, chapter 3 on what conditions one can respect the past. Monasticism, such as it existed in Spain and such as it still exists in Tibet, is a sort of physis for civilization. It stops life short. It simply depopulates claustration, castration. It has been the scourge of Europe. Add to this the violence so often done to the conscience, the forced vocations, feudalism, bolstered up by the cloisters, the rite of the firstborn, pouring the excess of the family into monasticism. The ferocities of which we have just spoken, the inpage, the closed mouths, the walled up brains, so many unfortunate minds placed in the dungeon of eternal vows, the taking of the Habit, the interment of living souls, add individual tortures to national degradations, and whoever you may be, you will shudder before the frock and the veil, those two winding sheets of human devising. Nevertheless, at certain points and in certain places, in spite of philosophy, in spite of progress, the spirit of the cloister persists in the midst of the 19th century, and a singular ascetic recrudescence is at this moment astonishing the civilized world. The obstinacy of antiquated institutions in perpetuating themselves resembles the stubbornness of the rancid perfume which should claim our hair, the pretensions of the spoiled fish which should persist in being eaten, the persecution of the child's garment, which should insist on clothing the man, the tenderness of queen corpses which should return to embrace the living ingrates, Says the garment. I protected you in inclement weather. Why will you have nothing to do with me? I have just come from the deep sea, says the fish. I have been a rose, says the perfume. I have loved you, says the corpse. I have civilized you, says the convention. To this there is but one reply. In former days, to dream of the indefinite prolongation of defunct things and of the government of men by embalming, to restore dogmas in a bad condition, to re gild shrines, to patch up cloisters, to re bless reliquaries, to refurnish superstitions, to revictual fanaticism, to put new handles on holy water brushes, and militarism, to reconstitute monasticism and militarism, to believe in the salvation of society by the multiplication of parasites, to force the past on the present. This seems strange. Still, there are theorists who hold such theories. These theorists, who are in other respects people of intelligence, have a very simple process. They apply to the past a glazing which they call social order, divine right, morality, family, the respect of elders, antique authority, sacred tradition, legitimacy, religion. And they go about shouting, look, take this, honest people. This logic was known to the ancients. The soothsayers practiced it. They rubbed a black heifer over with chalk and said, she is white, Bos craetatus. As for us, we respect the past here and there, and we spare it above all, provided that it consents to be dead. If it insists on being alive, we attack it and we try to kill it. Superstitions, bigotries, affected devotion, prejudices. Those forms, all forms, as they are are tenacious of life. They have teeth and nails in their smoke, and they must be clasped close, body to body, and war must be made on them, and that without truce. For it is one of the fatalities of humanity to be condemned to eternal combat with phantoms. It is difficult to seize darkness by the throat and to hurl it to the earth. A convent in France, in the broad daylight of the 19th century, is a college of owls facing the light, a cloister caught in the very act of asceticism in the very heart of the city of 89 and of 1830 and of 1848. Rome, blossoming out in Paris, is an anachronism in ordinary times, in order to dissolve an anachronism and to cause it to vanish, one has only to make it spell out the date. But we are not in ordinary times. Let us fight. Let us fight, but let us make a distinction. The peculiar property of truth is never to commit excesses. What need has it of exaggeration? There is that which it is necessary to destroy, and there is that which it is simply necessary to elucidate and examine what a force is. Kindly and serious examination. Let us not apply a flame where only a light is required. So, given the 19th century, we are opposed, as a general proposition and among all peoples in Asia as well as in Europe, in India as well as in Turkey, to ascetic claustration. Whoever says cloister, says Marsh. Their putrescence is evident. Their stagnation is unhealthy. Their fermentation infects people with fever and etiolates them. Their multiplication becomes a plague of Egypt. We cannot think without a fright of those lands where fakirs, bonzes, santons, Greek monks, marabouts, talapoins and dervishes multiply, even like swarms of vermin. This said, the religious question remains. This question has certain mysterious, almost formidable sides. May we be permitted to look at it fixedly? Chapter 3. [01:49:25] Speaker D: Les Miserables, Volume 2 by Victor Hugo translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood Book 7th, Chapter 4 the Convent from the point of view of principles, men unite themselves and dwell in communities. By virtue of what right? By virtue of the right of association, they shut themselves up at home. By virtue of what right? By virtue of the right which every man has to open or shut his door, they do not come forth. By virtue of what right? By virtue of the right to go and come, which implies the right to remain at home. There, at home, what do they do? They speak in low tones. They drop their eyes, they toil. They renounce the world, towns, sensualities, pleasures, vanities, pride, interests. They are clothed in coarse woollen or coarse linen. Not one of them possesses in his own right anything whatever. On entering there, each one who was rich makes himself poor. What he has, he gives to all. He who was what is called noble, a gentleman and a lord is the equal of him who was a peasant. The cell is identical, for all undergo the same tonsure, wear the same frock, eat the same black bread, sleep on the same straw, die on the same ashes, the same sack on their backs, the same rope around their loins. If the decision has been to go barefoot, all go barefoot. There may be a prince among them. That prince is the same shadow as the rest. No titles, even family names have disappeared. They bear only first names. All are bowed beneath the equality of baptismal names. They have dissolved the carnal family and constituted in their community a spiritual family. They have no other relatives than all men. They succour the poor, they care for the sick, they elect those whom they obey. They call each other my brother. You stop me and exclaim, but that is the ideal convent. It is sufficient that it may be the possible convent that I should take notice of it. Thence it results that in the preceding book I have spoken of a convent with respectful accents. The Middle Ages Cast aside Asia, cast aside the historical and political question, held in reserve from the purely philosophical point of view, outside the requirements of militant policy, on condition that the monastery shall be absolutely a voluntary matter and shall contain only consenting parties, I shall always consider a cloistered community with a certain attentive and in some respects a deferential gravity. Wherever there is a community, there is a commune. Where there is a commune, there is right. The monastery is the product of the formula equality, fraternity. Oh, how grand is liberty. And what a splendid transfiguration. Liberty suffices to transform the monastery into a republic. Let us continue. But these men, or these women who are behind these four wa walls, they dress themselves in coarse. They are equals. They call each other brothers. That is well. But they do something else. Yes? What? They gaze on the darkness. They kneel and they clasp their hands. What does this sign? End of book 7th chapter 4 Les Miserables volume 2 by Victor Hugo translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood book 7th parenthesis chapter 5 Prayer They Pray. To whom? To God. To pray to God? What is the meaning of these words? Is there an infinite beyond us? Is that infinite there inherent, permanent, necessarily substantial? Since it is infinite, and because if it lacked matter, it would be bounded, necessarily intelligent? Since it is infinite, and because if it lacked intelligence, it would end there, does this infinite awaken in us the idea of essence, while we can attribute to ourselves only the idea of existence. In other terms, is it not the absolute of which we are only the relative? At the same time that there is an infinite without us, is there not an infinite within us? Are not those two infiniteswhat an alarming plural superposed the one upon the other? Is not this second infinite, so to speak, subjacent to the first? Is it not the latter's mirror, reflection echo an abyss which is concentric with another abyss? Is this second infinity intelligent also? Does it think? Does it love? Does it will? If these two infinities are intelligent, each of them has a will principle. And there is an I in the upper infinity, as there is an I in the lower infinity. The I below is the soul, the I on high is God. To place the infinity here below, in contact by the medium of thought with the infinity on high is called praying. Let us take nothing from the human mind. To suppress is bad. We must reform and transform. Certain faculties in man are directed towards the thought, reverie, prayer. The unknown is an ocean. What is conscience? It is the compass of the unknown. Thought, reverie, prayer. These are great and mysterious radiations. Let us respect them. Whither go these majestic irradiations of the soul into the shadow, that is to say, to the light? The grandeur of democracy is to disown nothing and to deny nothing of humanity, close to the right of the man beside it. At the least there exists the right of the soul to crush fanaticism and to venerate the infinite. Such is the law. Let us not confine ourselves to prostrating ourselves before the tree of creation and to the contemplation of its branches full of stars. We have a duty to labour over the human soul, to defend the mystery against the miracle, to adore the incomprehensible and reject the absurd, to admit as an inexplicable fact only what is necessary to purify belief, to remove superstitions from above religion, to clear God of caterpillars. End of book 7th Chapter 5 Les. [01:58:17] Speaker A: Miserables, Volume 2 by Victor Hugo translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood Book 7, Chapter 6 the Absolute Goodness of Prayer. [01:58:32] Speaker D: With. [01:58:32] Speaker A: Regard to the modes of prayer, all are good, provided that they are sincere. Turn your book upside down and be in the infinite. There is, as we know, a philosophy which denies the infinite. There is also a philosophy, pathologically classified, which denies the sun. This philosophy is called blindness. To erect a sense which we lack into a source of truth is a fine blind man's self sufficiency. The curious thing is the haughty, superior and compassionate airs which this groping philosophy assumes. Toward the philosophy which beholds God one fancies, he hears a mole crying, I pity them with their son. There are, as we know, powerful and illustrious atheists at bottom, led back to the truth by their very force. They are not absolutely sure that they are atheists. It is with them only a question of definition. And in any case, if they do not believe in God, being great minds, they prove God. We salute them as philosophers while inexorably denouncing their philosophy. Let us go on. The remarkable thing about it is also their facility in paying themselves off with words. A metaphysical school of the north, impregnated to some extent with fog, has fancied that it has worked a revolution in human understanding by replacing the word force with the word will. To say, the plant wills instead of the plant grows. This would be thickened in results indeed, if we were to add the universe wills. Why? Because it would come to the plant wills, therefore it has an I. The universe wills, therefore it has a God. As for us, who, however, in contradistinction to this school, reject nothing a priori, a will in the plant accepted by this school, appears to us more difficult to admit than a will in the universe denied by it. To deny the will of the infinite, that is to say, God, is impossible on any other conditions than a denial of the infinite. We have demonstrated this the negation of the infinite leads straight to nihilism. Everything becomes a mental conception. With nihilism no discussion is possible for the nihilist. Logic doubts the existence of its interlocutor and is not quite sure that it exists itself. From its point of view, it is possible that it may be for itself only a mental conception. Only it does not perceive that all which has denied it admits in volump simply by the utterance of the word mind. In short, no way is opened to the thought by a philosophy which makes all end in the monosyllable. No to know. There is only one reply. Yes. Nihilism has no point. There is no such thing as nothingness. Zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing. Man lives by affirmation, even more than by bread. Even to see and to show does not suffice. Philosophy should be an energy it should have for effort and effect. To ameliorate the condition of man, Socrates should enter into Adam and produce Marcus Aurelius. In other words, the man of wisdom should be made to emerge from the man of felicity. Eden should be changed into a lyceum Science should be a cordial to enjoy. What a sad aim and what a paltry ambition the brute enjoys to offer thought to the thirst of men, to give them all as an elixir, the notion of God, to make conscience and science