the
post should perceive your presence."

"Reverend Mother?"

"What, Father Fauvent?"

"Has the doctor for the dead paid his visit?"

"He will pay it at four o'clock to-day. The peal which orders the
doctor for the dead to be summoned has already been rung. But you do not
understand any of the peals?"

"I pay no attention to any but my own."

"That is well, Father Fauvent."

"Reverend Mother, a lever at least six feet long will be required."

"Where will you obtain it?"

"Where gratings are not lacking, iron bars are not lacking. I have my
heap of old iron at the bottom of the garden."

"About three-quarters of an hour before midnight; do not forget."

"Reverend Mother?"

"What?"

"If you were ever to have any other jobs of this sort, my brother is the
strong man for you. A perfect Turk!"

"You will do it as speedily as possible."

"I cannot work very fast. I am infirm; that is why I require an
assistant. I limp."

"To limp is no sin, and perhaps it is a blessing. The Emperor Henry II.,
who combated Antipope Gregory and re-established Benoit VIII., has two
surnames, the Saint and the Lame."

"Two surtouts are a good thing," murmured Fauchelevent, who really was a
little hard of hearing.

"Now that I think of it, Father Fauvent, let us give a whole hour to it.
That is not too much. Be near the principal altar, with your iron bar,
at eleven o'clock. The office begins at midnight. Everything must have
been completed a good quarter of an hour before that."

"I will do anything to prove my zeal towards the community. These are my
orders. I am to nail up the coffin. At eleven o'clock exactly, I am to
be in the chapel. The Mother Precentors will be there. Mother Ascension
will be there. Two men would be better. However, never mind! I shall
have my lever. We will open the vault, we will lower the coffin, and
we will close the vault again. After which, there will be no trace
of anything. The government will have no suspicion. Thus all has been
arranged, reverend Mother?"

"No!"

"What else remains?"

"The empty coffin remains."

This produced a pause. Fauchelevent meditated. The prioress meditated.

"What is to be done with that coffin, Father Fauvent?"

"It will be given to the earth."

"Empty?"

Another silence. Fauchelevent made, with his left hand, that sort of a
gesture which dismisses a troublesome subject.

"Reverend Mother, I am the one who is to nail up the coffin in the
basement