3.V.1.10. DAWN
AT that moment, Cosette awoke.
Her chamber was narrow, neat, unobtrusive, with a long
sash-window, facing the East on the back court-yard of the
house.
Cosette knew nothing of what was going on in Paris. She
had not been there on the preceding evening, and she had
already retired to her chamber when Toussaint had said:
"It appears that there is a row."
Cosette had slept only a few hours, but soundly. She had
had sweet dreams, which possibly arose from the fact that
her little bed was very white. Some one, who was Marius,
had appeared to her in the light. She awoke with the sun
in her eyes, which, at first, produced on her the effect of being
a continuation of her dream. Her first thought on emerging
from this dream was a smiling one. Cosette felt herself
thoroughly reassured. Like Jean Valjean, she had, a few
hours previously, passed through that reaction of the soul
which absolutely will not hear of unhappiness. She began to
cherish hope, with all her might, without knowing why. Then
she felt a pang at her heart. It was three days since she had
seen Marius. But she said to herself that he must have
received her letter, that he knew where she was, and that he
was so clever that he would find means of reaching her. — And
that certainly to-day, and perhaps that very morning. — It was
broad daylight, but the rays of light were very horizontal;
she thought that it was very early, but that she must rise,
nevertheless, in order to receive Marius.
She felt that she could not live without Marius, and that,
consequently, that was sufficient and that Marius would come.
No objection was valid. All this was certain. It was monstrous
enough already to have suffered for three days. Marius
absent three days, this was horrible on the part of the
good God. Now, this cruel teasing from on high had been
gone through with. Marius was about to arrive, and he would
bring good news. Youth is made thus; it quickly dries its
eyes; it finds sorrow useless and does not accept it. Youth
is the smile of the future in the presence of an unknown
quantity, which is itself. It is natural to it to be happy. It
seems as though its respiration were made of hope.
Moreover, Cosette could not remember what Marius had
said to her on the subject of this absence which was to last
only one day, and what explanation of it he had given her.
Every one has noticed with what nimbleness a coin which one
has dropped on the ground rolls away and hides, and with
what art it renders itself undiscoverable. There are thoughts
which play us the same trick; they nestle away in a corner
of our brain; that is the end of them; they are lost; it is
impossible
to lay the memory on them. Cosette was somewhat
vexed at the useless little effort made by her memory. She
told herself, that it was very naughty and very wicked of her,
to have forgotten the words uttered by Marius.
She sprang out of bed and accomplished the two ablutions
of soul and body, her prayers and her toilet.
One may, in a case of exigency, introduce the reader into
a
nuptial chamber, not into a virginal chamber. Verse would
hardly venture it, prose must not.
It is the interior of a flower that is not yet unfolded,
it
is whiteness in the dark, it is the private cell of a closed
lily, which must not be gazed upon by man so long as the sun
has not gazed upon it. Woman in the bud is sacred. That
innocent bud which opens, that adorable half-nudity which is
afraid of itself, that white foot which takes refuge in a
slipper,
that throat which veils itself before a mirror as though a
mirror were an eye, that chemise which makes haste to rise
up and conceal the shoulder for a creaking bit of furniture or
a passing vehicle, those cords tied, those clasps fastened, those
laces drawn, those tremors, those shivers of cold and modesty,
that exquisite affright in every movement, that almost winged
uneasiness where there is no cause for alarm, the successive
phases of dressing, as charming as the clouds of dawn, — it
is not fitting that all this should be narrated, and it is too
much to have even called attention to it.
The eye of man must be more religious in the presence of
the rising of a young girl than in the presence of the rising
of a star. The possibility of hurting should inspire an
augmentation
of respect. The down on the peach, the bloom on
the plum, the radiated crystal of the snow, the wing of the
butterfly powdered with feathers, are coarse compared to that
chastity which does not even know that it is chaste. The
young girl is only the flash of a dream, and is not yet a statue.
Her bed-chamber is hidden in the sombre part of the ideal.
The indiscreet touch of a glance brutalizes this vague penumbra.
Here, contemplation is profanation.
We shall, therefore, show nothing of that sweet little
flutter
of Cosette's rising.
An oriental tale relates how the rose was made white by
God, but that Adam looked upon her when she was unfolding,
and she was ashamed and turned crimson. We are of the
number who fall speechless in the presence of young girls and
flowers, since we think them worthy of veneration.
Cosette dressed herself very hastily, combed and dressed
her hair, which was a very simple matter in those days, when
women did not swell out their curls and bands with cushions
and puffs, and did not put crinoline in their locks. Then she
opened the window and cast her eyes around her in every
direction, hoping to descry some bit of the street, an angle of
the house, an edge of pavement, so that she might be able to
watch for Marius there. But no view of the outside was to
be had. The back court was surrounded by tolerably high
walls, and the outlook was only on several gardens. Cosette
pronounced these gardens hideous: for the first time in her
life, she found flowers ugly. The smallest scrap of the gutter
of the street would have met her wishes better. She decided
to gaze at the sky, as though she thought that Marius might
come from that quarter.
All at once, she burst into tears. Not that this was
fickleness
of soul; but hopes cut in twain by dejection — that was
her case. She had a confused consciousness of something
horrible. Thoughts were rife in the air, in fact. She told
herself that she was not sure of anything, that to withdraw
herself from sight was to be lost; and the idea that Marius
could return to her from heaven appeared to her no longer
charming but mournful.
Then, as is the nature of these clouds, calm returned to
her,
and hope and a sort of unconscious smile, which yet indicated
trust in God.
Every one in the house was still asleep. A country-like
silence reigned. Not a shutter had been opened. The porter's
lodge was closed. Toussaint had not risen, and Cosette,
naturally,
thought that her father was asleep. She must have
suffered much, and she must have still been suffering greatly,
for she said to herself, that her father had been unkind; but
she counted on Marius. The eclipse of such a light was
decidedly impossible. Now and then, she heard sharp shocks
in the distance, and she said: "It is odd that people should be
opening and shutting their carriage gates so early." They
were the reports of the cannon battering the barricade.
A few feet below Cosette's window, in the ancient and
perfectly black cornice of the wall, there was a martin's nest;
the curve of this nest formed a little projection beyond the
cornice, so that from above it was possible to look into
this little paradise. The mother was there, spreading her
wings like a fan over her brood; the father fluttered about,
flew away, then came back, bearing in his beak food and
kisses. The dawning day gilded this happy thing, the great
law, "Multiply," lay there smiling and august, and that sweet
mystery unfolded in the glory of the morning. Cosette, with
her hair in the sunlight, her soul absorbed in chimeras,
illuminated
by love within and by the dawn without, bent over
mechanically, and almost without daring to avow to herself
that she was thinking at the same time of Marius, began to
gaze at these birds, at this family, at that male and female,
that mother and her little ones, with the profound trouble
which a nest produces on a virgin.