fraternize in them, to render them just. By this mysterious confrontation, such is the function of real philosophy. Morality is a blossoming out of truths. Contemplation leads to action. The absolute should be practicable. It is necessary that the ideal should be breathable, drinkable and eatable to the human mind. It is the ideal which has the right to say, take this. It is on this condition that it ceases to be a sterile love of science and becomes the one and sovereign mode of human rallying, and that philosophy herself is promoted to religion. Philosophy should not be a corbel erected on mystery, to gaze upon it at its ease, without any other result than that of being convenient to curiosity. For our part, adjourning the development of our thought to another occasion, we will confine ourselves to saying that we neither understand man as a point of departure nor progress as an end without those two forces which are their two motors, faith and love. Progress is the goal. The ideal is the type. What is this ideal? It is God ideal. Absolute perfection, infinity, identical words. End of Book 7 Chapter 6. [02:03:43] Speaker D: Les Miserables, Volume 2 by Victor Hugo translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood Book 7th Chapter 7 Precautions to be observed in blame History and philosophy have eternal duties, which are at the same time simple duties to combat Caiaphas, the high priest, Draco the lawgiver, Trimalcion, the legislator, Tiberius the emperor. This is clear, direct and limpid, and offers no obscurity but the right to live apart, even with its inconveniences and its abuses, insists on being stated and taken into account. Cenobitism is a human problem. When one speaks of convents, those abodes of error, but of innocence, of aberration, but of good will, of ignorance, but of devotion, of torture, but of martyrdom. It always becomes necessary to say either yes or no. A convent is a contradiction, its object salvation, its means thereto sacrifice. The convent is supreme egoism, having for its result supreme abnegation. To abdicate with the object of reigning seems to be the device of monasticism. In the cloister one suffers in order to enjoy, one draws a bill of exchange. On death, one discounts in terrestrial gloom, celestial light. In the cloister, hell is accepted in advance as a post obit. On paradise, the taking of the veil or the frock is A suicide paid for with eternity. It does not seem to us that on such a subject mockery is permissible. All about it is serious, the good as well as the bad. The just man frowns, but never smiles with a malicious sneer. We understand wrath, but not malice. End of book 7th, chapter 7 Les. [02:06:14] Speaker H: Mudrabus by Victor Hugo Translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood, Volume 2, Book 7, Chapter 8 Faith Law A few words more. We lame the church when she exaggerated with intrigues. We despise the spirit spiritual, which is harsh toward the temple. But we everywhere honor the thoughtful man. We salute the man who kneels a faith. This is a necessity for man. Woe to him who believes nothing. One is not unoccupied because one is absorbed. There is visible labor and invisible labor. To contemplate is to labor. To think is to act. Folded arms, toy, clasped hands. Work. A gaze fixed on heaven is a work. Selles remained motionless for four years. He founded philosophy. In our opinion, Cenobites are not lazy men, and recluses are not idlers. To meditate on the shadow is a serious thing. Without invalidating anything that we have just said, we. We believe that a perpetual memory of the tomb is proper for the living. On this point the priest and the philosopher agree. We must die. The Abbe de la Trompe replies to Horace. To mingle with one's life a certain presence of the sepulchre. This is the law of the sage, and it is the law of the ascetic. In this respect, the ascetic and sage convergence. There is a material growth, we admit it. There is a moral grandeur. We hold to that thoughtless and vivacious spirits. What is the good of those motionless figures on the side of mystery? What purpose do they serve? What do they do, alas, in the presence of the darkness which environs us and which awaits us in our ignorance of what the immense dispersion we may make of us, we. There is probably no work more divine than that performed by these souls. And we add, there is probably no work which is more useful. There certainly must be some who pray constantly for those who never pray at all. In our opinion, the whole question lies in the amount of thought that is mingled with prayer. Leibniz's prayer is grand, but tale adoring is fine. Dear execis for tail. We are for religion as against religions. We are of the number who believe in the wretchedness of orisons and the sublimity of prayer. Moreover, at this minute which we are now traversing, a minute which will not fortunately leave its impress on the 19th century. At this hour, when so many men have low brows and souls but little elevated among so many mortals, whose morality consists in enjoyment, and who are busied with the brief and misshapen things of matter, whoever exiles himself seems worthy of veneration. To us, the monastery is a renunciation sacrifice, wrongly directed is dear sacrifice. To mistake a grave error for a duty has a grandeur of its own, taken by itself and ideally, and in order to examine the truth on all sides, until all aspects have been impartially exhausted, the monastery, the female convent in particular, for in our century it is women who suffers the most, and in this exile of the cloister there is something of protestation. The female convent has inconsistently, a certain majesty. This cloistered existence, which is so austere, so depressing, a few of whose features we have just traced, is not life, for it is not liberty. It is not a tomb, for it is not plenitude. It is the strange place whence one beholds, as from the crest of a lofty mountain, on one side the abyss where we are, on the other the abyss whither we shall go. It is the narrow and misty frontier, separate in two worlds, illuminated and obscured by both at the same time, where the ray of life which has become enfeebled is mingled with the vague ray of death. It is the half obscurity of the tomb, we who do not believe what these women believe, but who, like them, live by faith. We have never been able to think without a sort of tender and religious terror, without a sort of pity that is forth envy of those devoted, trembling and trusting creatures, of these humble and august souls who dare to dwell on the very brink of the mystery waiting between the world which is closed and the heaven which is not yet open, turned towards the the light which one cannot see, possessing the sole happiness of thinking that they know where it is, aspiring towards the gulf and the unknown, their eyes fixed motionless on the darkness, kneeling, bewildered, stupefied, shuddering, half lifted at times by the deep breeze of eternity. End of Chapter eight this Mudrabus by Victor Hugo Translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. [02:11:55] Speaker I: Les Miserables volume two by Victor Hugo Translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood BOOK EIGHTH Cemeteries Take that which is committed to them. Chapter one which treats of the manner of entering a convent. It was into this house that John Valjean had, as Fosh Elevant expressed it, fallen from the sky. He had scaled the wall of the garden which formed the angle of the Rue Polonso that hymn of the angels which he had heard in the middle of the night was the nuns chanting Matins. That hall of which he had caught a glimpse in the gloom was the chapel. That phantom which he had seen stretched on the ground was the sister who was making reparations. That bell, the sound of which had so strangely surprised him was the gardener's bell, attached to the knee of Father Fauchelevent. Cosette. Once put to bed, Jean Valjean and Fauchelevent had, as we have already seen, supped on a glass of wine and a bit of cheese before a good crackling fire. Then, the only bed in the hut being occupied by Cosette, each threw himself on a truss of straw. Before he shut his eyes, Jean Valjean said, I must remain here henceforth. This remark trotted through Fauchelevent's head all night long. To tell the truth, neither of them slept. Jean Valjean, feeling that he was discovered and that Javert was on his scent, understood that he and Cosette were lost. Lost. If they returned to Paris, then the new storm which had just burst upon him had stranded him in this cloister. Jean Valjean had henceforth but one thought to remain there. Now, for an unfortunate man in his position, this convent was both the safest and the most dangerous of places. The most dangerous because, as no men might enter there if he were discovered, it was a flagrant offense. And Jean Valjean would find but one safe step intervening between the convent and the prison the safest. Because if he could manage to get himself accepted there and remain there, who would ever seek him in such a place? To dwell in an impossible place was safety on his side? For sure, Levon was cudgelling his brains. He began by declaring to himself that he understood nothing of the matter. How had Monsieur Madeleine got there when the walls were what they were? Cloister walls are not to be stepped over. How did he get there? With a child? One cannot scale a perpendicular wall with a child in one's arms. Who was that child? Where did they both come from? Since Fauchelevent had lived in the convent, he had heard nothing of Monsieur Sir M. And he knew nothing of what had taken place there. Father Madeleine had an air which discouraged questions. And besides, Foshelevant said to himself, one does not question a saint. Monsieur Madeleine had preserved all his prestige in Fauchelevent's eyes. Only from some words which Jean Valjean had let fall, the gardener thought he could draw the inference that Monsieur Madeleine had probably become bankrupt through the hard times and and that he was pursued by his creditors, or that he had compromised himself in some political affair and was in hiding. Which last did not displease Forchelevant, who, like many of our peasants of the north, had an old fund of Bonapartism about him. While in hiding, M. Madeleine had selected the convent as a refuge, and it was quite simple that he should wish to remain there. But the inexplicable point to which Fauchelevent returned constantly and over which he wearied his brain, was that Monsieur Madeleine should be there and that he should have that little girl with him. Fauchelevent saw them, touched them, spoke to them, and still did not believe it possible. The incomprehensible had just made its entrance into Fauchelevent's hut. Fauchelevent groped about amid conjectures and could see nothing clearly. But this Monsieur Madeleine saved my life. This certainty alone was sufficient and decided his course. He said to himself, it is my turn now. He added, in his conscience, Monsieur Madeleine did not stop to deliberate. When it was a question of thrusting himself under the cart for the purpose of dragging me out, he made up his mind to save Mr. Madeleine. Nevertheless, he put many questions to himself and made himself diverse replies. And what he did for me, would I save him if he were a thief? Just the same? If he were an assassin, would I save him just the same? Since he is a saint, shall I save him just the same? But what a problem it was to manage to have him remain in the convent. Fauchelevent did not recoil in the face of this almost chimerical undertaking. This poor peasant of Picardy, without any other ladder than his self devotion, his goodwill, and a little of that old rustic cunning, on this occasion, enlisted in the service of a generous enterprise, undertook to scale the difficulties of the cloister and the steep escarpments of the rule of Sambanois. Father Fauchelevent was an old man who had been an egoist all his life and who, towards the end of his days, halt infirm, with no interest left to him in the world, found it sweet to be grateful, and perceiving a generous action to be performed, flung himself upon it like a man who at the moment when he is dying, should find close to his hand a glass of good wine which he had never tasted, and should swallow it with avidity. We may add that the air which he had breathed for many years in this convent had destroyed all personality in him, and had ended by rendering a good action of some kind absolutely necessary to him. [02:17:53] Speaker C: Him. [02:17:55] Speaker I: So he took his resolve to devote himself to Monsieur Madeleine. We've just called him a poor peasant of Picardy. That description is just but incomplete. At the point of this story, which we have now reached a little of Father Foshelevants, physiology becomes useful. He was a peasant, but he had been a notary, which added trickery to his cunning and penetration to his ingenuity strenuousness. Having through various causes failed in his business, he had descended to the calling of a carter and a laborer. But in spite of oaths and lashings which horses seem to require, something of the notary had lingered in him. He had some natural wit. He talked good grammar, he conversed, which is a rare thing in a village, and the other peasants said of him, he talks almost like a gentleman with a hat. Fauchelevent belonged, in fact, to that species which the impertinent and flippant vocabulary of the last century qualified as demi bourgeois, demi lout and which the metaphor, showered by the chateau upon the thatched cottage ticketed in the pigeonhole of the plebeian, rather rustic, rather citified pepper and salt. Fauchelevent, though sorely tried and harshly used by fate, worn out, a sort of poor, threadbare old soul, was nevertheless an impulsive man and extremely