บทที่ บทที่ 92 · IN WHICH THE READER WILL PERUSE TWO VERSES, WHICH ARE OF THE

DEVIL’S COMPOSITION, POSSIBLY

Before proceeding further, it will be to the purpose to narrate in some

detail, a singular occurrence which took place at about the same epoch,

in Montfermeil, and which is not lacking in coincidence with certain

conjectures 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, because a

popular superstition in the vicinity of Paris is like an aloe in

Siberia. We are among those who respect everything which is in the

nature of a rare plant. Here, then, is the superstition of Montfermeil:

it is thought that the devil, from time immemorial, has selected the

forest as a hiding-place for his treasures. Goodwives affirm that it is

no 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 wooden

shoes, clad in trousers and a blouse of linen, and recognizable by the

fact, that, instead of a cap or hat, he has two immense horns on his

head. This ought, in fact, to render him recognizable. This man is

habitually engaged in digging a hole. There are three ways of profiting

by 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

black because it is nightfall; that he is not digging any hole

whatever, but is cutting grass for his cows, and that what had been

taken for horns is nothing but a dung-fork which he is carrying on his

back, and whose teeth, thanks to the perspective of evening, seemed to

spring from his head. The man returns home and dies within the week.

The second way is to watch him, to wait until he has dug his hole,

until he has filled it and has gone away; then to run with great speed

to the trench, to open it once more and to seize the “treasure” which

the black man has 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 look at him, and to flee at the best speed of one’s legs.

One then dies within the year.

As all three methods are attended with their special inconveniences,

the second, which at all events, presents some advantages, among others

that of possessing a treasure, if only for a month, is the one most

generally adopted. So bold men, who are tempted by every chance, have

quite frequently, as we are assured, opened the holes excavated by the

black man, and tried to rob the devil. The success of the operation

appears to be but moderate. At least, if the tradition is to be

believed, and in particular the two enigmatical lines in barbarous

Latin, which an evil Norman monk, a bit of a sorcerer, named Tryphon

has left on this subject. This Tryphon is buried at the Abbey of

Saint-Georges de Bocherville, near Rouen, and toads spawn on his grave.

Accordingly, enormous efforts are made. Such trenches are ordinarily

extremely deep; a man sweats, digs, toils all night—for it must be done

at 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 on

the “treasure,” what does he find? What is the devil’s treasure? A sou,

sometimes a crown-piece, a stone, a skeleton, a bleeding body,

sometimes a spectre folded in four like a sheet of paper in a

portfolio, sometimes nothing. This is what Tryphon’s verses seem to

announce to the indiscreet 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 with

bullets, sometimes an old pack of cards greasy and worn, which has

evidently served the devil. Tryphon does not record these two finds,

since Tryphon lived in the twelfth century, and since the devil does

not appear 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 one

possesses! and as for the powder in the horn, it possesses the property

of making your gun burst in your face.

Now, a very short time after the epoch when it seemed to the

prosecuting attorney that the liberated convict Jean Valjean during his

flight of several days had been prowling around Montfermeil, it was

remarked in that village that a certain old road-laborer, named

Boulatruelle, had “peculiar ways” in the forest. People thereabouts

thought they knew that this Boulatruelle had been in the galleys. He

was subjected to certain police supervision, and, as he could find work

nowhere, the administration employed him at reduced rates as a

road-mender on the crossroad from Gagny to Lagny.

This Boulatruelle was a man who was viewed with disfavor by the

inhabitants of the district as too respectful, too humble, too prompt

in removing his cap to every one, and trembling and smiling in the

presence of the gendarmes,—probably affiliated to robber bands, they

said; suspected of lying in ambush at verge of copses at nightfall. The

only thing 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-breaking

and care of the road at a very early hour, and to betaking himself to

the forest with his pickaxe. He was encountered towards evening in the

most deserted clearings, in the wildest thickets; and he had the

appearance of being in search of something, and sometimes he was

digging holes. The goodwives who passed took him at first for

Beelzebub; then they recognized Boulatruelle, and were not in the least

reassured thereby. These encounters seemed to cause Boulatruelle a

lively displeasure. It was evident that he sought to hide, and that

there was some 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

cunning enough to pocket Lucifer’s hoard.”

The Voltairians added, “Will Boulatruelle catch the devil, or will the

devil catch Boulatruelle?” The old women made a great many signs of the

cross.

In the meantime, Boulatruelle’s manœuvres in the forest ceased; and he

resumed his regular occupation of roadmending; and people gossiped of

something else.

Some persons, however, were still curious, surmising that in all this

there was probably no fabulous treasure of the legends, but some fine

windfall of a more serious and palpable sort than the devil’s

bank-bills, and that the road-mender had half discovered the secret.

The most “puzzled” were the schoolmaster and Thénardier, the proprietor

of the tavern, who was everybody’s friend, and had not disdained to

ally himself with Boulatruelle.

“He has been in the galleys,” said Thénardier. “Eh! Good God! no one

knows who has been there or will be there.”

One evening the schoolmaster affirmed that in former times the law

would have instituted an inquiry as to what Boulatruelle did in the

forest, and that the latter would have been forced to speak, and that

he would have been put to the torture in case of need, and that

Boulatruelle would not have resisted the water test, for example. “Let

us put him to the 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

combined with admirable art, and in masterly proportions, the thirst of

a gormandizer with the discretion of a judge. Nevertheless, by dint of

returning to the charge and of comparing and putting together the few

obscure words which he did allow to escape him, this is what Thénardier

and 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 and

pick of Father Six-Fours, the water-carrier, and would have thought no

more about it. But, on the evening of that day, he saw, without being

seen himself, as he was hidden by a large tree, “a person who did not

belong in those parts, and whom he, Boulatruelle, knew well,” directing

his steps towards the densest part of the wood. Translation by

Thénardier: _A comrade of the galleys_. Boulatruelle obstinately

refused to 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 that the idea of following that “person” had occurred to

him. But it was too late; the person was already in the thicket, night

had descended, and Boulatruelle had not been able to catch up with him.

Then he had adopted the course of watching for him at the edge of the

woods. “It was moonlight.” Two or three hours later, Boulatruelle had

seen this person emerge from the brushwood, carrying no longer the

coffer, but a shovel and pick. Boulatruelle had allowed the person to

pass, and had not dreamed of accosting him, because he said to himself

that the other man was three times as strong as he was, and armed with

a pickaxe, and that he would probably knock him over the head on

recognizing him, and on perceiving that he was recognized. Touching

effusion of two old comrades on meeting again. But the shovel and pick

had served as a ray of light to Boulatruelle; he had hastened to the

thicket in the morning, and had found neither shovel nor pick. From

this he had drawn the inference that this person, once in the forest,

had dug a hole with his pick, buried the coffer, and reclosed the hole

with his shovel. Now, the coffer was too small to contain a body;

therefore it contained money. Hence his researches. Boulatruelle had

explored, sounded, searched the entire forest and the thicket, and had

dug wherever the earth appeared to him to have been recently turned up.

In vain.

He had “ferreted out” nothing. No one in Montfermeil thought any more

about it. There were only a few brave gossips, who said, “You may be

certain that the mender on the Gagny road did not take all that trouble

for nothing; he was sure that the devil had come.”