It Is Not Necessary to Be Drunk in Order to Be Immortal — Les Misérables

On the following day, as the sun was declining, the very rare passers-by on the Boulevard du Maine pulled off their hats to an old-fashioned hearse, ornamented with skulls, cross-bones, and tears. This hearse contained a coffin covered with a white cloth over which spread a large black cross, like a huge corpse with drooping arms. A mourning-coach followed, with a priest in his surplice and a choir boy in his red cap. Two undertaker's men in gray walked on the right and the left. Behind it came an old man in the garments of a labourer, who limped along. The handle of a hammer, the blade of a cold chisel, and the antennae of a pair of pincers protruded from his pocket. The procession was going in the direction of the Vaugirard cemetery. That cemetery formed an exception among the cemeteries of Paris. The Bernardines had permission to be buried there in a corner apart, and at night. The gates closed at sundown. A grave-digger delayed after that moment needed his card, dropped into a letter-box in the porter's window, or paid a fine of fifteen francs. The cemetery was a faded enclosure, planted like an old-fashioned French garden. Pere-Lachaise if you please: to be buried there is equivalent to having furniture of mahogany. Vaugirard hinted at poverty. In the evening it was tragic there.

The sun had not yet set when the hearse with the white pall and the black cross entered the avenue. The lame man was Fauchelevent. The interment of Mother Crucifixion under the altar, the exit of Cosette, the introduction of Jean Valjean to the dead-room: all had been executed without difficulty. Fauchelevent limped along in a very contented frame of mind. His twin plots, the one with the nuns, the one with Madeleine, had succeeded to all appearance. Jean Valjean's composure was contagious. What remained to be done was a mere nothing. Within the last two years he had made Father Mestienne drunk at least ten times. He played with Father Mestienne. He did what he liked with him. At the moment when the convoy entered the avenue, Fauchelevent glanced cheerfully at the hearse and said half aloud, as he rubbed his big hands: Here's a fine farce. All at once the hearse halted at the gate. During the delay of the permission, a stranger came and placed himself behind the hearse, beside Fauchelevent. He was a sort of labouring man who wore a waistcoat with large pockets and carried a mattock under his arm. Who are you? The grave-digger. If a man could survive the blow of a cannon-ball full in the breast, he would make the same face that Fauchelevent made. Father Mestienne is the grave-digger. He was. He is dead. Fauchelevent had expected anything but this, that a grave-digger could die. By dint of excavating graves for other people, one hollows out one's own. After Napoleon, Louis XVIII. After Mestienne, Gribier. Peasant, my name is Gribier. He was a tall, thin, livid, utterly funereal man. He had the air of an unsuccessful doctor who had turned grave-digger.

Fauchelevent burst out laughing, and offered little Father Lenoir, a jug of red wine. I have been a student. I passed my fourth examination. I never drink. The hearse set out again. Fauchelevent limped more out of anxiety than from infirmity. He had to deal with a fine talker. People do not know each other until they have drunk together. Business first. Fauchelevent thought: I am lost. Peasant, I have seven small children who must be fed. As they must eat, I cannot drink. Their hunger is the enemy of my thirst. The hearse turned into the nuns' corner. Fauchelevent offered Argenteuil, and left in the dark who was to pay. Generally, Fauchelevent offered and Father Mestienne paid. The new man had been destined for literature, had reverses, and now cumulated: in the morning he wrote love letters at the Umbrella Market; in the evening he dug graves. A man cannot serve two mistresses. I must choose between the pen and the mattock. The mattock is ruining my hand. The hearse halted. One of the small front wheels had run up on a pile of earth, beyond which an open grave was visible. What a farce this is, repeated Fauchelevent in consternation.