by Victor Hugo
It was like the shadow of a man who might have been standing in the edge of the shrubbery, a few steps behind Cosette.
For a moment she was unable to speak, or cry, or call, or stir, or turn her head.
At last she summoned up all her courage and resolutely turned round.
There was nobody there.
She looked upon the ground. The shadow had disappeared.
She returned into the shrubbery, boldly hunted through the corners, went as far as the gate, and found nothing.
She felt her blood run cold. Was this also a hallucination? What! two days in succession? One hallucination may pass, but two hallucinations? What made her most anxious was that the shadow was certainly not a phantom. Phantoms never wear round hats.
The next day Jean Valjean returned. Cosette narrated to him what she thought she had heard and seen. She expected to be reassured, and that her father would shrug his shoulders and say: “You are a foolish little girl.”
Jean Valjean became anxious.
“It may be nothing,” said he to her.
He left her under some pretext and went into the garden, and she saw him examining the gate very closely.
In the night she awoke; now she was certain, and she distinctly heard somebody walking very near the steps under her window. She ran to her slide and opened it. There was in fact a man in the garden with a big club in his hand. Just as she was about to cry out, the moon lighted up the man’s face. It was her father!
She went back to bed, saying: “So he is really anxious!”
Jean Valjean passed that night in the garden and the two nights following. Cosette saw him through the hole in her shutter.
The third night the moon was smaller and rose later, it might have been one o‘clock in the morning, she heard a loud burst of laughter and her father’s voice calling her:
“Cosette!”
She sprang out of bed, threw on her dressing-gown, and opened her window.
Her father was below on the grass-plot.
“I woke you up to show you,” said he. “Look, here is your shadow in a round hat.” And he pointed to a shadow on the sward made by the moon, and which really bore a close resemblance to the appearance of a man in a round hat. It was a figure produced by a sheet-iron stove-pipe with a cap, which rose above a neighbouring roof.
Cosette also began to laugh, all her gloomy suppositions fell to the ground, and the next day, while breakfasting with her father, she made merry over the mysterious garden haunted by shadows of stove-pipes.
Jean Valjean became entirely calm again; as to Cosette, she did not notice very carefully whether the stove-pipe was really in the direction of the shadow which she had seen, or thought she saw, and whether the moon was in the same part of the sky. She made no question about the oddity of a stove-pipe which is afraid of being caught in the act, and which retires when you look at its shadow, for the shadow had disappeared when Cosette turned round, and Cosette had really believed that she was certain of that. Cosette was fully reassured. The demonstration appeared to her complete, and the idea that there could have been anybody walking in the garden that evening, or that night, no longer entered her head.
A few days afterwards, however, a new incident occurred.
2 (3)
ENRICHED BY THE COMMENTARIES OF TOUSSAINT
IN THE GARDEN, near the grated gate, on the street, there was a stone bench protected from the gaze of the curious by a hedge, but which, nevertheless, by an effort, the arm of a passer-by could reach through the grating and the hedge.
One evening in this same month of April, Jean Valjean had gone out; Cosette, after sunset, had sat down on this bench. The wind was freshening in the trees, Cosette was musing; a vague sadness was coming over her little by little, that invincible sadness which evening gives and which comes perhaps, who knows? from the mystery of the tomb half-opened at that hour.
Fantine was perhaps in that shadow.
Cosette rose, slowly made the round of the garden, walking in the grass which was wet with dew, and saying to herself through the kind of melancholy somnambulism in which she was enveloped: “One really needs wooden shoes for the garden at this hour. I shall catch cold.”
She returned to the bench.
Just as she was sitting down, she noticed in the place she had left a stone of considerable size which evidently was not there the moment before.
Cosette reflected upon this stone, asking herself what it meant. Suddenly, the idea that this stone did not come upon the bench of itself, that somebody had put it there, that an arm had passed through that grating, this idea came to her and made her afraid. It was a genuine fear this time; there was the stone. No doubt was possible, she did not touch it, fled without daring to look behind her, took refuge in the house, and immediately shut the glass-door of the stairs with shutter, bar, and bolt. She asked Toussaint:
“Has my father come in?”
“Not yet, mademoiselle.”
(We have noted once for all Toussaint’s stammering. Let us be permitted to indicate it no longer. We dislike the musical notation of an infirmity.)
Jean Valjean, a man given to thought and a night-walker, frequently did not return till quite late.
“Toussaint,” resumed Cosette, “you are careful in the evening to bar the shutters well, upon the garden at least, and to really put the little iron things into the little rings which fasten?”
“Oh! never fear, mademoiselle.”
Toussaint did not fail, and Cosette well knew it, but she could not help adding:
“Because it is so solitary about here!”
“For that matter,” said Toussaint, “that is true. We would be assassinated before we would have time to say Boo! And then, monsieur doesn’t sleep in the house. But don’t be afraid, mademoiselle, I fasten the windows like Bastilles. Lone women! I am sure it is enough to make us shudder! Just imagine it! to see men come into the room at night and say to you: Hush! and set themselves to cutting your throat. It isn’t so much the dying, people die, that is all right, we know very well that we must die, but it is the horror of having such people touch you. And then their knives, they must cut badly! O God!”
“Be still,” said Cosette. “Fasten everything well.”
Cosette, dismayed by the melodrama improvised by Toussaint, and perhaps also by the memory of the apparitions of the previous week which came back to her, did not even dare to say to her: “Go and look at the stone which somebody has laid on the bench!” for fear of opening the garden door again, and lest “the men” would come in. She had all the doors and windows carefully closed, made Toussaint go over the whole house from cellar to garret, shut herself up in her room, drew her bolts, looked under her bed, lay down, and slept badly. All night she saw the stone big as a mountain and full of caves.
