ails up the coffin?"

"I do."

"Who spreads the pall over it?"

"I do."

"Are you alone?"

"Not another man, except the police doctor, can enter the dead-room.
That is even written on the wall."

"Could you hide me in that room to-night when every one is asleep?"

"No. But I could hide you in a small, dark nook which opens on the
dead-room, where I keep my tools to use for burials, and of which I have
the key."

"At what time will the hearse come for the coffin to-morrow?"

"About three o'clock in the afternoon. The burial will take place at the
Vaugirard cemetery a little before nightfall. It is not very near."

"I will remain concealed in your tool-closet all night and all the
morning. And how about food? I shall be hungry."

"I will bring you something."

"You can come and nail me up in the coffin at two o'clock."

Fauchelevent recoiled and cracked his finger-joints.

"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 diameter 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 convict's
expedient,--is also an imperial expedient. If we are to credit the monk
Austin Castillejo, this was the means employed 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 monastery 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 plank on loosely."

"Good! And what if you should happen to cough or to sneeze?"

"A man who is making his escape doe