coffin.

Fauchelevent, hardly able to draw his breath for trembling, seized his
cold chisel and his hammer, and pried up the coffin lid.

Jean Valjean's face appeared in the twilight; it was pale and his eyes
were closed.

Fauchelevent's hair rose upright on his head, he sprang to his feet,
then fell back against the side of the grave, ready to swoon on the
coffin. He stared at Jean Valjean.

Jean Valjean lay there pallid and motionless.

Fauchelevent murmured in a voice as faint as a sigh:--

"He is dead!"

And, drawing himself up, and folding his arms with such violence that
his clenched fists came in contact with his shoulders, he cried:--

"And this is the way I save his life!"

Then the poor man fell to sobbing. He soliloquized the while, for it is
an error to suppose that the soliloquy is unnatural. Powerful emotion
often talks aloud.

"It is Father Mestienne's fault. Why did that fool die? What need was
there for him to give up the ghost at the very moment when no one was
expecting it? It is he who has killed M. Madeleine. Father Madeleine!
He is in the coffin. It is quite handy. All is over. Now, is there any
sense in these things? Ah! my God! he is dead! Well! and his little
girl, what am I to do with her? What will the fruit-seller say? The idea
of its being possible for a man like that to die like this! When I think
how he put himself under that cart! Father Madeleine! Father Madeleine!
Pardine! He was suffocated, I said so. He wouldn't believe me. Well!
Here's a pretty trick to play! He is dead, that good man, the very best
man out of all the good God's good folks! And his little girl! Ah! In
the first place, I won't go back there myself. I shall stay here. After
having done such a thing as that! What's the use of being two old men,
if we are two old fools! But, in the first place, how did he manage to
enter the convent? That was the beginning of it all. One should not
do such things. Father Madeleine! Father Madeleine! Father Madeleine!
Madeleine! Monsieur Madeleine! Monsieur le Maire! He does not hear me.
Now get out of this scrape if you can!"

And he tore his hair.

A grating sound became audible through the trees in the distance. It was
the cemetery gate closing.

Fauchelevent bent over Jean Valjean, and all at once he bounded back and
recoiled so far as the limits of a grave permit.

Jean Valjean's eyes were open and gazing at him.

To see a corpse is alarming, to behold a resurrecti