Mother Innocente — Les Misérables

About a quarter of an hour elapsed. The prioress returned and seated herself once more on her chair. The two interlocutors seemed preoccupied. There is a stone to be raised, she told Father Fauvent: the slab of the pavement at the side of the altar, the slab which closes the vault. It would be a good thing to have two men for it. Mother Ascension, who is as strong as a man, will help you. A woman is never a man, said the gardener, and a cloister is not a dock-yard, said the prioress. Merit consists in working according to one's strength. And my brother is the strong one, though. There is a ring in the stone. The stone swings on a pivot. Fauchelevent will put the lever through it and open the vault. When the vault is open, it must be closed again. Will that be all? No. Fauvent, we have confidence in you. And to hold your peace about everything. When the vault is open, something must be lowered into it.

A silence. The prioress broke it. You know that a mother died this morning? No, said Fauchelevent. Did you not hear the bell? Nothing can be heard at the bottom of the garden. It was Mother Crucifixion. A blessed woman. Three years ago a Jansenist turned orthodox merely from having seen her at prayer. The mothers have taken her to the dead-room. No other man than you can or must enter that chamber. Then the talk tangled itself on the words more often, and nine o'clock struck in time to cut the skein. At nine o'clock in the morning and at all hours, praised and adored be the most Holy Sacrament of the altar. Amen, said Fauchelevent, and mopped his forehead. In her lifetime Mother Crucifixion made converts. After her death she will perform miracles. What the dead wish must be done. She slept in her coffin for twenty years, by express permission of Pius VII. The dead must be obeyed: a worm of the earth on a tomb, a burial beneath the gallows, a sign for passers-by to spit, a body carried against a king's wish. Mother Crucifixion will be interred in the coffin in which she has slept for the last twenty years. It is a continuation of her slumber. Fauchelevent will nail that coffin and reject the undertaker's box. The four Mother Precentors will assist in lowering it. Where? Into the vault under the altar. Fauchelevent started. But it is forbidden. Forbidden by men, enjoined by God. What if it became known? We have confidence in you. Oh, I am a stone in your walls. The chapter has decided. Think, if she were to work miracles here. Miracles issue from tombs.

Fauchelevent tried the agent of the sanitary commission, the commissary of police, the inspector from the Prefecture. Each name was answered with a saint, a German king, or a Latin device, and with Amen whenever he heard Latin. Then the prioress, whose reservoir was overfull after the barrier of silence, rose and let the dam break: Bernard on one side, Benoit on the other, and the sanitary agent opposite the cross. The state, the road commissioners, the public undertaker, what do we know of all that? We have not even the right to give our dust to Jesus Christ. Your sanitary department is a revolutionary invention. God subordinated to the commissary of police: such is the age. Silence, Fauvent. He was ill at ease under this shower bath. Is it settled? It is settled. Between eleven o'clock and midnight he will come with the iron bar. There will be in the chapel only the four Mother Precentors, Mother Ascension, and himself. The sister at the post will not turn round. He will remove his bell. The doctor for the dead will pay his visit at four o'clock. A lever at least six feet long will be required. He has his heap of old iron at the bottom of the garden. Thus all has been arranged? No. What else remains? The empty coffin remains. Empty, the bearers will feel that there is nothing in it. Fauchelevent improvised: I will put earth in the coffin. Earth, that is the same thing as man. The prioress's face grew serene. As he was on the point of passing out, she raised her voice gently. I am pleased with you, Father Fauvent. Bring your brother to me tomorrow, after the burial, and tell him to fetch his daughter.