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‘The nun is dead,’ said he. ‘There is the knell.’
And he made a sign to Jean Valjean to listen.
The bell struck a second time.
‘It is the knell, Monsieur Madeleine. The bell will con-
tinue to strike once a minute for twenty-four hours, until
the body is taken from the church.—You see, they play. At
recreation hours it suffices to have a ball roll aside, to send
them all hither, in spite of prohibitions, to hunt and rum-
mage for it all about here. Those cherubs are devils.’
‘Who?’ asked Jean Valjean.
‘The little girls. You would be very quickly discovered.
They would shriek: ‘Oh! a man!’ There is no danger to-day.
There will be no recreation hour. The day will be entirely
devoted to prayers. You hear the bell. As I told you, a stroke
each minute. It is the death knell.’
‘I understand, Father Fauchelevent. There are pupils.’
And Jean Valjean thought to himself:—
‘Here is Cosette’s education already provided.’
Fauchelevent exclaimed:—
‘Pardine! There are little girls indeed! And they would
bawl around you! And they would rush off! To be a man
here is to have the plague. You see how they fasten a bell to
my paw as though I were a wild beast.’
Jean Valjean fell into more and more profound thought.—
‘This convent would be our salvation,’ he murmured.
Then he raised his voice:—
‘Yes, the difficulty is to remain here.’
‘No,’ said Fauchelevent, ‘the difficulty is to get out.’
Jean Valjean felt the blood rush back to his heart.