Page 934 - les-miserables

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 pietonne.[16] The
Bernardines-Benedictines of the Rue Petit-Picpus had ob-
tained 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 grave-diggers
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 regu-
lation, the Vaugirard cemetery was bound by it like the rest.
The carriage gate and the house door were two contiguous
grated gates, adjoining a pavilion built by the architect Per-
ronet, and inhabited by the door-keeper 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 grave-digger’s card furnished by the depart-
ment of public funerals. A sort of letter-box was constructed
in the porter’s window. The grave-digger 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 men-
tioned 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 grave-digger stepped out, but had
to pay a fine of fifteen francs.

934 Les Miserables