er."
The prioress stared at him.
"Ah! you have a communication to make to me."
"A request."
"Very well, speak."
Goodman Fauchelevent, the ex-notary, belonged to the category of peasants who have assurance.
A certain clever ignorance constitutes a force; you do not distrust it, and you are caught by it. Fauchelevent had been a success during the something more than two years which he had passed in the convent.
Always solitary and busied about his gardening, he had nothing else to do than to indulge his curiosity.
As he was at a distance from all those veiled women passing to and fro, he saw before him only an agitation of shadows. By dint of attention and sharpness he had succeeded in clothing all those phantoms with flesh, and those corpses were alive for him. He was like a deaf man whose sight grows keener, and like a blind man whose hearing becomes more acute.
He had applied himself to riddling out the significance of the different peals, and he had succeeded, so that this taciturn and enigmatical cloister possessed no secrets for him; the sphinx babbled all her secrets in his ear. Fauchelevent knew all and concealed all; that constituted his art. The whole convent thought him stupid.
A great merit in religion. The vocal mothers made much of Fauchelevent.
He was a curious mute. He inspired confidence.