spontaneous in his actions, a precious quality which prevents one from ever being wicked. His defects and his vices, for he had some were all superficial. In short, his physiognomy was of the kind which succeeds within an observer. His aged face had none of those disagreeable wrinkles at the top of the forehead which signify malice or stupidity. At daybreak, Father Fauchelevent opened his eyes after having done an enormous deal of thinking and beheld Monsieur Madeleine seated on his truss of straw and watching Cosette slumbers. Fauchelevent sat up and said, now that you are here, how are you going to contrive to enter? This remark summed up the situation and aroused Jean Valjean from his reverie. The two men took counsel together. In the first place, said Fauchelevent, you will begin by not setting foot outside of this chamber, either you or the child. One step in the garden and we are done for. That is true, Monsieur Madeleine resumed for sure level. You have arrived at a very auspicious moment. I mean to say, a very inauspicious moment. One of the ladies is very ill. This will prevent them from looking much in our direction. It seems that she is dying. The prayers of the 40 hours are being said. The whole Community is in confusion that occupies them. The one who is on the point of departure is a saint. In fact, we are all saints here. All the difference between them and me is that they say our cell and that I say my cabin. The prayers for the dying are to be said, and then the prayers for the dead. We shall be at peace here for today, but I will not answer for tomorrow. Still, observed Jean Valjean, this cottage is in the niche of the wall. It is hidden by a sort of ruin. There are trees. It is not visible from the convent. And I add that the nuns never come near it. Well, said John Valjean. The interrogation mark which accentuated this well signified. It seems to me that one may remain concealed here. It was to this interrogation point that Fauchelevent responded. There are the little girls. What little girls? Asked John Valjean. Just as Fauchelevant opened his mouth to explain the words which he had uttered, a bell emitted one stroke. The nun is dead, said he. There is the nell. And he made a sign to Jean Valjean to listen. The bell struck a second time. It is the nell, Monsieur Madeleine. The bell will continue to strike once a minute for 24 hours until the body is taken from the church. You see, they play at recreation hours. It suffices to have a ball roll aside to send them all hither, in spite of prohibitions, to hunt and rummage for it all about here. Those cherubs are devils. Who? Asked Jean Valjean. The little girls, you would be very quickly discovered. They would shriek. Oh, a man. There is no danger today. 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 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 ball 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 Vaush Levant. 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 nail had sounded, Foshelevant 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 peeling from another bell. Ah, said Fauchelevent. They are ringing up the vocal mothers. They're going to the chapter. They always hold a chapter when anyone 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 council 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 toward 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 peel. 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. What is her name? Cosette. She is your daughter. You are her grandfather. That is, yes. It will be easy enough for her to get out of here. I have my service door which opens on the courtyard. I knock, the porter opens. I have my vintage basket on my back. The child is in it. I go out. Father Fauchelevent goes out with his basket. That is perfectly natural. You will tell the child to keep very quiet. She will be under the COVID I will leave her for whatever time is required with a good old friend, a fruit seller whom I know in the Rue Chamover, who is deaf and who has a little bed. I will shout in the fruit sellers ear that she is a niece of mine and that she is to keep her for me until tomorrow. Then the little one will re enter with you, for I will contrive to have you re enter. It must be done. But how will you manage to get out? Jean Valjean shook his head. No one must see me. The whole point lies there. Father Fauchelevent find some means of getting me out. In a basket, under cover, like Cosette. Vauchelevon scratched the lobe of his ear with the middle finger of his left hand, a sign of serious embarrassment. A third peel created a diversion. That is the dead doctor taking his departure, said Fauchelevent. He has taken a look and said, she is dead. That is well. When the doctor has signed the passport for paradise, the undertaker's company sends a coffin. If it is a mother, the mothers lay her out. If she is a sister, the sisters lay her out. After which I nail her up. That forms a part of my gardener's duty. A gardener is a bit of a grave digger. She is placed in a lower hall of the church which communicates with the street and into which no man may enter save the doctor of the dead. I don't count the undertaker's men and myself as men. It is in that hall that I nail up the coffin. The undertaker's men come and get it and whip up coachmen. That's the way one goes to heaven. They fetch a box with nothing in it, they take it away again with something in it. That's what a burial is. Like de Profundis, a horizontal ray of sunshine lightly touched the face of the sleeping Cosette, who lay with her mouth vaguely open and had the air of an angel drinking in the light. Jean Valjean had fallen to gazing at at her. He was no longer listening to Fauchelevent. That one is not listened to is no reason for preserving silence. The good old gardener went on tranquilly with his babble. The grave is dug in the Vosgerard cemetery. They declare that they are going to suppress that Beau Girard cemetery. It is an ancient cemetery which is outside the regulations, which has no uniform and which is going to retire. It is a shame. For its convenience. I have a friend there, Father Mestienne, the gravedinger. The nuns here possess one privilege. It is to be taken to that cemetery at nightfall. There is a special permission from the prefecture on their behalf. But how many events have happened since yesterday? Mother Crucifixion is dead and Father Madeleine is buried, said Jean Valjean, smiling sadly. Fauchelevent caught the word goodness. If you were here for Good. It would be a real burial. A fourth peel burst out. Fauchelevent hastily detached the bell kneecap from its nail and buckled it on his knee again. This time it is for me. The Mother Prioress wants me. Good. Now I am pricking myself on the tongue of my buckle. Monsieur Madeleine, don't stir from here and wait for me. Something new has come up. If you are hungry, there is wine, bread and cheese. And he hastened out of the hut, crying, Coming, coming. Jean Valjean watched him hurrying across the garden as fast as his crooked leg would permit, casting a sidelong glance, by the way, on his melon patch. Less than 10 minutes later, Father Fauchelevent, whose bell put the nuns in his road to flight, tapped gently at a door, and a gentle voice replied, forever. Forever, that is to say, enter. The door was the one leading to the parlor, reserved for seeing the gardener on business. This parlor adjoined the chapter hall. The prioress, seated on the only chair in the parlor, was waiting for Fauchelevent. [02:29:22] Speaker J: Chapter 1 Les Miserables, Volume 2 by Victor Hugo translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood Book 8 Cemeteries take that which is committed them. Chapter 2 Fauchelevent in the presence of a Difficulty it is the peculiarity of certain persons and certain professions, notably priests and nuns, to wear a grave and agitated air on critical occasions. At the moment when Fauchelevent entered, this double form of preoccupation was imprinted on the countenance, Countenance of the prioress, who was that wise and charming Mademoiselle de Blumure, Mother Innocent, who was ordinarily cheerful. The gardener made a timid bow and remained at the door of the cell. The prioress, who was telling her beads, raised her eyes and said, ah, it is you, Father Fauvent. This abbreviation had been adopted in the convent. Fauchelevent bowed again. Father Fauvant, I. I have sent for you. Here I am, Reverend Mother. I have something to say to you. And so have I, said Fauchelevent, with a boldness which caused him inward terror. I have something to say to the Very Reverend Mother. The Prioress stared at him. Ah, you have a communication to make to me. A request? Very well. Speak, goodman. Vauchelevent, the ex notary belong to the category of peasants who have assurance a certain clever ignorance constitutes a force. You do not distrust it and you are caught by it. For Chalavant had been a success during the something more than two years which he had passed in the convent, always solitary and busied about his gardening. He had nothing Else to do than to indulge his curiosity. As he was at a distance from all those veiled ones, women passing to and fro, he saw before him only an agitation of shadows. By dint of attention and sharpness he had succeeded in clothing all those phantoms with flesh. And those corpses were alive for him. He was like a deaf man whose sight grows keener, and like a blind man whose hearing becomes more acute. He had applied himself to riddling out the significance of the different peals. And he had some succeeded. So that this taciturn and enigmatical cloister possessed no secrets for him. The Sphinx babbled all her secrets in his ear. Fauchelevent knew all and concealed all that constituted his art. The whole convent thought him stupid. A great merit in religion. The vocal mothers made much of Fauchelevent. He was a curious mute. He inspired confidence. Moreover, he was regular and never went out, except for well demonstrated requirements of the orchard and vegetable garden. This discretion of conduct had inured to his credit none the less. He had set two men to chattering. The porter in the convent, and he knew the singularities of their parlor and the grave digger at the cemetery. And he was acquainted with the peculiarities of their sepulture. In this way he possessed a double light on the subject of these nuns, one as to their life, the other as to their death. But he did not abuse his knowledge. The congregation thought a great deal of him. Old, lame, blind to everything, probably a little deaf into the bargain. What qualities. They would have found it difficult to replace him, the goodman, with the assurance of a person who feels that he is appreciated, entered into a rather difficult, profuse and very deep rustic harangue to the Reverend Prioress. He talked a long time about his age, his infirmities, the surcharge of years counting double for him henceforth, of the increasing demands of his work and of the great size of the garden of nights which must be passed like the last. For instance, when he had been obliged to put straw mats over the melon beds because of the moon. And he wound up as that he had a brother. The prioress made a movement. A brother no longer young. A second movement on the part of the prioress, but one expressive of reassurance that if he might be permitted, this brother would come and live with him and help him, that he was an excellent gardener, that the community would receive from him good service better than his own, that otherwise, if his brother were not admitted as he, the elder felt that his health was broken, broken, and that he was insufficient for the work he should be obliged greatly to his regret to go away, and that his brother had a little daughter whom he would bring with him, who might be reared for God in the house, and who might, who knows, become a nun some day. When he had finished speaking, the prioress stayed the slipping of her rosary between her fingers and said to him, could you procure a stout iron bar between now and this evening? For what purpose? To serve as a lever. Yes, Reverend Mother, replied Fauchelevent. The prioress, without adding a word, rose and entered the adjoining room, which was the hall of the chapter and where the vocal mothers were probably assembled. Fauchelevent was left alone. End of Book 8 Chapter 2 of Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. [02:34:41] Speaker C: Les Miserables, Volume 2 by Victor Hugo translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood Book 8 the Wicked Poor Man Chapter 3 Mother Innocent about a quarter of an hour elapsed. The prioress returned and seated herself once more on her chair. The two interlocutors seemed preoccupied. We will present a stenographic report of the dialogue which then ensued to the best of our ability. Father Fovent. Reverend Mother. Do you know the chapel? I have a little cage there where I hear the mass in the offices. And you have been in the choir in pursuance of your duties? Two or three times. There is a stone to be raised heavy. The slab of the pavement which is at the side of the altar. The slab which closes the vault? Yes. It would be a good thing to have two men for it. Mother Ascension, who is as strong as a man, will help you. A woman is never a man. We have only a woman here to help you. Each one does what he can because dom Marbalon gives 417 epistles of St Bernard, while Merlinus Horstas only gives 367. I do not despise Merlonis portions. Neither do I. Merit consists in working according to one's strength. A cloister is not a dockyard and a woman is not a man. But my brother is the strong one, though. And can you get a lever? That is the only sort of key that fits that sort of door. There is a ring in the stone. I will put the lever through it. And the stone is so arranged