Page 951 - les-miserables

When the man had disappeared in the thicket, Fau-
chelevent listened until he heard his footsteps die away in
the distance, then he leaned over the grave, and said in a
low tone:—
‘Father Madeleine!’
There was no reply.
Fauchelevent was seized with a shudder. He tumbled
rather than climbed into the grave, flung himself on the
head of the coffin and cried:—
‘Are you there?’
Silence in the coffin.
Fauchelevent, hardly able to draw his breath for trem-
bling, 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 that the soliloquy is un-
natural. Powerful emotion often talks aloud.

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