Page 902 - les-miserables

Fauchelevent. Find some means of getting me out in a bas-
ket, under cover, like Cosette.’
Fauchelevent scratched the lobe of his ear with the mid-
dle finger of his left hand, a sign of serious embarrassment.
A third peal created a diversion.
‘That is the dead-doctor taking his departure,’ said Fau-
chelevent. ‘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 garden-
er’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 undertak-
er’s men come and get it, and whip up, coachman! 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 her. He was no longer listen-
ing 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 Vaugirard cemetery. They declare

902 Les Miserables