1.C.5.6. THE BEGINNING OF AN ENIGMA
JEAN VALJEAN found himself in a sort of garden which was
very vast and of singular aspect; one of those melancholy gardens
which seem made to be looked at in winter and at night.
This garden was oblong in shape, with an alley of large poplars
at the further end, tolerably tall forest trees in the corners, and
an unshaded space in the centre, where could be seen a very
large, solitary tree, then several fruit-trees, gnarled and bristling
like bushes, beds of vegetables, a melon patch, whose glass
frames sparkled in the moonlight, and an old well. Here and
there stood stone benches which seemed black with moss. The
alleys were bordered with gloomy and very erect little shrubs.
The grass had half taken possession of them, and a green
mould covered the rest.
Jean Valjean had beside him the building whose roof had
served him as a means of descent, a pile of fagots, and, behind
the fagots, directly against the wall, a stone statue, whose
mutilated face was no longer anything more than a shapeless
mask which loomed vaguely through the gloom.
The building was a sort of ruin, where dismantled chambers
were distinguishable, one of which, much encumbered, seemed
to serve as a shed.
The large building of the Rue Droit-Mur, which had a wing
on the Rue Petit-Picpus, turned two facades, at right angles,
towards this garden. These interior facades were even more
tragic than the exterior. All the windows were grated. Not
a gleam of light was visible at any one of them. The upper
story had scuttles like prisons. One of those facades cast its
shadow on the other, which fell over the garden like an immense
black pall.
No other house was visible. The bottom of the garden was
lost in mist and darkness. Nevertheless, walls could be confusedly
made out, which intersected as though there were more
cultivated land beyond, and the low roofs of the Rue Polonceau.
Nothing
more wild and solitary than this garden could be
imagined. There was no one in it, which was quite natural in
view of the hour; but it did not seem as though this spot were
made for any one to walk in, even in broad daylight.
Jean Valjean's first care had been to get hold of his shoes
and put them on again, then to step under the shed with
Cosette. A man who is fleeing never thinks himself sufficiently
hidden. The child, whose thoughts were still on the
Thenardier, shared his instinct for withdrawing from sight as
much as possible.
Cosette trembled and pressed close to him. They heard the
tumultuous noise of the patrol searching the blind alley and
the streets; the blows of their gun-stocks against the stones;
Javert's appeals to the police spies whom he had posted, and
his imprecations mingled with words which could not be distinguished.
At
the expiration of a quarter of an hour it seemed as
though that species of stormy roar were becoming more distant.
Jean Valjean held his breath.
He had laid his hand lightly on Cosette's mouth.
However, the solitude in which he stood was so strangely
calm, that this frightful uproar, close and furious as it was,
did not disturb him by so much as the shadow of a misgiving.
It seemed as though those walls had been built of the deaf
stones of which the Scriptures speak.
All at once, in the midst of this profound calm, a fresh
sound arose; a sound as celestial, divine, ineffable, ravishing,
as the other had been horrible. It was a hymn which issued
from the gloom, a dazzling burst of prayer and harmony in the
obscure and alarming silence of the night; women's voices, but
voices composed at one and the same time of the pure accents
of virgins and the innocent accents of children,— voices which
are not of the earth, and which resemble those that the newborn
infant still hears, and which the dying man hears already.
This song proceeded from the gloomy edifice which towered
above the garden. At the moment when the hubbub of demons
retreated, one would have said that a choir of angels was approaching
through the gloom.
Cosette and Jean Valjean fell on their knees.
They knew not what it was, they knew not where they were;
but both of them, the man and the child, the penitent and the
innocent, felt that they must kneel.
These voices had this strange characteristic, that they did
not prevent the building from seeming to be deserted. It was a
supernatural chant in an uninhabited house.
While these voices were singing, Jean Valjean thought of
nothing. He no longer beheld the night; he beheld a blue sky.
It seemed to him that he felt those wings which we all have
within us, unfolding.
The song died away. It may have lasted a long time. Jean
Valjean could not have told. Hours of ecstasy are never more
than a moment.
All fell silent again. There was no longer anything in the
street; there was nothing in the garden. That which had menaced,
that which had reassured him,— all had vanished. The
breeze swayed a few dry weeds on the crest of the wall, and
they gave out a faint, sweet, melancholy sound.