Les misyrables, p.98
Les Misérables, page 98
CHAPTER II--IN WHICH THE READER WILL PERUSE TWO VERSES, WHICH ARE OF THEDEVIL'S COMPOSITION, POSSIBLY
Before proceeding further, it will be to the purpose to narrate in somedetail, a singular occurrence which took place at about the same epoch,in Montfermeil, and which is not lacking in coincidence with certainconjectures of the indictment.
There exists in the region of Montfermeil a very ancient superstition,which is all the more curious and all the more precious, becausea popular superstition in the vicinity of Paris is like an aloe inSiberia. We are among those who respect everything which is in thenature of a rare plant. Here, then, is the superstition of Montfermeil:it is thought that the devil, from time immemorial, has selected theforest as a hiding-place for his treasures. Goodwives affirm that it isno rarity to encounter at nightfall, in secluded nooks of the forest,a black man with the air of a carter or a wood-chopper, wearing woodenshoes, clad in trousers and a blouse of linen, and recognizable by thefact, that, instead of a cap or hat, he has two immense horns on hishead. This ought, in fact, to render him recognizable. This man ishabitually engaged in digging a hole. There are three ways of profitingby such an encounter. The first is to approach the man and speak to him.Then it is seen that the man is simply a peasant, that he appears blackbecause it is nightfall; that he is not digging any hole whatever, butis cutting grass for his cows, and that what had been taken for hornsis nothing but a dung-fork which he is carrying on his back, and whoseteeth, thanks to the perspective of evening, seemed to spring from hishead. The man returns home and dies within the week. The second way isto watch him, to wait until he has dug his hole, until he has filled itand has gone away; then to run with great speed to the trench, toopen it once more and to seize the "treasure" which the black manhas necessarily placed there. In this case one dies within the month.Finally, the last method is not to speak to the black man, not to lookat him, and to flee at the best speed of one's legs. One then dieswithin the year.
As all three methods are attended with their special inconveniences, thesecond, which at all events, presents some advantages, among others thatof possessing a treasure, if only for a month, is the one most generallyadopted. So bold men, who are tempted by every chance, have quitefrequently, as we are assured, opened the holes excavated by the blackman, and tried to rob the devil. The success of the operation appearsto be but moderate. At least, if the tradition is to be believed, and inparticular the two enigmatical lines in barbarous Latin, which anevil Norman monk, a bit of a sorcerer, named Tryphon has left onthis subject. This Tryphon is buried at the Abbey of Saint-Georges deBocherville, near Rouen, and toads spawn on his grave.
Accordingly, enormous efforts are made. Such trenches are ordinarilyextremely deep; a man sweats, digs, toils all night--for it must be doneat night; he wets his shirt, burns out his candle, breaks his mattock,and when he arrives at the bottom of the hole, when he lays his hand onthe "treasure," what does he find? What is the devil's treasure? A sou,sometimes a crown-piece, a stone, a skeleton, a bleeding body, sometimesa spectre folded in four like a sheet of paper in a portfolio,sometimes nothing. This is what Tryphon's verses seem to announce to theindiscreet and curious:--
"Fodit, et in fossa thesauros condit opaca, As, nummas, lapides, cadaver, simulacra, nihilque."
It seems that in our day there is sometimes found a powder-horn withbullets, sometimes an old pack of cards greasy and worn, which hasevidently served the devil. Tryphon does not record these two finds,since Tryphon lived in the twelfth century, and since the devil does notappear to have had the wit to invent powder before Roger Bacon's time,and cards before the time of Charles VI.
Moreover, if one plays at cards, one is sure to lose all that onepossesses! and as for the powder in the horn, it possesses the propertyof making your gun burst in your face.
Now, a very short time after the epoch when it seemed to the prosecutingattorney that the liberated convict Jean Valjean during his flight ofseveral days had been prowling around Montfermeil, it was remarked inthat village that a certain old road-laborer, named Boulatruelle, had"peculiar ways" in the forest. People thereabouts thought they knew thatthis Boulatruelle had been in the galleys. He was subjected tocertain police supervision, and, as he could find work nowhere, theadministration employed him at reduced rates as a road-mender on thecross-road from Gagny to Lagny.
This Boulatruelle was a man who was viewed with disfavor by theinhabitants of the district as too respectful, too humble, too prompt inremoving his cap to every one, and trembling and smiling in the presenceof the gendarmes,--probably affiliated to robber bands, they said;suspected of lying in ambush at verge of copses at nightfall. The onlything in his favor was that he was a drunkard.
