, "a man cannot serve two mistresses.
I must choose between the pen and the mattock. The mattock is ruining my
hand."

The hearse halted.

The choir boy alighted from the mourning-coach, then the priest.

One of the small front wheels of the hearse had run up a little on a
pile of earth, beyond which an open grave was visible.

"What a farce this is!" repeated Fauchelevent in consternation.

CHAPTER VI--BETWEEN FOUR PLANKS

Who was in the coffin? The reader knows. Jean Valjean.

Jean Valjean had arranged things so that he could exist there, and he
could almost breathe.

It is a strange thing to what a degree security of conscience confers
security of the rest. Every combination thought out by Jean Valjean had
been progressing, and progressing favorably, since the preceding day.
He, like Fauchelevent, counted on Father Mestienne. He had no doubt
as to the end. Never was there a more critical situation, never more
complete composure.

The four planks of the coffin breathe out a kind of terrible peace. It
seemed as though something of the repose of the dead entered into Jean
Valjean's tranquillity.

From the depths of that coffin he had been able to follow, and he had
followed, all the phases of the terrible drama which he was playing with
death.

Shortly after Fauchelevent had finished nailing on the upper plank, Jean
Valjean had felt himself carried out, then driven off. He knew, from the
diminution in the jolting, when they left the pavements and reached the
earth road. He had divined, from a dull noise, that they were crossing
the bridge of Austerlitz. At the first halt, he had understood that they
were entering the cemetery; at the second halt, he said to himself:--

"Here is the grave."

Suddenly, he felt hands seize the coffin, then a harsh grating against
the planks; he explained it to himself as the rope which was being
fastened round the casket in order to lower it into the cavity.

Then he experienced a giddiness.

The undertaker's man and the grave-digger had probably allowed the
coffin to lose its balance, and had lowered the head before the foot. He
recovered himself fully when he felt himself horizontal and motionless.
He had just touched the bottom.

He had a certain sensation of cold.

A voice rose above him, glacial and solemn. He heard Latin words, which
he did not understand, pass over him, so slowly that he was able to
catch them one by one:--

"Qui dormiunt in terrae pulv