that it swings on a pivot. That is good, Reverend Mother. I will open the vault and the four Mother Precentors will help you. And when the vault is open, it must be closed again. Will that be all? No. Give me your orders. Very Reverend Mother Fovent. We have confidence in you. I am here to do anything you wish. And to hold your peace about everything. Yes, Reverend Mother. When the vault is open, I will close it again. But before that, what, Reverend Mother? Something must be lowered into it. A silence ensued. Prioress, after a pout of the underlip which resembled hesitation, broke it. Father Fauven. Reverend Mother, you know that a mother died this morning? No. Did you not hear the bell? Nothing can be heard at the bottom of the garden. Really? I can hardly distinguish my own signal. She died at daybreak. And then the wind is not blowing in my direction. This morning it was Mother Crucifixion. A blessed woman. Prioress paused, moved her lips as though in mental prayer, and resumed. Three years ago, Madame de Bethune, a Jansenist, turned orthodox merely from having seen Mother Crucifixion at prayer. Ah, yes. Now I hear the Nell, Reverend Mother. The Mothers have taken her to the Dead Room, which opens on the church. I know no other man than you can or must enter that chamber. See to that. A fine sight it would be to see a man enter the Dead Room more often. Hey. More often. What do you say? I say more often. More often than what, Reverend Mother? I did not say more often than what? I said more often. I don't understand you. Why do you say more often? In order to speak like you, Reverend Mother. But I did not say more often. At that moment, 9 o' clock struck at 9 o' clock in the morning and at all hours praised and adored. Be the most holy sacrament of the altar, said the Prioress. Amen, said False Levant. The clock struck opportunely. It cut more often short. It is probable that had it not been for this, the Prioress and Fauchelevent would never have unraveled that sign. False Levant mopped his forehead. The Prioress indulged in another little inward murmur, probably sacred, then raised her voice. In her lifetime, Mother Crucifixion made converts. After her death, she will perform miracles. She will, replied Father Faunch Lavant, falling into step and striving not to flinch again. Father Fauvent, the community has been blessed in Mother Crucifixion. No doubt. It is not granted to everyone to die like Cardinal de Baroul while saying the Holy Mass, and to breathe forth their souls to God while pronouncing these words. Hank igatur oblation. But without attending such happiness, Mother Crucifixion's death was very precious. She retained her consciousness to the very last moment. She spoke to us. Then she spoke to the angels. She gave us her last commands. If you had a little more Faith. And if you could have been in her cell, she would have cured your leg merely by touching it. She smiled. We felt that she was regaining her life in God. There was something of paradise in that death. False Levant thought that it was an orison which she was finishing. Amen, said he, Father, for that what the dead wish must be done. The prioress took off several beads of her chaplet. Fauchelevent held his peace. She went on. I have consulted upon this point many ecclesiastics laboring in our Lord, who occupy themselves in the exercises of the clerical life and who bear wonderful fruit. Reverend Mother, you can hear the Nell much better here than in the garden. Besides, she is more than a dead woman. She's a saint. Like yourself, Reverend Mother. She slept in her coffin for 20 years by express permission of our Holy Father Pius 7, the one who crowned the EMP1 apart. For a clever man like Foster, this illusion was an awkward one. Fortunately, the prioress, completely absorbed in her own thoughts, did not hear it. She continued, Father for ven. Reverend Mother, Saint Didyrus, Archbishop of Cappadocia, desired that this single word might be inscribed on his tomb. Acurus, which signifies a worm of the earth. This was done. Is this true? Yes, Reverend Mother. The Blessed Mezocain, Abbot of Aquila, wished to be buried beneath the gallows. This was done. That is true. Saint Terentius, Bishop of Port, where the mouth of the Tiber empties into the sea, requested that on his tomb might be engraved the sign which was placed on the graves of parricides in the hope that passers by would spit on his tomb. This was done. The dead must be obeyed. So be it. The body of Bernard Guydonis, born in France, near Rochabille, was as he had ordered and in spite of the King of Castile, born to the church of the Dominicans in Limoges, although Bernard Guidoni was bishop of Ty in Spain. Can the contrary be confirmed? For that matter, no, Reverend Mother. The fact is attested by Plantaville de la Fosse. Several beads of the chaplet were told off. Still in silence, the prioress resumed. Father. For vent. Mother. Crucifixion will be interred in the coffin in which she has slept for the last 20 years. That is just. It is a continuation of her slumber. So I shall have to nail up that coffin? Yes. And we are to reject the undertaker's coffin? Precisely. I am at the orders of the Very Reverend community. The four Mother presenters will assist you in nailing up the coffin. I do not need them? No, in lowering the coffin. Where? Into the vault. What fault? Under the altar started. The vault. Under the altar? Under the altar. But you will have an iron bar. Yes, but you will raise the stone with the bar by means of the ring. But the dead must be obeyed. To be buried in the vault under the altar of the chapel, not to go to profane earth, to remain there in death, where she prayed while living. Such was the last wish of Mother Crucifixion. She asked it of us, that is to say, commanded us. But it is forbidden. Forbidden by men, enjoined by God. What if it became known? We have confidence in you. Oh, I am a stone in your walls. The chapter assembled. The vocal mothers, whom I have just consulted again and who are now deliberating, have decided that Mother Crucifixion shall be buried according to her wish in her own coffin under our altar. Think, Father Fauvent, if she were to work miracles here, what a glory of God for the community. And miracles issue from tombs. But Reverend Mother is the agent of the sanitary commission. Saint Benwatu, in the matter of sepulture, resisted Constantine Pogonatus. But the commissary of police Shono Demer, one of the seven German kings who entered among the Gauls under the empire of Constantius, expressly recognized the right of nuns to be buried in religion, that is to say, beneath the altar. But the inspector from the prefecture. The world is nothing in the presence of the cross. Martin, the 11th General of the Carthusians, gave to his order this device. Stat crew doom Volviter orbis. Amen, said Faunch Levent, who imperturbably extricated himself in this manner from the dilemma whenever he heard Latin. Any audience suffices for a person who has held his peace too long. On the day when the rhetorician Jim Nestoris left his prison, bearing in his body many dilemmas and numerous syllogisms which had struck in he halted in front of the first tree which he came to harangued it and made very great efforts to convince it. The prioress, who is usually subjected to the barrier of silence, and whose reservoir was over full, rose and exclaimed with the loquacity of a dam which has broken away. I have on my right Benoit, and on my left Bernard. Who was Bernard? The first abbot of Clairvoye. Fontaine in Burgundy, is a country that is blessed because it gave him birth. His father was named Tesselin and his mother Elise. He began at Citeaux to end in Clairvoye. He was ordained abbot by the bishop of Chalons or Swan, Guillaume de champo. He had 700 novices and founded 160 monasteries. He overthrew Ablard at the Council of Seine in 1140 and Pierre de Bray and Henry, his disciple and another sort of erring spirits who were called the Apostolics. He confounded Arno de Brescia, darted lightning at the monk Raoul, the murderer of the Jews, dominated the Council of Rheims in 1148, caused the condemnation of Gilbert de Porea, Bishop of Poitouille, caused the condemnation of Ion de la Toile, arranged the disputes of princes, enlightened King Louis the Young, advised Pope Eugene III, regulated the temple, preached the crusade, performed 250 miracles during his lifetime and as many as 39 in one day. Who was Benoit? He was the patriarch of Ma Casin. He was the second founder of the Sainte Claustral. He was the Basil of the West. His order has produced 40 popes, 200 cardinals, 50 patriarchs, 1600 archbishops, 4600 bishops, 4 emperors, 12 empresses, 46 kings, 41 queens, 3600 canonized saints and has been in existence for 1400 years. On one side, Saint Bernard. On the other, the agent of the sanitary department. On one side, Saint Benoit. On the other, the inspector of public ways, the State, the road commissioners, the public undertaker regulations, the administration. What do we know of all that there is not a chance passerby, who would not be indignant to see how we are treated. We have not even the right to give our dust to Jesus Christ. Your sanitary department is a revolutionary invention. God subordinated to the commissary of police. Such is the age. Silence. For what was but ill at ease under this shower bath. The prioress continued. No one doubts the right of the monastery to sepulture. Only fanatics and those in error deny it. We live in times of terrible confusion. We do not know that which it is necessary to know, and we know that which we should ignore. We are ignorant and impious. In this age there exist people who do not distinguish between the very great St. Bernard and the St. Bernard dominated of the poor Catholics. A certain good ecclesiastic who lived in the 13th century. Others are so blasphemous as to compare the scaffold of Louis XVI to the cross of Jesus Christ. Louis 16 was merely a king. Let us beware of God. There is no longer just nor unjust. The name of Voltaire is known, but not the name of Caesar du Bass. Nevertheless, Caesar de Buss is a man of blessed memory and Voltaire one of Unblessed memory. The last archbishop, the Cardinal de Perigord, did not even know that Charles de Gondren succeeded to be rule. And Francois Bourgeois to Gondone and Jean Francois Se nault to bourgeois and Father St. Marth to Jean Francois and all. The name of Father Coton is known not because he was one of the three who urged the foundation of the oratory, but because he furnished Henry 14, the Huguenot king, with the material for an oath. That which pleases people of the world in Saint Francois de Salle is that he cheated at play. And then religion is attacked. Why? Because there have been bad priests. Because Sagatera, Bishop of Gap, was a brother of Salon, Bishop of Embrun, and because both of them followed Mamal. What has that to do with the question? Does that prevent Martin de Tour from being a saint and giving half of his cloak to a beggar? They persecute the saints. They shut their eyes to the truth. Darkness is the rule. The most ferocious beasts are beasts which are blind. No one thinks of hell as a reality. Oh, how wicked people are. By order of the King signifies today, by order of the Revolution, one no longer knows what is due to the living or to the dead. A holy death is prohibited. Burial is a civil matter. This is horrible. Saint Leo too wrote two special letters, one to Pierre Notaire, the other to the King of the Visigoths, for the purpose of combating and rejecting in questions touching the dead, the authority of the Exarch and the supremacy of the Emperor. Gauthier, Bishop of Chalon, held his own in this matter against Otho, Duke of Burgundy. The ancient magistracy agreed with him. In former times we had voices in the chapter, even on matters of the day. The Abbot of Sato, the General of the Order, was counselor by right of birth to the Parliament of Burgundy. We do what we please with our dead. Is not the body of Saint Benoit himself in France, in the Abbey of Fleury, called Saint Benoit Sirlois, although he died in Italy at Monte Cassin on Saturday the 21st of the month of March of the year 543. All this is incontestable. I abhor psalm singers, I hate priors, I execrate heretics. But I should detest yet more anyone who should maintain the contrary. One has only to read Arnold Wayan, Gabriel Gustlin, Trithymus Moralex and Dom Luce Dashery. The Prioress took breath, then turned to Fauchelevent. Is it settled, Father Favin? It is settled, Reverend Mother. We may depend on you. I will obey that Is well. I am entirely devoted to the convent. That is understood. You will close the coffin. The sisters will carry it to the chapel. The office for the dead will then be set. Then we shall return to the cloister. Between 11 o' clock and midnight you will come with your iron bar. All will be done in the most profound secrecy. There will be in the chapel only the four mother presenters. Mother Ascension and yourself. And the sister at the post. She will not turn round. But she will hear. She will not listen. Besides, what the cloister knows, the world learns. Not a pause ensued. The prioress went on. You will remove your bell. It is not necessary that the sister at the post should perceive your presence. Reverend Mother. What, Father Forven? Has the doctor for the dead paid his visit? He will pay it at 4 o' clock today. The appeal which orders the doctor for the dead to be summoned has already been rung. But you do not understand any of the peels. I pay no attention to any but my own. That is well, Father. For fen, Reverend Mother, a lever at least 6ft long will be required. Where will you obtain it? Where gratings are not lacking. Iron bars are not lacking. I have my heap of old iron at the bottom of the garden. About three quarters of an hour before