“It will be easy enough for her to get out of here. I have my service door which opens on the courtyard. I knock. The porter opens; I have my vintage basket on my back, the child is in it, I go out. Father Fauchelevent goes out with his basket⁠—that is perfectly natural. You will tell the child to keep very quiet. She will be under the cover. I will leave her for whatever time is required with a good old friend, a fruit-seller whom I know in the Rue Chemin-Vert, who is deaf, and who has a little bed. I will shout in the fruit-seller’s ear, that she is a niece of mine, and that she is to keep her for me until tomorrow. Then the little one will reenter with you; for I will contrive to have you reenter. It must be done. But how will you manage to get out?”

Jean Valjean shook his head.

“No one must see me, the whole point lies there, Father Fauchelevent. Find some means of getting me out in a basket, under cover, like Cosette.”

Fauchelevent scratched the lobe of his ear with the middle finger of his left hand, a sign of serious embarrassment.