622 Les Miserables
But it was too late; the person was already in the thicket,
night had descended, and Boulatruelle had not been able
to catch up with him. Then he had adopted the course of
watching for him at the edge of the woods. ‘It was moon-
light.’ Two or three hours later, Boulatruelle had seen this
person emerge from the brushwood, carrying no longer the
coffer, but a shovel and pick. Boulatruelle had allowed the
person to pass, and had not dreamed of accosting him, be-
cause he said to himself that the other man was three times
as strong as he was, and armed with a pickaxe, and that he
would probably knock him over the head on recognizing
him, and on perceiving that he was recognized. Touching
effusion of two old comrades on meeting again. But the
shovel and pick had served as a ray of light to Boulatruelle;
he had hastened to the thicket in the morning, and had
found neither shovel nor pick. From this he had drawn the
inference that this person, once in the forest, had dug a hole
with his pick, buried the coffer, and reclosed the hole with
his shovel. Now, the coffer was too small to contain a body;
therefore it contained money. Hence his researches. Bou-
latruelle had explored, sounded, searched the entire forest
and the thicket, and had dug wherever the earth appeared
to him to have been recently turned up. In vain.
He had ‘ferreted out’ nothing. No one in Montfermeil
thought any more about it. There were only a few brave gos-
sips, who said, ‘You may be certain that the mender on the
Gagny road did not take all that trouble for nothing; he was
sure that the devil had come.’