Page 930 - les-miserables

‘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 di-
ameter 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 con-
vict’s expedient,— is also an imperial expedient. If we are to
credit the monk Austin Castillejo, this was the means em-
ployed by Charles the Fifth, desirous of seeing the Plombes
for the last time after his abdication.
He had her brought into and carried out of the monas-
tery of Saint-Yuste 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

930 Les Miserables