Who was concerned, after all?
A convict and a woman of the town.
That is why he had a very simple funeral for Fantine, and reduced it to that strictly necessary form known as the pauper's grave.
So Fantine was buried in the free corner of the cemetery which belongs to anybody and everybody, and where the poor are lost.
Fortunately, God knows where to find the soul again. Fantine was laid in the shade, among the first bones that came to hand; she was subjected to the promiscuousness of ashes. She was thrown into the public grave.
Her grave resembled her bed.
[The end of Volume I. "Fantine"]
BOOK FIRST.-WATERLOO
CHAPTER I
WHAT IS MET WITH ON THE WAY FROM NIVELLES
year (1861), on a beautiful May morning, a traveller, the personwho is telling this story, was coming from Nivelles, and directinghis course towards La Hulpe. He was on foot. He was pursuinga broad paved road, which undulated between two rows of trees,over the hills which succeed each other, raise the road and let itfall again, and produce something in the nature of enormous waves.
He had passed Lillois and Bois-Seigneur-Isaac. In the west heperceived the slate-roofed tower of Braine-l'Alleud, which hasthe form of a reversed vase. He had just left behind a wood uponan eminence; and at the angle of the cross-road, by the sideof a sort of mouldy gibbet bearing the inscription AncientBarrier No. 4, a public house, bearing on its front this sign: At the Four Winds (Aux Quatre Vents). Echabeau, Private Cafe.
A quarter of a league further on, he arrived at the bottom of alittle valley, where there is water which passes beneath an archmade through the embankment of the road. The clump of sparselyplanted but very green trees, which fills the valley on one side ofthe road, is dispersed over the meadows on the other, and disappearsgracefully and as in order in the direction of Braine-l'Alleud.
On the right, close to the road, was an inn, with a four-wheeled cartat the door, a large bundle of hop-poles, a plough, a heap of driedbrushwood near a flourishing hedge, lime smoking in a square hole,and a ladder suspended along an old penthouse with straw partitions. A young girl was weeding in a field, where a huge yellow poster,probably of some outside spectacle, such as a parish festival,was fluttering in the wind. At one corner of the inn, beside a poolin which a flotilla of ducks was navigating, a badly paved path plungedinto the bushes. The wayfarer struck into this.
After traversing a hundred paces, skirting a wall of thefifteenth century, surmounted by a pointed gable, with bricks setin contrast, he found himself before a large door of arched stone,with a rectilinear impost, in the sombre style of Louis XIV., flankedby two flat medallions. A severe facade rose above this door;a wall, perpendicular to the facade, almost touched the door,and flanked it with an abrupt right angle. In the meadowbefore the door lay three harrows, through which, in disorder,grew all the flowers of May. The door was closed. The two decrepitleaves which barred it were ornamented with an old rusty knocker.
The sun was charming; the branches had that soft shivering of May,which seems to proceed rather from the nests than from the wind. A brave little bird, probably a lover, was carolling in a distractedmanner in a large tree.
The wayfarer bent over and examined a rather large circular excavation,resembling the hollow of a sphere, in the stone on the left,at the foot of the pier of the door.
At this moment the leaves of the door parted, and a peasantwoman emerged.