One word did not wait for the next, the old man spoke with a rustic volubility in which there was nothing alarming; and it was all said with a mixture of stupefaction and simple kindness.
"Who are you, and what is this house?" Jean Valjean asked.
"Oh, Lord, that is too strong!" the old man exclaimed. "Why, did you not get me the situation, and in this house too? What, don't you recognize me?"
"No," said Jean Valjean; "and how is it that you know me?"
He turned; a moonbeam played on his face, and Jean Valjean recognized old Fauchelevent.
"Ah!" he said, "it is you? Oh, now I recognize you."
"That is lucky," the old man said reproachfully.
"And what are you doing here?" Jean Valjean asked.
Old Fauchelevent really held in his hand at the moment when Jean Valjean accosted him a piece of matting, which he was engaged in spreading over the melon-frame. He had laid a good many pieces during the hour he had been in the garden, and it was this operation that produced the peculiar movements which Jean Valjean had noticed from the shed. He continued,--
"I said to myself, there is a bright moon and it is going to freeze, so I had better put these great-coats on my melons." And he added, as he looked at Jean Valjean with a grin, "You should have done the same. But how have you got here?"
Jean Valjean, feeling himself known by this man, at least under the name of Madeleine, only advanced cautiously. He multiplied his questions, and curiously enough they changed parts,--he, the intruder, became the questioner.
"And what is that bell you have on your knee?"
"That?" Fauchelevent said; "it is that they may avoid me."
Old Fauchelevent gave an inimitable wink.
"Oh, Lord, they are only women in this house, and lots of girls. It seems that I should be dangerous to meet, and so the bell warns them; when I come they go."
"Why, you got me the gardener's place here."
"Well, it is the Convent of the Little Picpus, then."
Jean Valjean's recollections returned to him. Chance, that is to say, Providence, had brought him to the very convent in the Quartier St. Antoine where Fauchelevent after his accident had been engaged on his recommendation two years back. He repeated, as if speaking to himself,--
"But come, tell me," Fauchelevent continued, "how the deuce did you get in here, Father Madeleine? For though you are a saint, you are a man, and no men are admitted here."