Robinson and Grandma Henrouille move to Toulouse through a hurried scheme devised by Abbé Protiste and accepted by Ferdinand Bardamu. Intended to remove the pair from the danger and scandal left by the failed attempt on the old woman’s life, the relocation turns them into caretakers of a church crypt and its mummies. In Toulouse, the dead become a paying attraction, Grandma Henrouille finds a profitable occupation, and Robinson’s damaged eyes begin to improve; the move promises a new life, but its foundation is an improvised bargain in which fear, money, and the handling of the dead are inseparable.

Causes and Arrangement

Abbé Protiste visits Bardamu to discuss a plan that has been underway with Madame Henrouille: finding an inexpensive religious institution for Grandma Henrouille and Robinson together. The priest explains that Madame Henrouille had approached him after the incident, seeking help with the predicament the family had created. His manner suggests embarrassment at his part in the affair, but the scheme proceeds all the same. He and Bardamu are not acting from some untouched position outside the surrounding wrongdoing; as Bardamu puts it, the priest has joined them in the night.

A place among nuns in the provinces might have been possible, but it would take months to find a vacancy. The family is sick of waiting, and the immediate pressure is to get the two out of sight. Protiste therefore proposes a faster alternative: Bardamu is to persuade Robinson to go south, along with Grandma Henrouille. The proposal is explicitly advantageous to the intermediaries as well as the family. Bardamu is promised a commission, and he agrees to keep quiet and help, even while recognizing that the plan is wild and that Robinson has come close to murdering the old woman he is now expected to accompany.

The destination is Toulouse, where Robinson and Grandma Henrouille will have lodgings and work connected with a church crypt. Bardamu promises to visit once they are settled. To win Robinson over, he means to present the South as an excellent climate for damaged eyes and to describe the move as a stroke of luck. His own reasoning shifts with the promised payment: he is troubled by how soon Robinson must leave, but glad that he will at last make a real profit. A thousand francs is offered for his part in arranging the move, and he quickly persuades himself that the scheme is sensible.

The work is a mummy exhibition. The bodies lie in the cellar of a church, where visitors pay to see them; Protiste presents the enterprise as good business. Bardamu is almost persuaded by the priest’s confidence and even admits to a flicker of jealousy at a business that puts the dead to work. The relocation is thus less a rescue into a secure institution than a placement in an unusual commercial arrangement, devised to solve an urgent family problem and to reward those who arrange it.

Life in the Crypt

When Bardamu eventually sets out to see Robinson and the crypt, the move has already taken effect. At the Church of Sainte-Eponime, he learns from the young caretaker that she fills in for Grandma Henrouille at lunchtime and works for a dressmaker in the afternoon. Robinson is doing better: a specialist believes he may soon see well enough to go out alone. Grandma Henrouille, meanwhile, appears delighted with the vault and is making money there. Their lodging is less benign. Bedbugs keep the household awake, especially on stormy nights, and the occupants burn sulfur to deal with them.

The crypt contains twenty-six bodies, preserved after spending more than five hundred years in quicklime. The collection includes two women in bonnets, a hunchback, a giant, and a complete baby with lace around its dried neck and remnants of swaddling clothes. The corpses have passed through decay toward dust, but the display makes their preserved remains available to the living as both spectacle and source of income. Grandma Henrouille has gone from being a vulnerable old woman who herself once looked like one of the mummies to earning money by exhibiting them.

During the height of the summer season, Grandma Henrouille is present whenever a party of tourists arrives. She makes the mummies perform for the visitors and brings in a hundred francs a day. Her sales talk turns the remains into a guided attraction: she explains the quicklime preservation, points out the surviving skin and clothing, and emphasizes that the bodies are not indecent. Visitors are told that the baby was buried with its mother and that a tall man still has all his teeth. At the end of the tour, she taps the dried bodies so that they sound like drums, and invites visitors to touch them while warning them not to pull too hard because they are fragile.

Robinson’s part in the business is more limited. The stairs down to the cellar are treacherously narrow, and he does not often descend. Most of the time he stands at the entrance, gives tourists a little sales talk, and gets used to taking in a few specks of light. The division of labor places Grandma Henrouille among the mummies and Robinson at the threshold: she handles the exhibition directly, while he remains close to the entrance as his sight slowly improves.

Robinson’s Recovery and New Prospects

The move gives Robinson a change in circumstances, but not a clean restoration. When Protiste returns to Bardamu with news, he reports that Robinson’s eyes are considerably better and that the inflammation of his lids has stopped. By the time Bardamu visits Toulouse, a specialist expects that Robinson will soon be able to go out by himself. This is a concrete improvement in the condition that helped make him an object of the family’s plans, though Robinson’s recovery remains partial and dependent on the specialist’s assessment.

A marriage is also being arranged. Protiste tells Bardamu that Robinson is about to marry the daughter of the woman who sells candles in the church beside the burial vault. The caretaker introduces herself as Madelon. She is about twenty, works part-time in the crypt and for a dressmaker, and confirms that Robinson is improving. She is set on the projected marriage, while Bardamu privately doubts that she understands the extent of Robinson’s injuries: in his view, the damage reaches beyond his eyes to his nerves and morale. He does not warn her, and the conversation turns instead to the crypt and its occupants.

The caretaker says that Robinson speaks pleasantly of Bardamu. When Bardamu visits, he and Madelon talk about Robinson’s plans and the stories he has told her about America and the tropics. Bardamu has traveled with Robinson and has stories of his own, so he offers to tell her some. Their conversation carries them into an intimate encounter in the crypt, interrupted by the prospect of Grandma Henrouille returning from lunch. They climb back toward daylight by the steep, rickety staircase, which Bardamu notes. Robinson’s proposed marriage and Bardamu’s closeness with Madelon therefore emerge during the very visit meant to confirm that the relocation has settled his friend into a new life.

Profit, Spectacle, and the Dead

The financial terms of the move recur as the arrangement develops. When Protiste later visits Bardamu to divide the commission from the crypt, each receives fifteen hundred francs. Bardamu had expected the priest’s arrival less and treats his appearance as a welcome gift. The payment makes him indulgent and optimistic about Robinson’s plans. The increased sum also confirms that the relocation has not been a disinterested act of charity: Bardamu’s involvement brings him a continuing share in a business built around the crypt.

The enterprise makes the boundary between care and exploitation difficult to separate. Grandma Henrouille has a place to live and work, and Robinson’s eyes improve; at the same time, the scheme has been arranged in haste to remove them from a dangerous family situation, and Bardamu receives money for persuading his friend to accept it. The business also depends on presenting the dead as harmless and contented objects of curiosity. Madelon asks whether they look sad, but Bardamu observes that they cannot speak for themselves and that the claim that the dead are happy proves nothing. Grandma Henrouille’s performance is more openly physical: when enough dried skin remains, she clouts a mummy’s belly to make it go boom.

The Toulouse move therefore resolves one immediate crisis without escaping the conditions that produced it. A family’s fear of scandal becomes a church business; the old woman’s need for shelter becomes paid work among bodies; Robinson’s impaired sight becomes a sales pitch for the southern climate and, later, a practical limit on how far down the cellar stairs he can go. The crypt offers a livelihood and a prospect of marriage, but its carefully rehearsed talk and fee-paying visitors make the new beginning inseparable from the spectacle of death.