1.C.3.5. THE LITTLE ONE ALL ALONE
As the Thenardier hostelry was in that part of the village
which is near the church, it was to the spring in the forest in
the direction of Chelles that Cosette was obliged to go for her
water.
She did not glance at the display of a single other merchant.
So long as she was in Boulanger Lane and in the neighborhood
of the church, the lighted stalls illuminated the road; but soon
the last light from the last stall vanished. The poor child
found herself in the dark. She plunged into it. Only, as a
certain emotion overcame her, she made as much motion as
possible with the handle of the bucket as she walked along.
This made a noise which afforded her company.
The further she went, the denser the darkness became.
There was no one in the streets. However, she did encounter
a woman, who turned around on seeing her, and stood still,
muttering between her teeth: "Where can that child be going?
Is it a werewolf child?" Then the woman recognized Cosette.
"Well," said she, "it's the Lark!"
In this manner Cosette traversed the labyrinth of tortuous
and deserted streets which terminate in the village of Montfermeil
on the side of Chelles. So long as she had the houses or
even the walls only on both sides of her path, she proceeded
with tolerable boldness. From time to time she caught the
flicker of a candle through the crack of a shutter— this was
light and life; there were people there, and it reassured her.
But in proportion as she advanced, her pace slackened mechanically,
as it were. When she had passed the corner of the last
house, Cosette paused. It had been hard to advance further
than the last stall; it became impossible to proceed further
than the last house. She set her bucket on the ground, thrust
her hand into her hair, and began slowly to scratch her head,—
a gesture peculiar to children when terrified and undecided
what to do. It was no longer Montfermeil; it was the open
fields. Black and desert space was before her. She gazed in
despair at that darkness, where there was no longer any one,
where there were beasts, where there were spectres, possibly.
She took a good look, and heard the beasts walking on the
grass, and she distinctly saw spectres moving in the trees.
Then she seized her bucket again; fear had lent her audacity.
"Bah!" said she; "I will tell him that there was no more
water!" And she resolutely re-entered Montfermeil.
Hardly had she gone a hundred paces when she paused and
began to scratch her head again. Now it was the Thenardier
who appeared to her, with her hideous, hyena mouth, and
wrath flashing in her eyes. The child cast a melancholy glance
before her and behind her. What was she to do? What was
to become of her? Where was she to go? In front of her was
the spectre of the Thenardier; behind her all the phantoms
of the night and of the forest. It was before the Thenardier
that she recoiled. She resumed her path to the spring, and
began to run. She emerged from the village, she entered the
forest at a run, no longer looking at or listening to anything.
She only paused in her course when her breath failed her; but
she did not halt in her advance. She went straight before her
in desperation.
As she ran she felt like crying.
The nocturnal quivering of the forest surrounded her completely.
She
no longer thought, she no longer saw. The immensity
of night was facing this tiny creature. On the one hand, all
shadow; on the other, an atom.
It was only seven or eight minutes' walk from the edge of
the woods to the spring. Cosette knew the way, through having
gone over it many times in daylight. Strange to say, she
did not get lost. A remnant of instinct guided her vaguely.
But she did not turn her eyes either to right or to left, for fear
of seeing things in the branches and in the brushwood. In this
manner she reached the spring.
It was a narrow, natural basin, hollowed out by the water in
a clayey soil, about two feet deep, surrounded with moss and
with those tall, crimped grasses which are called Henry IV.'s
frills, and paved with several large stones. A brook ran out
of it, with a tranquil little noise.
Cosette did not take time to breathe. It was very dark, but
she was in the habit of coming to this spring. She felt with
her left hand in the dark for a young oak which leaned over
the spring, and which usually served to support her, found one
of its branches, clung to it, bent down, and plunged the bucket
in the water. She was in a state of such violent excitement
that her strength was trebled. While thus bent over, she did
not notice that the pocket of her apron had emptied itself into
the spring. The fifteen-sou piece fell into the water. Cosette
neither saw nor heard it fall. She drew out the bucket nearly
full, and set it on the grass.
That done, she perceived that she was worn out with fatigue.
She would have liked to set out again at once, but the effort
required to fill the bucket had been such that she found it
impossible to take a step. She was forced to sit down. She
dropped on the grass, and remained crouching there.
She shut her eyes; then she opened them again, without
knowing why, but because she could not do otherwise. The
agitated water in the bucket beside her was describing circles
which resembled tin serpents.
Overhead the sky was covered with vast black clouds, which
were like masses of smoke. The tragic mask of shadow seemed
to bend vaguely over the child.
Jupiter was setting in the depths.
The child stared with bewildered eyes at this great star, with
which she was unfamiliar, and which terrified her. The planet
was, in fact, very near the horizon and was traversing a dense
layer of mist which imparted to it a horrible ruddy hue. The
mist, gloomily empurpled, magnified the star. One would
have called it a luminous wound.
