t that he was doing right, and perhaps he really was, in
reserving as much money as possible from what Jean Valjean had left for
the poor. Who was concerned, after all? A convict and a woman of the
town. That is why he had a very simple funeral for Fantine, and reduced
it to that strictly necessary form known as the pauper's grave.

So Fantine was buried in the free corner of the cemetery which belongs
to anybody and everybody, and where the poor are lost. Fortunately, God
knows where to find the soul again. Fantine was laid in the shade,
among the first bones that came to hand; she was subjected to the
promiscuousness of ashes. She was thrown into the public grave. Her
grave resembled her bed.

[THE END OF VOLUME I. "FANTINE"]

[Illustration: Frontispiece Volume Two 2frontispiece]

[Illustration: Titlepage Volume Two 2titlepage]

VOLUME II.--COSETTE

BOOK FIRST.--WATERLOO

CHAPTER I--WHAT IS MET WITH ON THE WAY FROM NIVELLES

Last year (1861), on a beautiful May morning, a traveller, the person
who is telling this story, was coming from Nivelles, and directing his
course towards La Hulpe. He was on foot. He was pursuing a broad paved
road, which undulated between two rows of trees, over the hills which
succeed each other, raise the road and let it fall again, and produce
something in the nature of enormous waves.

He had passed Lillois and Bois-Seigneur-Isaac. In the west he perceived
the slate-roofed tower of Braine-l'Alleud, which has the form of a
reversed vase. He had just left behind a wood upon an eminence; and
at the angle of the cross-road, by the side of a sort of mouldy gibbet
bearing the inscription Ancient Barrier No. 4, a public house, bearing
on its front this sign: At the Four Winds (Aux Quatre Vents). Echabeau,
Private Cafe.

A quarter of a league further on, he arrived at the bottom of a little
valley, where there is water which passes beneath an arch made through
the embankment of the road. The clump of sparsely planted but very green
trees, which fills the valley on one side of the road, is dispersed over
the meadows on the other, and disappears gracefully and as in order in
the direction of Braine-l'Alleud.

On the right, close to the road, was an inn, with a four-wheeled cart
at the door, a large bundle of hop-poles, a plough, a heap of dried
brushwood near a flourishing hedge, lime smoking in a square hole, and
a ladder suspended along an old penthouse with s