Page 304 - les-miserables

CHAPTER VII

FAUCHELEVENT BECOMES

A GARDENER IN PARIS

Fauchelevent had dislocated his kneepan in his fall.
Father Madeleine had him conveyed to an infirmary which
he had established for his workmen in the factory building
itself, and which was served by two sisters of charity. On
the following morning the old man found a thousand-franc
bank-note on his night-stand, with these words in Father
Madeleine’s writing: ‘I purchase your horse and cart.’ The
cart was broken, and the horse was dead. Fauchelevent re-
covered, but his knee remained stiff. M. Madeleine, on the
recommendation of the sisters of charity and of his priest,
got the good man a place as gardener in a female convent in
the Rue Saint-Antoine in Paris.
Some time afterwards, M. Madeleine was appointed may-
or. The first time that Javert beheld M. Madeleine clothed in
the scarf which gave him authority over the town, he felt
the sort of shudder which a watch-dog might experience on
smelling a wolf in his master’s clothes. From that time forth
he avoided him as much as he possibly could. When the re-

304 Les Miserables