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Updated: May 20, 2025
"What is the meaning of this?" demanded Gribier. "The meaning of it is, that you dropped your card out of your pocket, that I found it on the ground after you were gone, that I have buried the corpse, that I have filled the grave, that I have done your work, that the porter will return your card to you, and that you will not have to pay fifteen francs. There you have it, conscript."
Fauchelevent, who was deadly pale, stared at this 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. "Ah!" said he, "what queer things do happen! Father Mestienne is dead, but long live little Father Lenoir! Do you know who little Father Lenoir is? He is a jug of red wine.
By dint of excavating graves for other people, one hollows out one's own. Fauchelevent stood there with his mouth wide open. He had hardly the strength to stammer: "But it is not possible!" "It is so." "But," he persisted feebly, "Father Mestienne is the grave-digger." "After Napoleon, Louis XVIII. After Mestienne, Gribier. Peasant, my name is Gribier."
"Thanks, villager!" exclaimed Gribier, radiant. "The next time I will pay for the drinks." An hour later, in the darkness of night, two men and a child presented themselves at No. 62 Rue Petit-Picpus. The elder of the men lifted the knocker and rapped. They were Fauchelevent, Jean Valjean, and Cosette.
The arrival of the grave-digger Gribier was not to be apprehended. That "conscript" was at home busily engaged in looking for his card, and at some difficulty in finding it in his lodgings, since it was in Fauchelevent's pocket. Without a card, he could not get back into the cemetery. Fauchelevent took the shovel, and Jean Valjean the pick-axe, and together they buried the empty coffin.
But Fauchelevent was in too great a hurry to terminate this adventure to take any notice of this sad side of his success. He entered and said: "I have brought you back your shovel and pick." Gribier gazed at him in stupefaction. "Is it you, peasant?" "And to-morrow morning you will find your card with the porter of the cemetery." And he laid the shovel and mattock on the floor.
Fauchelevent had slackened his pace. He limped more out of anxiety than from infirmity. The grave-digger walked on in front of him. Fauchelevent passed the unexpected Gribier once more in review. He was one of those men who, though very young, have the air of age, and who, though slender, are extremely strong. "Comrade!" cried Fauchelevent. The man turned round. "I am the convent grave-digger."
The whole of this adventure increased the importance of good, old Fauchelevent; he won a triple success; in the eyes of Jean Valjean, whom he had saved and sheltered; in those of grave-digger Gribier, who said to himself: "He spared me that fine"; with the convent, which, being enabled, thanks to him, to retain the coffin of Mother Crucifixion under the altar, eluded Caesar and satisfied God.
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