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‘What house is this?’
‘Come, you know well enough.’
‘But I do not.’
‘Not when you got me the place here as gardener?’
‘Answer me as though I knew nothing.’
‘Well, then, this is the Petit-Picpus convent.’
Memories recurred to Jean Valjean. Chance, that is to say,
Providence, had cast him into precisely that convent in the
Quartier Saint-Antoine where old Fauchelevent, crippled by
the fall from his cart, had been admitted on his recommen-
dation two years previously. He repeated, as though talking
to himself:—
‘The Petit-Picpus convent.’
‘Exactly,’ returned old Fauchelevent. ‘But to come to the
point, how the deuce did you manage to get in here, you, Fa-
ther Madeleine? No matter if you are a saint; you are a man
as well, and no man enters here.’
‘You certainly are here.’
‘There is no one but me.’
‘Still,’ said Jean Valjean, ‘I must stay here.’
‘Ah, good God!’ cried Fauchelevent.
Jean Valjean drew near to the old man, and said to him
in a grave voice:—
‘Father Fauchelevent, I saved your life.’
‘I was the first to recall it,’ returned Fauchelevent.
‘Well, you can do to-day for me that which I did for you
in the olden days.’
Fauchelevent took in his aged, trembling, and wrinkled
hands Jean Valjean’s two robust hands, and stood for sev-