1.C.2.2. 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 cross-road 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 manoeuvres in the forest
ceased; and he resumed his regular occupation of road-mending;
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 Thenardier, 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 Thenardier. "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 Thenardier.
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 Thenardier
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 Thenardier:
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."