Old Fauchelevent really held in his hand at the moment when Jean Valjean accosted him a piece of matting, which he was engaged in spreading over the melon-frame. He had laid a good many pieces during the hour he had been in the garden, and it was this operation that produced the peculiar movements which Jean Valjean had noticed from the shed. He continued,-- "I said to myself, there is a bright moon and it is going to freeze, so I had better put these great-coats on my melons." And he added, as he looked at Jean Valjean with a grin, "You should have done the same. But how have you got here?" Jean Valjean, feeling himself known by this man, at least under the name of Madeleine, only advanced cautiously. He multiplied his questions, and curiously enough they changed parts,--he, the intruder, became the questioner. "And what is that bell you have on your knee?" "That?" Fauchelevent said; "it is that they may avoid me." "What on earth do you mean?" Old Fauchelevent gave an inimitable wink. "Oh, Lord, they are only women in this house, and lots of girls. It seems that I should be dangerous to meet, and so the bell warns them; when I come they go." "What is this house?" "Oh, nonsense, you know." "Indeed I do not." "Why, you got me the gardener's place here." "Answer me as if I knew nothing." "Well, it is the Convent of the Little Picpus, then." Jean Valjean's recollections returned to him. Chance, that is to say, Providence, had brought him to the very convent in the Quartier St. Antoine where Fauchelevent after his accident had been engaged on his recommendation two years back. He repeated, as if speaking to himself,-- "'Little Picpus'!" "But come, tell me," Fauchelevent continued, "how the deuce did you get in here, Father Madeleine? For though you are a saint, you are a man, and no men are admitted here." "Why, you are!" "Well, only I." "And yet," Jean Valjean continued, "I must remain." "Oh, Lord!" Fauchelevent exclaimed. Jean Valjean walked up to the gardener and said in a grave voice,-- "Fauchelevent, I saved your life." "I was the first to remember it," Fauchelevent answered. "Well, you can do for me to-day what I did for you formerly." Fauchelevent took Jean Valjean's muscular hands in his old wrinkled and trembling hands, and for some seconds seemed as if unable to speak; at length he exclaimed,-- "Oh, it would be a blessing from Heaven if I could repay you a slight portion! Save your life! M. Madeleine, you can dispose of an old man as you please." An admirable joy had transfigured the aged gardener, and his face seemed radiant. "What do you wish me to do?" he continued. "I will explain. Have you a room?" "I have a cottage behind the ruins of the old convent, in a corner which no one visits, with three rooms." "Good," said Jean Valjean; "now I will ask two things of you." "What are they, M. le Maire?"