“A couple of steps from the barrier, a quarter of an hour from here. No. 87 Rue de Vaugirard.”
“You have just time to get out by taking to your heels at your best speed.”
“That is exactly so.”
“Once outside the gate, you gallop home, you get your card, you return, the cemetery porter admits you. As you have your card, there will be nothing to pay. And you will bury your corpse. I’ll watch it for you in the meantime, so that it shall not run away.”
“I am indebted to you for my life, peasant.”
“Decamp!” said Fauchelevent.
The gravedigger, overwhelmed with gratitude, shook his hand and set off on a run.
When the man had disappeared in the thicket, Fauchelevent listened until he heard his footsteps die away in the distance, then he leaned over the grave, and said in a low tone:—
“Father Madeleine!”
There was no reply.
Fauchelevent was seized with a shudder. He tumbled rather than climbed into the grave, flung himself on the head of the coffin and cried:—
“Are you there?”
Silence in the coffin.
Fauchelevent, hardly able to draw his breath for trembling, seized his cold chisel and his hammer, and pried up the coffin lid.