midnight. Do not forget, Reverend Mother, what if you were ever to have any other jobs of this sort? My brother is the strong man for you. A perfect Turk. You will do it as speedily as possible. I cannot work very fast. I'm infirm. That is why I require an assistant. I limp. To limp is no sin. And perhaps it is a Blessing. The Emperor Henry 2, who combated Antipope Gregory and re established Benoit 8 has two surnames, the saint and the lame. Two, sir touts are a good thing. Murmured Fosh Laval, who really was a little hard of hearing. Now that I think of it, Father. For Van, let us give a whole hour to it. That is not too much. Be near the principal altar with your iron bar at 11 o'. Clock. The office begins at midnight. Everything must have been completed a good quarter of an hour before that. I will do anything to prove my zeal towards the community. These are my orders. I am to nail up the coffin at 11 o' clock exactly. I am to be in the chapel. The Mother Precentors will be there. Mother Ascension will be there. Two men would be better. However. Never mind. I shall have my lever. We will open the vault, we will lower the coffin and we will close the vault again. After which there will be no trace of anything. The government will have no suspicion. Thus all has been arranged, Reverend Mother. No. What else remains? The empty coffin remains. This produced a pause for Schlub. Meditated. The prioress meditated. What is to be done with that coffin, Father? Prevent. It will be given to the earth. Empty. Another silence. Franch Levant made with his left hand that sort of a gesture which dismisses the troublesome subject. Reverend Mother, I am the one who is to nail up the coffin in the basement of the church, and no one can enter there but myself. And I will cover the coffin with the pall. Yes, but the bearers, when they place it in the hearse and lower it into the grave, will be sure to feel that there is nothing in it. Ah, Lida. Exclaimed Fauchelevent. The prioress began to make the sign of the cross and looked fixedly at the gardener. The veal stuck fast in his throat. He made haste to improvise an expedient to make her forget the oath. I will put earth in the coffin, Reverend Mother. That will produce the effect of a corpse. You are right. Earth. That is the same thing as man. You will manage the empty coffin. I will make that my special business. The prioress's face, up to that moment, troubled and clouded, grew serene once more. She made the sign of a superior dismissing an inferior to him. Fosh Levo went towards the door. As he was on the point of passing out, the prioress raised her voice gently. I am pleased with you, Father Ferven. Bring your brother to me to morrow after the burial. And tell him to fetch his daughter. Chapter 3. [02:55:37] Speaker H: Les Miserables, Volume 2 by Victor Hugo translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood Book 8 Cemeteries take that which is committed them. Chapter 4, in which Jean Valjean has quite the air of having read Austin Castillejo. The strides of a lame man are like the ogling glances of a one eyed man. They do not reach their goal very promptly. Moreover, Fauchelevent was in a dilemma. He took nearly a quarter of an hour to return to his cottage in the garden. Cosette had waked up. Jean Valjean had placed her near the fire. At the moment when Fauchelevent entered, Jean Valjean was pointing out to her the vintner's basket on the wall and saying to her, listen attentively to me, my little Cosette. We must go away from this house, but we shall return to it, and we shall be very happy here. The good man who lives here is going to carry you off on his back. In that you will wait for me at a lady's house. I shall come to fetch you. Obey and say nothing above all things, unless you want Madame Thenardier to get you again. Cosette nodded gravely. Jean Valjean turned round at the noise made by Fauchelevent opening the door. Well, everything is arranged and nothing is, said Fauchelevent. I have permission to bring you in. But before bringing you in you must be got out. That's where the difficulty lies. It is easy enough with the child. You will carry her out and she will hold her tongue. I answer for that. But you, Father Madeleine. And after a silence fraught with anxiety, Fauchelevent exclaimed, why, get out as you came in? Jean Valjean, as in the first instance, contented himself with saying impossible. Fauchelevent grumbled more to himself than to Jean Valjean. There is another thing which bothers me. I have said that I would put earth in it. When I come to think it over, the earth in instead of the corpse will not seem like the real thing. It won't do. It will get displaced. It will move about. The men will bear it. You understand, Father Madeleine. The government will notice it. Jean Valjean stared him straight in the eye and thought that he was raving. Fauchelevent went on. How the deuce are you going to get out? It must all be done by two to morrow morning. It is to morrow that I am to bring you in. The prioress expects you. Then he explained to Jean Valjean that this was his recompense for a service which he, Fauchelevent, was to render to the community. That it fell among his duties to take part in their burials. That he nailed up the coffins and helped the grave digger at the cemetery. That the nun who had died that morning had requested the to be buried in the coffin which had served her for a bed and interred in the vault under the altar of the chapel. That the police regulations forbade this, but that she was one of those dead to whom nothing is refused. That the prioress and the vocal mothers intended to fulfil the wish of the deceased. That it was so much the worse for the government. That he forchelevent was to nail up the coffin in the cell, raise the stone in the chapel and lower the corpse into the vault and that by way of thanks, the prioress was to admit his brother to the house as a gardener and his niece as a pupil. That his brother was Monsieur Madeleine and that his niece was Cosette. That the prioress had told him to bring his brother on the following evening after the counterfeit interment in the cemetery. But that he could not bring Monsieur Madeleine into from the outside. If Monsieur Madeleine was not outside. That was the first problem. And then that there was another. The empty coffin. What is that empty coffin? Asked Jean Valjean. Fauchelevent replied, the coffin of the administration. What coffin? What administration? A nun dies. The municipal doctor comes and says a nun has died. The government sends a coffin. The next day it sends a hearse and undertaker's men to get the coffin and carry it to the cemetery. The undertaker's men will come and lift the coffin. There will be nothing in it. Put something in it. [03:00:19] Speaker D: A corpse. [03:00:20] Speaker H: I have none. [03:00:22] Speaker D: No? [03:00:23] Speaker H: What then? A living person. What person? Me, said Jean Valjean. Fauchelevent, who was seated, sprang up as though a bomb had burst under his chair. You? Why not? Jean Valjean gave way to one of those rare smiles which lighted up his face like a flash from heaven in the winter. You know, Fanchelevent, what you have said, Mother? Crucifixion is dead. And I add, and Father Madeleine is buried. Ah, you can laugh. You are not speaking seriously. Very seriously. I must get out of this place. Certainly. I have told you to find a basket and a cover for me also. Well, the basket will be of pine and the COVID a black cloth. In the first place it will be a white cloth. Nuns are buried in white. Let it be a white cloth then. You are not like other people. Men, Father Madeleine, 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 St. 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 pool. 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 anyone 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 tonight when everyone 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? [03:03:25] Speaker J: To morrow. [03:03:27] Speaker H: About three o'clock in the afternoon. The burial will take place at the Vaugirat 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 2 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. Moreover, a coffin containing a living being, that convict's expedient, is also an imperial expedient. If we are to credit the monk Austin Castillejo. This was the means employed by Charles V, desirous of seeing the plomb for the last time after his abdication, he had her brought into and carried out of the monastery of Saint Just. In this manner Fauchelevent, who had recovered himself a little, exclaimed, but how will you manage to breathe? I will breathe in that box. The mere thought of it suffocates me. You surely must have a gimlet. You will make a few holes here. And there around my mouth. And you will nail the top plank on loosely. Good. And what if you should happen to cough or to sneeze? A man who is making his esteem escape does not cough or sneeze. And Jean Valjean added. Father Fouche Levent, we must come to a decision. I must either be caught here or accept this escape through the hearse. Everyone has noticed the taste which cats have for pausing and lounging between the two leaves of a half shut door. Who is there who has not said to a cat, do come in? There are men who, when an incident stands half open before them, have the same tendency to halt in indecision between two resolutions at the risk of getting crushed through the abrupt closing of the adventure by fate, the over prudent cats as they are, and because they are cats, sometimes incur more danger than the audacious Fauchelevent was of this hesitating nature. Nature. But Jean Valjean's coolness prevailed over him. In spite of himself, he grumbled. Well, since there is no other means, Jean Valjean resumed, the only thing which troubles me is what will take place at the cemetery. Oh, that is the very point. That is not troublesome, Exclaimed Fauchelevent. If you are sure of coming out of the coffin, all right, I. I am sure of getting you out of the grave. The grave digger is a drunkard and a friend of mine. He is Father Mess Tienne, an old fellow of the old school. The grave digger puts the corpses in the grave, and I put the grave digger in my pocket. I will tell you what will take place. They will arrive a little before dusk, three quarters of an hour before the gates of the cemetery are closed. The hearse will drive directly up to the grave. I shall follow. That is my business. I shall have a hammer, a chisel and some pincers in my pocket. The hearse halts. The undertaker's men knot a rope around your coffin and lower you down. The priest says the prayers, makes the sign of the cross, sprinkles the holy water and takes his departure. I am left alone with Father Mestienne. He is my friend. I tell you, one of two things will happen. He will either be sober or he will not be sober. If he is not drunk, I shall say to him, come and drink about while the bon coin, the good quince, is open. I carry him off, I get him drunk. It does not take long to make Father Mestien drunk. He always has the beginning of it about him. I lay him under the table. I take his card so that I can get into the cemetery again, and I return without him. Then you have no longer anyone but me to deal with. If he is drunk, I shall say to him, be off. I will do your work for you. Off he goes, and I drag you out of the hole. Jean Valjean held out his hand, and Fauchelevent precipitated himself upon it with the touching effusion of a peasant. That is settled, Father Fauchelevent. All will go well, provided nothing goes wrong, thought Fauchelevent. In that case, it would be terrible. End of Book 8 Chapter 4 recording by Gabriel Lambrick Les Miserables, Volume 2 by Victor Hugo Translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood Book VIII Cemeteries Take that which has committed them. Chapter 5 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, crossbones, 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 grey 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 Vaugirat 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 vojika symmetry for 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 pieton. The Bernardine Benedictine 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 gravediggers 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 Vaugirat cemetery was bound by it like the 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 doorkeeper 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 gravedigger's card, furnished by the Department of Public Funerals. A sort of letter box was constructed in the porter's window. The gravedigger 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 gravedigger stepped out, but had to pay a fine of 15 francs. 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 Montparnasse, called the Eastern Cemetery, succeeded to it and inherited that famous dram shop next to the Vaugirat 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 coin. The Vaugirat 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 Vaugirat. 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 Vaugirat cemetery was a venerable enclosure, planted like an old fashioned fruit. French gardenstraight, alleys, rocks, 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 Vaugirat 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 into 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 yourself. 