Jean Valjean held out his hand, which Father Fauchelevent seized with a touching peasant devotion.
"It is settled, Father Fauchelevent. All will go well."
"Providing that nothing is deranged," Fauchelevent thought; "suppose the affair was to have a terrible ending!"
The next day, as the son was setting, the few passers-by on the Boulevard de Maine took off their hats to an old-fashioned hearse, ornamented with death's-head, thigh-bones, and tears. In this hearse was a coffin covered with a white pall, on which lay an enormous black cross, like a tall dead woman with hanging arms. A draped carriage, in which could be noticed a priest in his surplice, and a chorister in his red skull-cap, followed. Two mutes in a gray uniform with black facings walked on the right and left of the hearse, while behind them came an old man in workman's garb, who halted. The procession proceeded toward the Vaugirard cemetery. Projecting from the man's pocket could be seen the handle of a hammer, the blade of a cold-chisel, and the double antennæ of a pair of pincers. This cemetery formed an exception to the others in Paris. It had its peculiar usages, just as it had a large gate and a side gate, which old people in the quarters, tenacious to old names, called the horseman's gate and the footman's gate. The Bernardo-Benedictines of the Little Picpus had obtained, as we have stated, permission to be buried there in a separate corner, and by night, because the cemetery had formerly belonged to their community. The grave-diggers, having thus an evening duty in summer and a night duty in winter, were subjected to special rules. The gates of Parisian cemeteries were closed at that period at sunset; and as this was a police measure, the Vaugirard cemetery was subjected to it like the rest. The two gates adjoined a pavilion, built by the architect Perronet, in which the porter lived, and they were inexorably closed at the moment when the sun disappeared behind the dome of the Invalides. If any grave-digger were detained at that moment in the cemetery, he had only one way to get out, his card, with which the undertaker's department supplied him. There was a species of letter-box in the shutter of the porter's window; the grave-digger threw his card into this box, the porter heard it fell, pulled the string, and the small gate opened. If the grave-digger had not his card he gave his name; the porter got up, recognized him, and opened the gate with his key; but in that case the grave-digger paid a fine of fifteen francs.