The singing of angels that Jean Valjean had heard in the night was the nuns singing their early morning office. The wide room he had glimpsed in the dark was the chapel, and the ghostly figure lying face down on the stone was a nun making the reparation. The bell that had so startled him was the gardener’s bell on Old Fauchelevent’s knee.
Once Cosette was in bed, the two men lay down on bundles of straw, but neither of them slept. Jean Valjean knew that if he went back into Paris, he and the child were finished. For him this convent was at once the most dangerous place and the safest. No man was allowed in, so if he were found he would go straight from here to prison; but if he could be accepted, no one would ever come looking for him here.
Fauchelevent could make nothing of it. Why Monsieur Madeleine was here, how he had got over that wall with a child in his arms, who the child was. He was certain of only one thing. This man saved my life.