Page 948 - les-miserables

‘It is Argenteuil wine, at six.’
‘Oh, come,’ said the grave-digger, ‘you are a bell-ringer.
Ding dong, ding dong, that’s all you know how to say. Go
hang yourself.’
And he threw in a second shovelful.
Fauchelevent had reached a point where he no longer
knew what he was saying.
‘Come along and drink,’ he cried, ‘since it is I who pays
the bill.’
‘When we have put the child to bed,’ said the grave-dig-
ger.
He flung in a third shovelful.
Then he thrust his shovel into the earth and added:—
‘It’s cold to-night, you see, and the corpse would shriek
out after us if we were to plant her there without a coverlet.’
At that moment, as he loaded his shovel, the grave-digger
bent over, and the pocket of his waistcoat gaped. Fauchelev-
ent’s wild gaze fell mechanically into that pocket, and there
it stopped.
The sun was not yet hidden behind the horizon; there
was still light enough to enable him to distinguish some-
thing white at the bottom of that yawning pocket.
The sum total of lightning that the eye of a Picard peas-
ant can contain, traversed Fauchelevent’s pupils. An idea
had just occurred to him.
He thrust his hand into the pocket from behind, without
the grave-digger, who was wholly absorbed in his shovelful
of earth, observing it, and pulled out the white object which
lay at the bottom of it.

948 Les Miserables