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 Monsieur 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 10 times. He played with Father Mestienne, he did what he liked with him. He made him dance according to his whim. Messienne'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, someone, 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 his arm. Fauchelevent surveyed this stranger. Who are you? He demanded. The man replied the gravedigger. If a man could survive the blow of a cannonball 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 gravediggers 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 gravedigger after Napoleon. Louis xviii, after Mestienne. Gribier, peasant, My name is 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 gravedigger. Fauchelevent burst out laughing. Ah, said he, what queer things do happen. Father Meztienne 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 Suren Morbi Coup of real Paris. Sure, he said. Old Mestienne is dead. I'm sorry for it. He was a jolly fellow. But you are a jolly fellow too, are you not, comrade? 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 gravedigger 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 gravedigger. 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 notebook, which shows when the time is up. It was Father Mestienne's not turn. Father Mestienne died, Fauchelevent repeated mechanically. 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 nun's corner. The grave digger 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, 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 Sepulta. 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 gravedigger. They have such a nice little Argenteuil wine, murmured Fauchelevent. Villager, retorted the man, I ought not to be a grave digger. My father was a porter at the Prytaneum. 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 accumulate. 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 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 gravedigger, 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, Fouchlevon did not wish to pay. Troubled as he was, the grave digger went on with a superior 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 scriveners 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, trickled down from his brow. But, continued the gravedigger, 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. Chapter 5. [03:24:23] Speaker D: Les Miserables, Volume 2 by Victor Hugo translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood Book 8 Cemeteries take that which is committed them. Chapter 6 Between Four Planks who was in the coffin? The reader knows Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean had arranged things so that he could exist there and he could almost breathe. It is a strange thing. To what a degree security of conscience confers security of the rest. Every combination thought out by Jean Valjean had been progressing and progressing favourably since the preceding day. He, like Fauchelevent, counted on Father Mestienne. He had no doubt as to the end. Never was there a more critical situation, never more complete composure. The four planks of the coffin breathe out a kind of terrible peace. It seemed as though something of the repose of the dead entered into Jean Valjean's tranquillity. From the depths of that coffin he had been able to follow, and he had followed all the phases of the terrible drama which he was playing with death. Shortly after Fauchelevent had finished nailing on the upper plank, Jean Valjean had felt himself carried out, then driven off. He knew from the diminution in the jolting when they left the pavements and reached the earth road. He had divined from a dull noise that they were crossing the bridge of Austerlitz. At the first halt he had understood that they were entering the cemetery. At the second halt he said to himself, here is the grave. Suddenly he felt hand seize the coffin, then a harsh grating against the planks. He explained it to himself as the rope which was being fastened round the casket in order to lower it into the cavity. Then he experienced a giddiness. The undertaker's man and the grave digger had probably allowed the coffin to lose its balance and had lowered the head before the foot. He recovered himself fully when he felt himself horizontal and motionless. He had just touched the bottom. He had a certain sensation of cold. A voice rose above him, glacial and solemn. He heard Latin words, which he did not understand, pass over him so slowly that he was able to catch them one by one. Qui dormiunt intere pulvere e vigilabunt ali invitame ternam et alii in opprobrium ut videant semper. A child's voice said, De profundis. The grave voice began. Requiem eternam dona ei, Domine. The child's voice responded, et lux perpetua luceat ei. He heard something like the gentle patter of several drops of rain on the plank which covered him. It was probably the holy water. He this will be over soon now. Patience for a little while longer. The priest will take his departure. Fauchelevent will take Mercienne off to drink. I shall be left. Then Fauchelevent will return alone, and I shall get out. That will be the work of a good hour. The grave voice resumed requiescat in pace, and the child's voice said, amen. Jean Valjean strained his ears and heard something like retreating footsteps. There they are going now, thought he. I am alone. All at once he heard over his head a sound which seemed to him to be a clap of thunder. It was a shovelful of earth. Four falling on the coffin. A second shovelful fell. One of the holes through which he breathed had just been stopped up. A third shovelful of earth fell, then a fourth. There are things which are too strong for the strongest man. Jean Valjean lost conscious. End of Book eight Chapter six Les Miserables, Volume two by Victor Hugo Translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood Book eight Cemeteries Take that which is committed them. Chapter seven in which will be found the origin of the saying don't lose the card. This is what had taken place above the coffin in which lay Jean Valjean. When the hearse had driven off, when the priest and the choir boy had entered the carriage again and taken their departure, Fauchelevent, who had not taken his eyes from the grave digger, saw the latter bend over and grasp his shovel, which was sticking upright in the heap of dirt. Then Fauchelevent took a soup. Supreme resolve. He placed himself between the grave and the grave digger, crossed his arms and said, I am the one to pay. The grave digger stared at him in amazement and replied, what's that, peasant? Fauchelevent repeated, I am the one who pays. What for the wine. What wine? That Argenteuil wine. Where is the Argente? At the Bon Coin. Go to the devil. Said the grave digger, and he flung a shovelful of earth on the coffin. The coffin gave back a hollow sound. Fauchelevent felt himself stagger, and on the point of falling headlong into the grave himself he shouted in a voice in which the strangling sound of the death rattle began to mingle. Comrade, before the bon coin is shut, the grave digger took some more earth on his shovel. Fauchelevent continued, I will pay. And he seized the man's arm. Listen to me, comrade. I am the convent crave digger. I have come to help you. It is a business which can be performed at night. Let us begin then by going for a drink. And as he spoke and clung to this desperate insistence, this melancholy reflection occurred to and if he drinks, will he get drunk? Provincial, said the man, if you positively insist upon it, I consent. We will drink after work. Never before. And he flourished his shovel briskly. Fauchelevent held him back. It is Argenteuil wine at six. Oh, come, said the gravedigger, you are a bell ringer. Ding dong, ding dong. That's all you know how to say. Go hang yourself. And he threw in a second shovel. Fauchelevent had reached a point where he no longer knew what he was saying. Come along and drink, he cried, since it is I who pays the bill. When we have put the child to bed, said the grave digger, he flung in a third shovelful. Then he thrust his shovel into the earth and added, it's cold to night, you see, and the cold corpse would shriek out after us if we were to plant her there without a coverlet. At that moment, as he loaded his shovel, the grave digger bent over and the pocket of his waistcoat gaped. Fauchelevent's wild gaze fell mechanically into that pocket. And there it stopped. The sun was not yet hidden behind the horizon. There was still light enough to enable him to distinguish something white at the bottom of that yawning pocket. The sum total of lightning that the eye of a Picard peasant can contain traversed Fauchelevent's pupils. An idea had just occurred to him. He thrust his hand into the pocket from behind, without the gravedigger, who was wholly absorbed in his shovel full of earth, observing it, and pulled out the white object which lay at the bottom of it. The man sent a fourth shovelful tumbling into the grave. Just as he turned round to get the fifth, Fauchelevent looked calmly at him. And by the way, you, new man, have you your card? The grave digger paused. What card? The sun is on the point of setting. That's good. It's going to put on its nightcap. The gate of the cemetery will close immediately. Well, what then? Have you your card? Ah, my card, said the grave digger. And he fumbled in his pocket. Having searched one pocket, he proceeded to search the other. He passed on to his fobs explored the first returned to the second. Why no, said he, I have not my card. I must have forgotten it. 15 francs fine, said Fauchelevent. The grave digger turned green. Green is the pallor of livid people. Ah, Jesus. Mon Dieu. Bain, crochet, ballalune. He exclaimed. 15 francs fine. Three pieces of a hundred sous, said Fauchelevent. The grave digger dropped his shovel. Fauchelevent's turn had come. Ah, come now, conscript, said Fauchelevent. None of this despair. There is no question of committing suicide and benefiting the grave. 15 francs is 15 francs. And besides, you may not be able to pay it. I am an old hand, you are a new one. I know all the ropes and the devices. I will give you some friendly advice. One thing is clear. The sun is on the point of setting. It is touching the dome now. The cemetery will be closed in five minutes more. That is true, replied the man. Five minutes more and you will not have time to fill the grave. It is as hollow as the devil, this grave. And to reach the gate in season to pass it before it is shut. That is true. In that case, a fine of 15 francs. 15 francs. But you have time. Where do you live? A couple of steps from the barrier, a quarter of an hour from here. Number 87, Rue du Vaugirard. You have just time to get out by taking to your heels at your best speed. That is exactly so. Once outside the gate, you gallop home, you get your card, you return, the cemetery porter admits you as you have your card, there will be nothing to pay, and you will bury your corpse. I'll watch it for you in the meantime, so that it shall not run away. I am indebted to you for my life, peasant de camp, said Fauchelevent. The grave digger, overwhelmed with gratitude, shook his hand and set off on a run. When the man had disappeared in the thicket, Fauchelevent listened until he heard his footsteps die away in the distance. Then he leaned over the grave and said in a low, father Madeleine. There was no reply. Fauchelevent was seized with a shudder. He tumbled rather than climbed into the grave, flung himself himself on the head of the coffin and cried, are you there? Silence in the coffin. Fauchelevent, hardly able to draw his breath for trembling, seized his cold chisel and his hammer and pried up the coffin lid. Jean Valjean's face appeared in the twilight. It was pale and his eyes were closed. Fauchelevent's hair rose upright on his head. He sprang to his feet Then fell back against the side of the grave, ready to swoon. On the coffin he stared at Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean lay there, pallid and motionless. Fauchelevent murmured in a voice as faint as a sigh, he is dead. And drawing himself up and folding his arms with such violence that his clenched fists came in contact with his shoulders, he cried, and this is the way I save his life. Then the poor man fell to sobbing. He soliloquized the while. For it is an error to suppose the that the soliloquy is unnatural. Powerful emotion often talks aloud. It is Father Mestienne's fault. Why did that fool die? What need was there for him to give up? The ghost at the very moment when no one was expecting. Is he who has killed Monsieur Madeleine? Father Madeleine? He is in the coffin. It is quite handy. All is over now. Is there any sense in these things? Ah. My God. He is dead. Well, and his little girl? What am I to do with her? What will the fruit seller say? The idea of its being possible for a man like that to die like this. When I think how he put himself under that cart. Father Madeleine. [03:39:41] Speaker H: Father. [03:39:41] Speaker D: Father Madeline Pardine. He was suffocated. I said so. He wouldn't believe me. Well, here's a pretty trick to play. He is dead. That good man. The very best man out of all the good God's good folks. And his little girl. Ah. In the first place, I won't go back there myself. Myself? I shall stay here after having done such a thing as that? What's the use of being two old men if we are two old fools? But in the first place, how did he manage to enter the convent? That was the beginning of it all. One should not do such things. Father Madeleine. Father Madeleine. Father Madeleine. Madeleine. Monsieur Madeleine. Monsieur Le Mer. He does not hear me. Now get out of this scrape if you can. And he tore his hair. A grating sound became audible through the trees in the distance. It was the cemetery gate closing. Fauchelevent bent over Jean Valjean, and all at once he bounded back and recoiled so far as the limits of a grave permit. Jean Valjean's eyes were open and gazing at him. To see a corpse is alarming. To behold a resurrection is almost as much so. Fauchelevent became like stone, pale, haggard, overwhelmed by all these excesses of emotion, not knowing whether he had