contagious. Fauchelevent no longer felt doubtful as to his success.

What remained to be done was a mere nothing. Within the last two years, he had made good Father Mestienne, a chubby-cheeked person, drunk at least ten times. He played with Father Mestienne. He did what he liked with him. He made him dance according to his whim. Mestienne’s head adjusted itself to the cap of Fauchelevent’s will. Fauchelevent’s confidence was perfect.

At the moment when the convoy entered the avenue leading to the cemetery, Fauchelevent glanced cheerfully at the hearse, and said half aloud, as he rubbed his big hands:⁠—

“Here’s a fine farce!”

All at once the hearse halted; it had reached the gate. The permission for interment must be exhibited. The undertaker’s man addressed himself to the porter of the cemetery. During this colloquy, which always is productive of a delay of from one to two minutes, someone, a stranger, came and placed himself behind the hearse, beside Fauchelevent. He was a sort of laboring man, who wore a waistcoat with large pockets and carried a mattock under his arm.

Fauchelevent surveyed this stranger.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

The man replied:⁠—

“The gravedigger.”

If a man could survive the blow of a cannonball full in the breast, he would make the same face that Fauchelevent made.

“The gravedigger?”

“Yes.”

“You?”

“I.”

“Father Mestienne is the gravedigger.”

“He was.”

“What! He was?”

“He is dead.”

Fauchelevent had expected anything but this, that a gravedigger could die. It is true, nevertheless, that gravediggers do die themselves. By dint of excavating graves for other people, one hollows out one’s own.

Fauchelevent stood there with his mouth wide open. He had hardly the strength to stammer:⁠—

“But it is not possible!”

“It is so.”

“But,” he persisted feebly, “Father Mestienne is the gravedigger.”

“After Napoleon, Louis XVIII. After Mestienne, Gribier. Peasant, my name is Gribier.”

Fauchelevent, who was deadly pale, stared at this Gribier.

He was a tall, thin, livid, utterly funereal man. He had the air of an unsuccessful doctor who had turned gravedigger.

Fauchelevent burst out laughing.

“Ah!” said he, “what queer things do happen! Father Mestienne is dead, but long live little Father Lenoir! Do you know who little Father Lenoir is? He is a jug of red wine. It is a jug of Surêne, morbigou! of real Paris Surêne? Ah! So old Mestienne is dead! I am sorry for it; he was a jolly fellow. But you are a jolly fellow, too. Are you not, comrade? We’ll go and have a drink together presently.”

The man replied:⁠—

“I have been a student. I passed my fourth examination. I never drink.”

The hearse had set out again, and was rolling up the grand alley of the cemetery.

Fauchelevent had slackened his pace. He limped more out of anxiety than from infirmity.

The gravedigger walked on in front of him.

Fauchelevent passed the unexpected Gribier once more in review.

He was one of those men who, though very young, have the air of age, and who, though slender, are extremely strong.

“Comrade!” cried Fauchelevent.

The man turned round.

“I am the convent gravedigger.”

“My colleague,” said the man.

Fauchelevent, who was illiterate but very sharp, understood that he had to deal with a formidable species of man, with a fine talker. He muttered:

“So Father Mestienne is dead.”

The man replied:⁠—

“Completely. The good God consulted his notebook which shows when the time is up. It was Father Mestienne’s turn. Father Mestienne died.”

Fauchelevent repeated mechanically: “The good God⁠—”

“The good God,” said the man authoritatively. “According to the philosophers, the Eternal Father; according to the Jacobins, the Supreme Being.”

“Shall we not make each other’s acquaintance?” stammered Fauchelevent.

“It is made. You are a peasant, I am a Parisian.”

“People do not know each other until they have drunk together. He who empties his glass empties his heart. You must come and have a drink with me. Such a thing cannot be refused.”

“Business first.”

Fauchelevent thought: “I am lost.”

They were only a few turns of the wheel distant from the small alley leading to the nuns’ corner.

The gravedigger resumed:⁠—

“Peasant, I have seven small children who must be fed. As they must eat, I cannot drink.”

And he added, with the satisfaction of a serious man who is turning a phrase well:⁠—

“Their hunger is the enemy of my thirst.”

The hearse skirted a clump of cypress-trees, quitted the grand alley, turned into a narrow one, entered the waste land, and plunged into a thicket. This indicated the immediate proximity of the place of sepulture. Fauchelevent slackened his pace, but he could not detain the hearse. Fortunately, the soil, which was light and wet with the winter rains, clogged the wheels and retarded its speed.

He approached the gravedigger.

“They have such a nice little Argenteuil wine,” murmured Fauchelevent.

“Villager,” retorted the man, “I ought not be a gravedigger. My father was a porter at the Prytaneum. 31 He destined me for literature. But he had reverses. He had losses on ’change. I was obliged to renounce the profession of author. But I am still a public writer.”

“So you are not a gravedigger, then?” returned Fauchelevent, clutching at this branch, feeble as it was.

“The one does not hinder the other. I cumulate.”

Fauchelevent did not understand this last word.

“Come have a drink,” said he.

Here a remark becomes necessary. Fauchelevent, whatever his anguish, offered a drink, but he did not explain himself on one point; who was to pay? Generally, Fauchelevent offered and Father Mestienne paid. An offer of a drink was the evident result of the novel situation created by the new gravedigger, and it was necessary to make this offer, but the old gardener left the proverbial quarter of an hour named after Rabelais in the dark, and that not unintentionally. As for himself, Fauchelevent did not wish to pay, troubled as he was.

The gravedigger went on with a superior smile:⁠—

“One must eat. I have accepted Father Mestienne’s reversion. One gets to be a philosopher when one has nearly completed his classes. To the labor of the hand I join the labor of the arm. I have my scrivener’s stall in the market of the Rue de Sèvres. You know? the Umbrella Market. All the cooks of the Red