to
get out--his grave-digger's card furnished by the department 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 mentioned 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.

This cemetery, with its peculiarities outside the regulations,
embarrassed the symmetry of the administration. It was suppressed
a little later than 1830. The cemetery of Mont-Parnasse, called the
Eastern cemetery, succeeded to it, and inherited that famous dram-shop
next to the Vaugirard cemetery, which was surmounted by a quince painted
on a board, and which formed an angle, one side on the drinkers' tables,
and the other on the tombs, with this sign: Au Bon Coing.

The Vaugirard cemetery was what may be called a faded cemetery. It
was falling into disuse. Dampness was invading it, the flowers were
deserting it. The bourgeois did not care much about being buried in
the Vaugirard; it hinted at poverty. Pere-Lachaise if you please! to be
buried in Pere-Lachaise is equivalent to having furniture of mahogany.
It is recognized as elegant. The Vaugirard cemetery was a venerable
enclosure, planted like an old-fashioned French garden. Straight alleys,
box, thuya-trees, holly, ancient tombs beneath aged cypress-trees, and
very tall grass. In the evening it was tragic there. There were very
lugubrious lines about it.

The sun had not yet set when the hearse with the white pall and the
black cross entered the avenue of the Vaugirard cemetery. The lame man
who followed it was no other than Fauchelevent.

The interment of Mother Crucifixion in the vault under the altar, the
exit of Cosette, the introduction of Jean Valjean to the dead-room,--all
had been executed without difficulty, and there had been no hitch.

Let us remark in passing, that the burial of Mother Crucifixion under
the altar of the convent is a perfectly venial offence in our sight. It
is one of the faults which resemble a duty. The nuns had committed it,
not only without difficulty, but even with the applause of their own
consciences. In the cloister, what is called the "government" is only
an intermeddling with authority, an interference which is always
qu