to do with a living man or a dead one, and staring at Jean Valjean, who was gazing at him. I fell asleep, said Jean Valjean. And he raised himself to a Sitting posture, Fauchelevent fell on his knees. Just good virgin. How you frightened me. Then he sprang to his feet and cried, thanks, Father Madeleine. Jean Valjean had merely fainted. The fresh air had revived him. Joy is the ebb of terror. Fauchelevent found almost as much difficulty in recovering himself as Jean Valjean had. So you are not dead. Oh, how wise you are. I called you so much that you came back. When I saw your eyes shut, I said, good, there he is stifled. I should have gone raving mad. Mad enough for a straitjacket. They would have put me in Bicetre. What do you suppose I should have done if you had been dead? And your little girl, there's that fruit seller. She would never have understood it. The child is thrust into your arms and then the grandfather is dead. What a story. Good saints of Paradise. What a tale. Oh, you are alive. That's the best of it. I am cold, said Jean Valjean. This remark recalled Fauchelevent thoroughly to reality, and there was pressing need of it. The souls of these two men were troubled even when they had recovered themselves, although they did not realise it. And there was about them something uncanny, which was the sinister bewilderment inspired by the place. Let us get out of here quickly. Exclaimed Fauchelevent. He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a gourd with which he had provided him some. But first take a drop, said he. The flask finished what the fresh air had begun. Jean Valjean swallowed a mouthful of brandy and regained full possession of his faculties. He got out of the coffin and helped Fauchelevent to nail on the lid again. Three minutes later they were out of the grave. Moreover, Fauchelevent was perfectly composed. He took his time. The cemetery was closed. The arrival of the gravedigger Gribier was not to be apprehended. That conscript was at home, busily engaged in looking for his card and at some difficulty in finding it in his lodgings, since it was in Fauchelevent's pocket. Without a card he could not get back into the cemetery. Fauchelevent took the shovel and Jean Valjean the pickaxe, and together they buried the empty coffin. When the grave was full, Fauchelevent said to Jean Valjean, let us go. I will keep the shovel. Do you carry off the mattock? Night was falling. Jean Valjean experienced some difficulty in moving and in walking. He had stiffened himself himself in that coffin and had become a little like a corpse. The rigidity of death had seized upon him. Between those four Planks he had in a manner to thaw out from the tomb. You are benumbed, said Fauchelevent. It is a pity that I have a game leg, for otherwise we might step out briskly. Bah, replied Jean Valjean. Four paces will put life into my legs. Once more they set off by the alleys through which the hearse had passed. On arriving before the closed gate and the porter's pavilion, Fauchelevent, who held the gravedigger's card in his hand, dropped it into the box. The porter pulled the rope, the gate opened and they went out. How well everything is going, said Fauchelevent. What a capital idea that was of yours, Father Madeleine. They passed the Vaugirard barriere in the simplest manner in the world. In the neighbourhood of the cemetery a shovel and pick are equal to two passports. The rue Vaugirard was deserted. Father Madeleine, said Fauchelevent as they went along, and raising his eyes to the houses. Your eyes are better than mine. Show me number 87. Here it is, said Jean Valjean. There is no one in the street, said Fauchelevent. Give me your mattock and wait a couple of minutes for me. Fauchelevent entered no. 87, ascended to the very top, guided by the instinct which always leads the poor man to the garret and knocked in the dark. At the door of an attic a voice replied, come in. It was Gribier's voice. Fauchelevent opened the door. The gravedigger's dwelling was like all such wretched habitations, an unfurnished and encumbered garret. A packing case, a coffin perhaps, took the place of a compassion mode. A butter pot served for a drinking fountain, A straw mattress served for a bed, the floor served instead of tables and chairs. In a corner, on a tattered fragment which had been a piece of an old carpet, a thin woman and a number of children were piled in a heap. The whole of this poverty stricken interior bore traces of having been overturned. One would have said that there had been an earthquake, for one. The covers were displaced, the rags scattered about, the jug broken. The mother had been crying. The children had probably been beaten. Traces of a vigorous and ill tempered search. It was plain that the grave digger had made a desperate search for his card and had made everybody in the garret, from the jug to his wife, responsible for its loss. He wore an air of desperation. But Fauchelevent was in too great a hurry to terminate this adventure, to take any notice of this sad side of his success. He entered and I Have brought you back your shovel and pick gazed at him in stupefaction. Is it you, peasant? And tomorrow morning you will find your card with the porter of the cemetery. And he laid the shovel and mattock on the floor. What is the meaning of this? Demanded Gribier. The meaning of it is that you dropped your card out of your pocket. That I found it on the ground after you were gone. That I have buried the cord corpse, that I have filled the grave, that I have done your work, that the porter will return your card to you and that you will not have to pay 15 francs. There you have it. Conscript. Thanks, villager. Exclaimed Cribier. Radiant. The next time I will pay for the drinks. End of Book 8 Chapter 7. [03:49:17] Speaker J: Les Miserables, Volume 2 by Victor Hugo translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood Book 8 Cemeteries take that which is committed them. Chapter 8 A successful interrogatory an hour later, in the darkness of night, two men and a child presented themselves themselves at number 62 Rue Petty Picpas. The elder of the men lifted the knocker and wrapped. They were forchelevant Jean Valjean and Cosette. The two old men had gone to fetch Cosette from the fruiteriers in the Rude de Chemin Verte, where Vauchelevant had deposited her on the preceding day. Cosette had passed these 24 hours trembling slightly and understanding nothing. She trembled to such a degree that she wept. She had neither eaten nor slept. The worthy fruit seller had plied her with a hundred questions without obtaining any other reply than a melancholy and unvarying gaze. Cosette had betrayed nothing of what she had seen and heard during the last two days. She divined that they were passing through a crisis. She was deeply conscious that it was necessary to be clear. Good. Who has not experienced the sovereign power of those 2? Words, pronounced with a certain accent in the ear of a terrified little being? Say nothing. Fear is mute. Moreover, no one guards a secret like a child. But when, at the expiration of these lugubrious 24 hours, she beheld Jean Valjean again, she gave vent to such a cry of joy that any thoughtful person who had chanced to hear that cry would have guessed that it issued from an abyss. Fauchelevent belonged to the convent and knew the passwords. All the doors opened. Thus was solved the double and alarming problem of how to get out and how to get in. The porter, who had received his instructions, opened the little servants door which connected the courtyard with the garden and which could still be seen from the street 20 years ago. In the wall at the bottom of the court, which faced the carriage entrance. The porter admitted all three of them through this door, and from that point they reached the inner reserved parlor, where Fauchelevent on the preceding day had received his orders from the prioress. The prioress, rosary in hand, was waiting for them. A vocal mother, with her veil lowered, stood beside her. A discreet candle, lighted, one might almost say, made a show of lighting the parlor. The prior is passed Jean Valjean in review. There is nothing which examines like a downcast eye. Then she questioned him, you are the brother? Yes, Reverend Mother, replied Fauchelevent. What is your name? Fauchelevent replied Ultim Fauchelevent. He really had had a brother named all team who was dead. Where do you come from? For shall Event replied, from Pequigny, near Amien. What is your age for? Chalevant replied, 50. What is your profession for? Chalevant replied, gardener. Are you a good Christian? For Shalavant replied, everyone is in the family. Is this your little girl? Faux Chalevant replied, yes, replied Reverend Mother. You are her father. Fauchelevent replied her grandfather. The vocal mother said to the prioress in a low voice, he answers well. Jean Valjean had not uttered a single word. The prioress looked attentively at Cosette and said half aloud to the vocal mother, she will grow up ugly. The two mothers consulted for a few moments in very low tones in the corner of the the parlor. Then the prioress turned around and said, father Fauvent, you will get another knee cap with a bell. Two will be required now and the following day. Therefore, two bells were audible in the garden, and the nuns could not resist the temptation to raise the corner of their veils. At the extreme end of the garden, under the trees, two men, Fauvent and another man, were visible as they dug side by side, an enormous event. Their silence was broken to the extent of saying to each other, he is an assistant gardener. The vocal mothers added, he is a brother of Father Fauva. Jean Valjean was in fact regularly installed. He had his belt, kneecap. Therefore he was official. His name was Ultim Fauchelevent. The most powerful determining cause of his admission had been the prioress's observation upon Cosette. She will grow up ugly. The prioress, that pronounced prognosticator, immediately took a fancy to Cosette and gave her a place in the school as a charity pupil. There is nothing that is not strictly logical about this. It is in vain that mirrors are banished from the convent women are conscious of their faces now. Girls who are conscious of their beauty do not easily become nuns, the vocation being voluntary in inverse proportion to their good looks. More is to be hoped from the ugly than from the pretty, hence a lively taste for plain girls. The whole of this adventure increased the importance of good old Fauchelevent. He won a triple success in the eyes of Jean Valjean, whom he had saved and sheltered in those of grave digger Gribier, who. Who said to himself, he spared me that fine with the convent which, being enabled, thanks to him, to retain the coffin of Mother Crucifixion under the altar, eluded Caesar and satisfied God. There was a coffin containing a body in the Petipicpus and a coffin without a body in the Vaugirard cemetery. Public order had no doubt been deeply disturbed thereby, but no one was aware of it. Convent as for the convent, its gratitude to Fauchelevent was very great. Fauchelevent became the best of servitors and the most precious of gardeners. Upon the occasion of the Archbishop's next visit, the prioress recounted the affair to his Grace, making something of a confession at the same time, and yet boasting of her deed. On leaving the convent, the Archbishop mentioned it with approval and in a whisper to Monsieur de Latille, Monsieur's confessor, afterwards Archbishop of Reims and cardinal. This admiration for Fauchelevent became widespread, for it made its way to Rome. We have seen a note addressed by the then reigning Pope Leo XII to one of his relatives, a monsignor in the Nuncio's establishment in Paris, and bearing like himself the name of della Ginga. It contained the these lines. It appears that there is, in a convent in Paris an excellent gardener who is also a holy man, named Fauvent. Nothing of this triumph reached Fauchelevent. In his hut he went on grafting, weeding and covering up his melon beds, without in the least suspecting his excellences and his sanctity. Neither did he suspect his glory any more than a Dirham or Surrey bull, whose portrait is published in the London Illustrated News with this inscription Bull which carried off the prize at the cattle show. End of Book 8 Chapter 8 Les. [03:56:40] Speaker D: Miserables, Volume 2 by Victor Hugo translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood Book 8 Cemeteries take that which is committed them. Chapter 9. Cloistered Cosette continued to hold her tongue in the convent. It was quite natural that Cosette should think herself Jean Valjean's daughter. Moreover, as she knew nothing, she could say nothing and Then she would not have said anything. In any case, as we have just observed, nothing trains children to silence like unhappiness. Cosette had suffered so much that she feared everything. Even to speak or to breathe a single word had so often brought down an avalanche upon her. She had hardly begun to regain her confidence. Since she had been with Jean Valjean, she speedily became accustomed to the convent. Only she regretted Catherine, but she dared not say so. Once, however, she did say to Jean Valjean, father, if I had known, I would have brought her away with me. Cosette had been obliged, on becoming a scholar in the convent, to don the garb of the pupils of the house. Jean Valjean succeeded in getting them to restore to him the garments which she laid aside. This was the same mountain morning suit which he had made her put on when she had quitted the Thenardier's inn. It was not very threadbare. Even now Jean Valjean locked up these garments, plus the stockings and the shoes, with a quantity of camphor and all the aromatics in which convents abound in a little valise, which he found means of