Les Misérables, Book 8: Cemeteries Take What Is Entrusted to Them, Chapter 3 summary

What happens

1. The prioress asks Fauchelevent to open the chapel vault and reveals that Mother Crucifixion wants burial beneath the altar.
2. Fauchelevent raises objections about officials, but the prioress defends the convent’s authority through religious examples.
3. He agrees to the secret burial, with Mother Ascension and the four Mother Precentors assisting him.
4. The prioress sets his arrival for eleven and orders him to remove his bell.
5. They resolve to fill the official coffin with earth so its weight conceals the absence of a body.
6. The prioress permits Fauchelevent to bring his brother and the brother’s daughter to her after the burial.

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