A cold wind was blowing from the plain. The forest was
dark, not a leaf was moving; there were none of the vague,
fresh gleams of summertide. Great boughs uplifted themselves
in frightful wise. Slender and misshapen bushes whistled
in the clearings. The tall grasses undulated like eels
under the north wind. The nettles seemed to twist long arms
furnished with claws in search of prey. Some bits of dry
heather, tossed by the breeze, flew rapidly by, and had the air
of fleeing in terror before something which was coming after.
On all sides there were lugubrious stretches.
The darkness was bewildering. Man requires light. Whoever
buries himself in the opposite of day feels his heart contract.
When the eye sees black, the heart sees trouble. In an
eclipse in the night, in the sooty opacity, there is anxiety even
for the stoutest of hearts. No one walks alone in the forest at
night without trembling. Shadows and trees— two formidable
densities. A chimerical reality appears in the indistinct depths.
The inconceivable is outlined a few paces distant from you
with a spectral clearness. One beholds floating, either in
space or in one's own brain, one knows not what vague and intangible
thing, like the dreams of sleeping flowers. There are
fierce attitudes on the horizon. One inhales the effluvia of the
great black void. One is afraid to glance behind him, yet
desirous of doing so. The cavities of night, things grown haggard,
taciturn profiles which vanish when one advances, obscure
dishevelments, irritated tufts, livid pools, the lugubrious
reflected in the funereal, the sepulchral immensity of silence, unknown but
possible beings, bendings of mysterious branches,
alarming torsos of trees, long handfuls of quivering plants,—
against all this one has no protection. There is no hardihood
which does not shudder and which does not feel the vicinity
of anguish. One is conscious of something hideous, as though
one's soul were becoming amalgamated with the darkness.
This penetration of the shadows is indescribably sinister in the
case of a child.
Forests are apocalypses, and the beating of the wings of a
tiny soul produces a sound of agony beneath their monstrous
vault.
Without understanding her sensations, Cosette was conscious
that she was seized upon by that black enormity of
nature; it was no longer terror alone which was gaining possession
of her; it was something more terrible even than terror;
she shivered. There are no words to express the strangeness
of that shiver which chilled her to the very bottom of her
heart; her eye grew wild; she thought she felt that she should
not be able to refrain from returning there at the same hour
on the morrow.
Then, by a sort of instinct, she began to count aloud, one,
two, three, four, and so on up to ten, in order to escape from
that singular state which she did not understand, but which
terrified her, and, when she had finished, she began again; this
restored her to a true perception of the things about her. Her
hands, which she had wet in drawing the water, felt cold; she
rose; her terror, a natural and unconquerable terror, had returned:
she had but one thought now,— to flee at full speed
through the forest, across the fields to the houses, to the windows,
to the lighted candles. Her glance fell upon the water
which stood before her; such was the fright which the Thenardier
inspired in her, that she dared not flee without that bucket
of water: she seized the handle with both hands; she could
hardly lift the pail.
In this manner she advanced a dozen paces, but the bucket
was full; it was heavy; she was forced to set it on the ground
once more. She took breath for an instant, then lifted the
handle of the bucket again, and resumed her march, proceeding
a little further this time, but again she was obliged to
pause. After some seconds of repose she set out again. She
walked bent forward, with drooping head, like an old woman;
the weight of the bucket strained and stiffened her thin arms.
The iron handle completed the benumbing and freezing of her
wet and tiny hands; she was forced to halt from time to time,
and each time that she did so, the cold water which splashed
from the pail fell on her bare legs. This took place in the
depths of a forest, at night, in winter, far from all human
sight; she was a child of eight: no one but God saw that sad
thing at the moment.
And her mother, no doubt, alas!
For there are things that make the dead open their eyes in
their graves.
She panted with a sort of painful rattle; sobs contracted her
throat, but she dared not weep, so afraid was she of the Thenardier,
even at a distance: it was her custom to imagine the
Thenardier always present.
However, she could not make much headway in that manner,
and she went on very slowly. In spite of diminishing the
length of her stops, and of walking as long as possible between
them, she reflected with anguish that it would take her more
than an hour to return to Montfermeil in this manner, and
that the Thenardier would beat her. This anguish was mingled
with her terror at being alone in the woods at night; she
was worn out with fatigue, and had not yet emerged from the
forest. On arriving near an old chestnut-tree with which she
was acquainted, made a last halt, longer than the rest, in
order that she might get well rested; then she summoned up
all her strength, picked up her bucket again, and courageously
resumed her march, but the poor little desperate creature could
not refrain from crying, "O my God! my God!"
At that moment she suddenly became conscious that her
bucket no longer weighed anything at all: a hand, which
seemed to her enormous, had just seized the handle, and lifted
it vigorously. She raised her head. A large black form,
straight and erect, was walking beside her through the darkness;
it was a man who had come up behind her, and whose approach
she had not heard. This man, without uttering a word, had
seized the handle of the bucket which she was carrying.
There are instincts for all the encounters of life.
The child was not afraid.