This is what people thought they had noticed:--
Of late, Boulatruelle had taken to quitting his task of stone-breakingand care of the road at a very early hour, and to betaking himself tothe forest with his pickaxe. He was encountered towards evening inthe most deserted clearings, in the wildest thickets; and he had theappearance of being in search of something, and sometimes he was diggingholes. The goodwives who passed took him at first for Beelzebub; thenthey recognized Boulatruelle, and were not in the least reassuredthereby. These encounters seemed to cause Boulatruelle a livelydispleasure. It was evident that he sought to hide, and that there wassome mystery in what he was doing.
It was said in the village: "It is clear that the devil has appeared.Boulatruelle has seen him, and is on the search. In sooth, he is cunningenough to pocket Lucifer's hoard."
The Voltairians added, "Will Boulatruelle catch the devil, or will thedevil catch Boulatruelle?" The old women made a great many signs of thecross.
In the meantime, Boulatruelle's manouvres in the forest ceased; and heresumed his regular occupation of roadmending; and people gossiped ofsomething else.
Some persons, however, were still curious, surmising that in all thisthere was probably no fabulous treasure of the legends, but somefine windfall of a more serious and palpable sort than the devil'sbank-bills, and that the road-mender had half discovered the secret. Themost "puzzled" were the school-master and Thénardier, the proprietor ofthe tavern, who was everybody's friend, and had not disdained to allyhimself with Boulatruelle.
"He has been in the galleys," said Thénardier. "Eh! Good God! no oneknows who has been there or will be there."
One evening the schoolmaster affirmed that in former times the law wouldhave instituted an inquiry as to what Boulatruelle did in the forest,and that the latter would have been forced to speak, and that he wouldhave been put to the torture in case of need, and that Boulatruellewould not have resisted the water test, for example. "Let us put him tothe wine test," said Thénardier.
They made an effort, and got the old road-mender to drinking.Boulatruelle drank an enormous amount, but said very little. He combinedwith admirable art, and in masterly proportions, the thirst of agormandizer with the discretion of a judge. Nevertheless, by dint ofreturning to the charge and of comparing and putting together the fewobscure words which he did allow to escape him, this is what Thénardierand the schoolmaster imagined that they had made out:--
One morning, when Boulatruelle was on his way to his work, at daybreak,he had been surprised to see, at a nook of the forest in the underbrush,a shovel and a pickaxe, _concealed, as one might say_.
However, he might have supposed that they were probably the shovel andpick of Father Six-Fours, the water-carrier, and would have thought nomore about it. But, on the evening of that day, he saw, without beingseen himself, as he was hidden by a large tree, "a person who did notbelong in those parts, and whom he, Boulatruelle, knew well," directinghis steps towards the densest part of the wood. Translation byThénardier: _A comrade of the galleys_. Boulatruelle obstinately refusedto reveal his name. This person carried a package--something square,like a large box or a small trunk. Surprise on the part of Boulatruelle.However, it was only after the expiration of seven or eight minutes thatthe idea of following that "person" had occurred to him. But it was toolate; the person was already in the thicket, night had descended, andBoulatruelle had not been able to catch up with him. Then he hadadopted the course of watching for him at the edge of the woods. "It wasmoonlight." Two or three hours later, Boulatruelle had seen this personemerge from the brushwood, carrying no longer the coffer, but a shoveland pick. Boulatruelle had allowed the person to pass, and had notdreamed of accosting him, because he said to himself that the other manwas three times as strong as he was, and armed with a pickaxe, and thathe would probably knock him over the head on recognizing him, and onperceiving that he was recognized. Touching effusion of two old comradeson meeting again. But the shovel and pick had served as a ray of lightto Boulatruelle; he had hastened to the thicket in the morning, and hadfound neither shovel nor pick. From this he had drawn the inference thatthis person, once in the forest, had dug a hole with his pick, buriedthe coffer, and reclosed the hole with his shovel. Now, the coffer wastoo small to contain a body; therefore it contained money. Hence hisresearches. Boulatruelle had explored, sounded, searched the entireforest and the thicket, and had dug wherever the earth appeared to himto have been recently turned up. In vain.
He had "ferreted out" nothing. No one in Montfermeil thought any moreabout it. There were only a few brave gossips, who said, "You may becertain that the mender on the Gagny road did not take all that troublefor nothing; he was sure that the devil had come."
