1494 Les Miserables
subterranean hollow lined with rock-work which lay near
the Rue de Babylone and which had formerly served the
chief-justice as a grotto; for at the epoch of follies and ‘Little
Houses’ no love was without a grotto.
In the door opening on the Rue de Babylone, there was
a box destined for the reception of letters and papers; only,
as the three inhabitants of the pavilion in the Rue Plumet
received neither papers nor letters, the entire usefulness of
that box, formerly the go-between of a love affair, and the
confidant of a love-lorn lawyer, was now limited to the tax-
collector’s notices, and the summons of the guard. For M.
Fauchelevent, independent gentleman, belonged to the na-
tional guard; he had not been able to escape through the
fine meshes of the census of 1831. The municipal informa-
tion collected at that time had even reached the convent
of the Petit-Picpus, a sort of impenetrable and holy cloud,
whence Jean Valjean had emerged in venerable guise, and,
consequently, worthy of mounting guard in the eyes of the
townhall.
Three or four times a year, Jean Valjean donned his uni-
form and mounted guard; he did this willingly, however;
it was a correct disguise which mixed him with every one,
and yet left him solitary. Jean Valjean had just attained his
sixtieth birthday, the age of legal exemption; but he did not
appear to be over fifty; moreover, he had no desire to escape
his sergeant-major nor to quibble with Comte de Lobau; he
possessed no civil status, he was concealing his name, he
was concealing his identity, so he concealed his age, he con-
cealed everything; and, as we have just said, he willingly did