Just as Fauchelevent opened his mouth to explain the words which he had uttered, a bell emitted one stroke.
"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 continue 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 rummage 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."