“But I do not.”

“Not when you got me the place here as gardener?”

“Answer me as though I knew nothing.”

“Well, then, this is the Petit-Picpus convent.”

Memories recurred to Jean Valjean. Chance, that is to say, Providence, had cast him into precisely that convent in the Quartier Saint-Antoine where old Fauchelevent, crippled by the fall from his cart, had been admitted on his recommendation two years previously. He repeated, as though talking to himself:⁠—

“The Petit-Picpus convent.”

“Exactly,” returned old Fauchelevent. “But to come to the point, how the deuce did you manage to get in here, you, Father Madeleine? No matter if you are a saint; you are a man as well, and no man enters here.”

“You certainly are here.”