procuring. He set this valise on a chair near his bed, and he always carried the key about his person. Father Cosette asked him one day, what is there in that box which smells so good? Father Fauchelevent received other recompense for his good action, in addition to the glory which we just mentioned, and of which he knew nothing. In the first place, it made him happy. Next, he had much less work, since it was shared. Lastly, as he was very fond of snuff, he found the presence of M. Madeleine an advantage, in that he used three times as much as he had done previously, and that in an infinitely more luxurious manner. Seeing that Monsieur Madeleine paid for it, the nuns did not adopt the name of they called Jean Valjean the other Fauvent. If these holy women had possessed anything of Javert's glance, they would eventually have noticed that when there was any errand to be done outside in the behalf of the garden, it was always the elder Fauchelevent, the old, the infirm, the lame man who went, and never the other. But whether it is that eyes constantly fixed on God know not not how to spy, or whether they were by preference occupied in keeping watch on each other, they paid no heed to this. Moreover, it was well for Jean Valjean that he kept close and did not stir out. Javert watched the quarter for more than a month. This convent was for Jean Valjean like an island Surrounded by gulfs. Henceforth those four walls constituted his world. He saw enough of the sky there to enable him to preserve his serenity and Cosette enough to remain happy. A very sweet life began for him. He inhabited the old hut at the end of the garden in company with Fauchelevent. This hovel, built of old rubbish, which was still in existence in 1845, was composed, as the reader already knows, of three chambers, all of which were utterly bare and had nothing beyond the walls. The principal one had been given up by force, for Jean Valjean had opposed it in vain to Monsieur Madeleine. By Father Fauchelevent. The walls of this chamber had for ornament, in addition to the two nails whereon to hang the knee cap and the basket, a royalist bank note of 93 applied to the wall over the chimney piece, and of which the following is an exact facsimile. Armee calbolique her royal de par le roi bon commercable de d? Livre. This specimen of Vendian paper money had been nailed to the wall by the preceding gardener, an old chouan who had died in the convent and whose place Fauchelevent had taken. Jean Valjean worked in the garden every day and made himself very useful. He had formerly been a pruner of trees, and he gladly found himself a gardener once more. It will be remembered that he knew all sorts of secrets and receipts, for he turned these to almost all the trees in the orchard were ungrafted and wild. He budded them and made them produce excellent fruit. Cosette had permission to pass an hour with him every day. As the sisters were melancholy and he was kind, the child made comparisons and adored him. At the appointed hour she flew to the hut. When she entered the lowly cabin, she filled it with paradise. Jean Valjean blossomed out and felt his happiness increase with the happiness which he afforded Cosette. The joy which we inspire has this charming property that, far from growing meagre, like all reflections, it returns to us more radiant than ever. At recreation hours Jean Valjean watched her running and playing in the distance and he distinguished her laugh from that of the rest. For Cosette laughed now. Cosette's face had even undergone a change to a certain extent the gloom had disappeared from it. A smile is the same as sunshine. It banishes winter from the human countenance. Recreation over. When Cosette went into the house again, Jean Valjean gazed at the windows of her classroom, and at night he rose to look at the windows of her dormitory. God has his own ways. Moreover, the convent contributed, like Cosette, to uphold and complete the bishop's work. In Jean Valjean it is certain that virtue adjoins pride. On one side a bridge built by the devil exists there. Jean Valjean had been unconsciously, perhaps tolerably, near that side and that bridge when Providence cast his lot in the convent of the Petit Picpus. So long as he had compared himself only to the bishop, he had regarded himself as unworthy and had remained humble. But for some time past he had been comparing himself to men in general, and pride was beginning to spring up. Who knows? He might have ended by returning very gradually to hatred. The convent stopped him on that downward path. This was the second place of captivity which he had seen in his youth, in what had been for him the beginning of his life. And later on, quite recently again, he had beheld another. A frightful place, a terrible place, whose severities had always appeared to him the iniquity of justice and the crime of the law. Now, after the galleys, he saw the cloister, and when he meditated, how he had formed a part of the galleys, and that he now, so to speak, was a spectator of the cloister. He confronted the two in his own mind with anxiety. Sometimes he crossed his arms and leaned on his hoe and slowly descended the endless spirals of reverie. He recalled his former companions. How wretched they were. They rose at dawn and toiled until night. Night hardly were they permitted to sleep. They lay on camp beds where nothing was tolerated but mattresses 2 inches thick, in rooms which were heated only in the very harshest months of the year. They were clothed in frightful red blouses. They were allowed, as a great favour, linen trousers in the hottest weather and a woollen carter's blouse on their backs when it was very cold. They drank no wine and ate no meat, except when they went on fatigue duty. They lived nameless, designated only by numbers, and converted, after a manner, into ciphers themselves. With downcast eyes, with lowered voices, with shorn heads beneath the cudgel and in disgrace. Then his mind reverted to the beings whom he had under his eyes. These beings also lived with shorn heads, with downcast eyes, with lowered voices, not in disgrace, but amid the scoffs of the world, not with their backs bruised with the cudgel, but with their shoulders lacerated with their discipline. Their names also had vanished from among men. They no longer existed except under austere appellations. They never ate meat and they never drank wine. They often remained until evening. Without food they were attired not in a red blouse, but in a black shroud of woollen, which was heavy in summer and thin in winter, without the power to add or subtract anything from it, without having, even according to the season, the resource of the linen garment or the woollen cloak. And for six months in the year they wore serge chemises which gave them fever. They dwelt not in rooms warmed only during rigorous cold, but in cells where no fire was ever lighted. They slept not on mattresses 2 inches thick, but on straw. And finally, they were not even allowed their sleep. Every night after a day of toil, they were obliged, in the weariness of their first slumber, at the moment when they were falling sound asleep and beginning to get warm, to rouse themselves, themselves to rise and to go and pray in an ice cold and gloomy chapel with their knees on the stones. On certain days, each of these beings in turn had to remain for 12 successive hours in a kneeling posture or prostrate, with face upon the pavement and arms outstretched in the form of a cross. The others were men. These were women. What had those men done? They had stolen, violated, pillaged, murdered, assassinated. They were bandits, counterfeiters, poisoners, incendiaries, murderers, parricides. What had these women done? They had done nothing whatever. On the one hand, highway robbery, fraud, deceit, violence, sensuality, homicide, all sorts of sacrilege, every variety of crime. On the other, one thing, innocence, perfect innocence, almost caught up into heaven in a mysterious assumption attached to the earth by virtue, already possessing something of heaven through holiness. On the one hand, confidences over crimes which are exchanged in whispers. On the other, the confession of faults made aloud. And what crimes and what faults? On the one hand, miasms. On the other, an ineffable perfume. On the one hand, a moral pest guarded from sight, penned up under the range of cannon and literally devouring its plague stricken victims. On the other, the chaste flame of all souls. On the same hearth. There, darkness. Here the shadow. But a shadow filled with gleams of light and of gleams full of radiance. Two strongholds of slavery, but in the first, deliverance possible, a legal limit always in sight. And then escape. In the second, perpetuity. The sole hope at the distant extremity of the future, that faint light of liberty which men call death. In the first, men are bound only with chains. In the other, chained by faith. What flowed from the first? An immense curse, the gnashing of teeth. Hatred, desperate viciousness. A cry of rage against human society, a sarcasm against Heaven, what results flowed from the second? Blessings and love. And in these two places, so similar, yet so unlike, these two species of beings, who were so very unlike, were undergoing the same expiation. Jean Valjean understood thoroughly the expiation of the former, that personal expiation, the expiation for oneself. But he did not understand that of these last, that of creatures without reproach and without stain. And he trembled as he asked himself the expiation of what? What expiation? A voice within his conscience, the most divine of human generosities, the expiation for others. Here all personal theory is withheld. We are only the narrator. We place ourselves at Jean Valjean's point of view and we translate his impressions. Before his eyes. He had the sublime summit of abnegation, the highest possible pitch of virtue, the innocence which pardons men their faults and which expiates in their stead servitude, submitted to torture, accepted punishment claimed by souls which have not sinned for the sake of sparing it to souls which have fallen, the love of humanity swallowed up in the love of God, but even there, preserving its distinct and mediatorial character, sweet and feeble beings possessing the misery of those who are punished and the smile of those who are recompensed. And he remembered that he had dared to murmur often in the middle of the night. He rose to listen to the grateful song of those innocent creatures weighed down with severities. And the blood ran cold in his veins at the thought that those who were justly chastised raised their voices heavenward only in blasphemy. And that he, wretch that he was, had shaken his fist at God. There was one striking thing which caused him to meditate deeply, like a warning whisper from Providence itself. The scaling of that wall, the passing of those barriers, the adventure accepted even at the risk of death, the painful and difficult ascent. All those efforts even which he had made to escape from that other place of expiation he had made in order to gain entrance into this one. Was this a symbol of his destiny? This house was a prison likewise, and bore a melancholy resemblance to that other one whence he had fled. And yet he had never conceived an idea of anything similar. Again he beheld gratings, bolts, iron bars, to guard whom angels. These lofty walls which he had seen around tigers he now beheld once more around lambs. This was a place of expiation and not of punishment. And yet it was still more austere, more gloomy and more pitiless than the other. These Virgins were even more heavily burdened than the convicts. A cold, harsh wind, that wind which had chilled his youth, traversed the barred and padlocked grating of the vultures. A still, harsher and more biting breeze blew in the cage of these doves. Why, when he thought on these things, all that was within him was lost in amazement before this mystery of sublimity. In these meditations his pride vanished. He scrutinised his own heart in all manner of ways. He felt his pettiness, and many a time he wept. All that had entered into his life for the last six months had led him back towards the bishop's. Holy Cosette through love, the convent, through humility. Sometimes, at eventide, in the twilight, at an hour when the garden was deserted, he could be seen on his knees in the middle of the walk which skirted the chapel in front of the window through which he had gazed on the night of his arrival, and turned towards the spot where, as he knew, the sister was making reparation, prostrated in prayer. Thus he prayed. As he knelt before the sister. It seemed as though he dared not kneel directly before God. Everything that surrounded him, that peaceful garden, those fragrant flowers, those children who uttered joyous cries, those grave and simple women, that silent cloister slowly permeated him. And little, little by little, his soul became compounded of silence. Like the cloister of perfume, like the flowers of simplicity, like the women, of joy, like the children. And then he reflected that these had been two houses of God which had received him in succession at two critical moments in his life. The first, when all doors were closed and when human society rejected him. The second, at a moment when human society had again set out in pursuit of him and when the galleys were again yawning. And that, had it not been for the first, he should have relapsed into crime. And had it not been for the second, into torment. His whole heart melted in gratitude. And he loved more and more. Many years passed in this manner. Cosette was growing up. End of book 8 chapter 9 and end of book 8 recording by Ruth Golding end of Les miserables, volume 2 to Cosette by Victor Hugo Translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood.