1.C.5.8. CONTINUATION OF THE ENIGMA
THE night wind had risen, which indicated that it must be
between one and two o'clock in the morning. Poor Cosette
said nothing. As she had seated herself beside him and leaned
her head against him, Jean Valjean had fancied that she was
asleep. He bent down and looked at her. Cosette's eyes were
wide open, and her thoughtful air pained Jean Valjean.
She was still trembling.
"Are you sleepy?" said Jean Valjean.
"I am very cold," she replied.
A moment later she resumed:—
"Is she still there?"
"Who?" said Jean Valjean.
"Madame Thenardier."
Jean Valjean had already forgotten the means which he had
employed to make Cosette keep silent.
"Ah!" said he, "she is gone. You need fear nothing further."
The
child sighed as though a load had been lifted from her
breast.
The ground was damp, the shed open on all sides, the breeze
grew more keen every instant. The goodman took off his coat
and wrapped it round Cosette.
"Are you less cold now?" said he.
"Oh, yes, father."
"Well, wait for me a moment. I will soon be back.'
He quitted the ruin and crept along the large building, seeking
a better shelter. He came across doors, but they were
closed. There were bars at all the windows of the ground
floor.
Just after he had turned the inner angle of the edifice, he
observed that he was coming to some arched windows, where
he perceived a light. He stood on tiptoe and peeped through
one of these windows. They all opened on a tolerably vast
hall, paved with large flagstones, cut up by arcades and pillars,
where only a tiny light and great shadows were visible. The
light came from a taper which was burning in one corner. The
apartment was deserted, and nothing was stirring in it. Nevertheless,
by dint of gazing intently he thought he perceived
on the ground something which appeared to be covered with a
winding-sheet, and which resembled a human form. This
form was lying face downward, flat on the pavement, with the
arms extended in the form of a cross, in the immobility of
death. One would have said, judging from a sort of serpent
which undulated over the floor, that this sinister form had a
rope round its neck.
The whole chamber was bathed in that mist of places which
are sparely illuminated, which adds to horror.
Jean Valjean often said afterwards, that, although many
funereal spectres had crossed his path in life, he had never
beheld anything more blood-curdling and terrible than that
enigmatical form accomplishing some inexplicable mystery in
that gloomy place, and beheld thus at night. It was alarming
to suppose that that thing was perhaps dead; and still more
alarming to think that it was perhaps alive.
He had the courage to plaster his face to the glass, and to
watch whether the thing would move. In spite of his remaining
thus what seemed to him a very long time, the outstretched
form made no movement. All at once he felt himself overpowered
by an inexpressible terror, and he fled. He began to run
towards the shed, not daring to look behind him. It seemed
to him, that if he turned his head, he should see that form following
him with great strides and waving its arms.
He reached the ruin all out of breath. His knees were giving
way beneath him; the perspiration was pouring from him.
Where was he? Who could ever have imagined anything
like that sort of sepulchre in the midst of Paris! What was
this strange house? An edifice full of nocturnal mystery, calling
to souls through the darkness with the voice of angels, and
when they came, offering them abruptly that terrible vision;
promising to open the radiant portals of heaven, and then
opening the horrible gates of the tomb! And it actually was
an edifice, a house, which bore a number on the street! It was
not a dream! He had to touch the stones to convince himself
that such was the fact.
Cold, anxiety, uneasiness, the emotions of the night, had
given him a genuine fever, and all these ideas were clashing
together in his brain.
He stepped up to Cosette. She was asleep.
CHAPTER VIII
THE ENIGMA BECOMES DOUBLY MYSTERIOUS
THE child had laid her head on a stone and fallen asleep.
He sat down beside her and began to think. Little by little,
as he gazed at her, he grew calm and regained possession of his
freedom of mind.
He clearly perceived this truth, the foundation of his life
henceforth, that so long as she was there, so long as he had
her near him, he should need nothing except for her, he should
fear nothing except for her. He was not even conscious that
he was very cold, since he had taken off his coat to cover her.
Nevertheless, athwart this revery into which he had fallen
he had heard for some time a peculiar noise. It was like the
tinkling of a bell. This sound proceeded from the garden. It
could be heard distinctly though faintly. It resembled the
faint, vague music produced by the bells of cattle at night in
the pastures.
This noise made Valjean turn round.
He looked and saw that there was some one in the garden.
A being resembling a man was walking amid the bell-glasses
of the melon beds, rising, stooping, halting, with regular movements,
as though he were dragging or spreading out something
on the ground. This person appeared to limp.
Jean Valjean shuddered with the continual tremor of the
unhappy. For them everything is hostile and suspicious.
They distrust the day because it enables people to see them,
and the night because it aids in surprising them. A little
while before he had shivered because the garden was deserted,
and now he shivered because there was some one there.
He fell back from chimerical terrors to real terrors. He said
to himself that Javert and the spies had, perhaps, not taken
their departure; that they had, no doubt, left people on the
watch in the street; that if this man should discover him in
the garden, he would cry out for help against thieves and
deliver him up. He took the sleeping Cosette gently in his
arms and carried her behind a heap of old furniture, which
was out of use, in the most remote corner of the shed. Cosette
did not stir.
From that point he scrutinized the appearance of the being
in the melon patch. The strange thing about it was, that the
sound of the bell followed each of this man's movements.
When the man approached, the sound approached; when the
man retreated, the sound retreated; if he made any hasty gesture,
a tremolo accompanied the gesture; when he halted, the
sound ceased. It appeared evident that the bell was attached
to that man; but what could that signify? Who was this man
who had a bell suspended about him like a ram or an ox?
As he put these questions to himself, he touched Cosette's
hands. They were icy cold.
"Ah! good God!" he cried.
He spoke to her in a low voice:—
"Cosette!"
She did not open her eyes.
He shook her vigorously.
She did not wake.
"Is she dead?" he said to himself, and sprang to his feet,
quivering from head to foot.
The most frightful thoughts rushed pell-mell through his
mind. There are moments when hideous surmises assail us
like a cohort of furies, and violently force the partitions of our
brains. When those we love are in question, our prudence invents
every sort of madness. He remembered that sleep in
the open air on a cold night may be fatal.
Cosette was pale, and had fallen at full length on the ground
at his feet, without a movement.
He listened to her breathing: she still breathed, but with a
respiration which seemed to him weak and on the point of
extinction.
How was he to warm her back to life? How was he to rouse
her? All that was not connected with this vanished from his
thoughts. He rushed wildly from the ruin.
It was absolutely necessary that Cosette should be in bed
and beside a fire in less than a quarter of an hour.