"Who spreads the pall over it?"
"I do."
"Are you alone?"
"Not another man, except the police doctor, can enter the dead-room. That is even written on the wall."
"Could you hide me in that room to-night when every one is asleep?"
"No. But I could hide you in a small, dark nook which opens on the dead-room, where I keep my tools to use for burials, and of which I have the key."
"At what time will the hearse come for the coffin to-morrow?"
"About three o'clock in the afternoon.
The burial will take place at the Vaugirard cemetery a little before nightfall. It is not very near."
"I will remain concealed in your tool-closet all night and all the morning.
And how about food?
I shall be hungry."
"I will bring you something."
"You can come and nail me up in the coffin at two o'clock."
Fauchelevent recoiled and cracked his finger-joints.
"But that is impossible!"
"Bah!
Impossible to take a hammer and drive some nails in a plank?"
What seemed unprecedented to Fauchelevent was, we repeat, a simple matter to Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean had been in worse straits than this.