He tumbled rather than climbed into the grave, flung himself on the head of the coffin and cried:--
"Are you there?"
Silence in the coffin.
Fauchelevent, hardly able to draw his breath for trembling, seized his cold chisel and his hammer, and pried up the coffin lid.
Jean Valjean's face appeared in the twilight; it was pale and his eyes were closed.
Fauchelevent's hair rose upright on his head, he sprang to his feet, then fell back against the side of the grave, ready to swoon on the coffin.
He stared at Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean lay there pallid and motionless.
Fauchelevent murmured in a voice as faint as a sigh:--
"He is dead!"
And, drawing himself up, and folding his arms with such violence that his clenched fists came in contact with his shoulders, he cried:--
"And this is the way I save his life!"
Then the poor man fell to sobbing.
He soliloquized the while, for it is an error to suppose that the soliloquy is unnatural. Powerful emotion often talks aloud.
"It is Father Mestienne's fault.
Why did that fool die?
What need was there for him to give up the ghost at the very moment when no one was expecting it?
It is he who has killed M. Madeleine. Father Madeleine!
He is in the coffin.
It is quite handy. All is over.