At sunrise—the peculiarity of sunrise is to make us laugh at all our terrors of the night, and our laugh is always proportioned to the fear we have had—at sunrise Cosette, on waking, looked upon her fright as upon a nightmare, and said to herself: “What have I been dreaming about? This is like those steps which I thought I heard at night last week in the garden! It is like the shadow of the stove-pipe! And am I going to be a coward now!”
The sun, which shone through the cracks of her shutters, and made the damask curtains purple, reassured her to such an extent that it all vanished from her thoughts, even the stone.
“There was no stone on the bench, any more than there was a man with a round hat in the garden; I dreamed the stone as I did the rest.”
She dressed herself, went down to the garden, ran to the bench, and felt a cold sweat. The stone was there.
But this was only for a moment. What is fright by night is curiosity by day.
“Pshaw!” said she, “now let us see.”
She raised the stone, which was pretty large. There was something underneath which resembled a letter.
It was a white paper envelope. Cosette seized it; there was no address on the one side, no seal on the other.
Still the envelope, although open, was not empty. Papers could be seen in it.
Cosette examined it. There was no more fright, there was curiosity no more; there was a beginning of anxious interest.
Cosette took out of the envelope what it contained, a quire of paper, each page of which was numbered and contained a few lines written in a rather pretty hand-writing, thought Cosette, and very fine.
Cosette looked for a name, there was none; a signature, there was none. To whom was it addressed? to her probably, since a hand had placed the packet upon her seat. From whom did it come? An irresistible fascination took possession of her, she endeavoured to turn her eyes away from these leaves which trembled in her hand, she looked at the sky, the street, the acacias all steeped in light, some pigeons which were flying about a neighbouring roof, then all at once her eye eagerly sought the manuscript, and she said to herself that she must know what there was in it.
This is what she read:
3 (4)
A HEART UNDER A STONE
THE REDUCTION of the universe to a single being, the expansion of a single being even to God, this is love
Love is the angels’ greeting.
How sad is the soul when it is sad from love!
What a void is the absence of the being who alone fills the world! Oh! how true it is that the beloved being becomes God! One would conceive that God would be jealous if the Father of all had not evidently made creation for the soul, and the soul for love!
A glimpse of a smile under a white crape hat with a lilac coronet is enough, for the soul to enter into the palace of dreams.
God is behind all things, but all things hide God. Things are black, creatures are opaque. To love a being, is to render her transparent.ei
Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the posture of the body, the soul is on its knees.
Separated lovers deceive absence by a thousand chimerical things which still have their reality. They are prevented from seeing each other, they cannot write to each other; they find a multitude of mysterious means of correspondence. They commission the song of the birds, the perfume of flowers, the laughter of children, the light of the sun, the sighs of the wind, the beams of the stars, the whole creation. And why not? All the works of God were made to serve love. Love is powerful enough to charge all nature with its messages.
O Spring! thou art a letter which I write to her.
The future belongs still more to the heart than to the mind. To love is the only thing which can occupy and fill up eternity. The infinite requires the inexhaustible.
Love partakes of the soul itself. It is of the same nature. Like it, it is a divine spark; like it, it is incorruptible, indivisible, imperishable. It is a point of fire which is within us, which is immortal and infinite, which nothing can limit and which nothing can extinguish. We feel it burn even in the marrow of our bones, and we see it radiate even to the depths of the sky.
Becoming increasingly religious and mystical, but also alluding increasingly to his brief encounters with Cosette, Marius’s effusions continue for another four pages.
4 (5)
COSETTE AFTER THE LETTER
DURING THE READING, Cosette entered gradually into reverie. At the moment she raised her eyes from the last line of the last page, the handsome officer, it was his hour, passed triumphant before the grating. Cosette thought him hideous.
She began again to contemplate the letter. It was written in a ravishing hand-writing, thought Cosette; in the same hand, but with different inks, sometimes very black, sometimes pale, as ink is put into the ink-stand, and consequently on different days. It was then a thought which had poured itself out there, sigh by sigh, irregularly, without order, without choice, without aim, at hazard. Cosette had never read anything like it. This manuscript, in which she found still more clearness than obscurity, had the effect upon her of a half-opened sanctuary. Each of these mysterious lines was resplendent to her eyes, and flooded her heart with a strange light. The education which she had received had always spoken to her of the soul and never of love, almost like one who should speak of the ember and not of the flame. This manuscript of fifteen pages revealed to her suddenly and sweetly the whole of love, the sorrow, the destiny, the life, the eternity, the beginning, the end. It was like a hand which had opened and thrown suddenly upon her a handful of sunbeams. She felt in these few lines a passionate, ardent, generous, honest nature, a consecrated will, an immense sorrow and a boundless hope, an oppressed heart, a glad ecstasy. What was this manuscript? a letter. A letter with no address, no name, no date, no signature, intense and disinterested, an enigma composed of truths, a message of love made to be brought by an angel and read by a virgin, a rendezvous given beyond the earth, a love-letter from a phantom to a shade. He was a calm yet exhausted absent one, who seemed ready to take refuge in death, and who sent to the absent Her the secret of destiny, the key of life, love. It had been written with the foot in the grave and the finger in Heaven. These lines, fallen one by one upon the paper, were what might be called drops of soul.
Now these pages, from whom could they come? Who could have written them?
Cosette did not hesitate for a moment. One single man.
He!
Day had revived in her mind; all had appeared again. She felt a wonderful joy and deep anguish. It was he! he who wrote to her! he who was there! he whose arm had passed through that grating! While she was forgetting him, he had found her again! But had she forgotten him? No, never! She was mad to have thought so for a moment. She had always loved him, always adored him. The fire had been covered and had smouldered for a time, but she clearly saw it had only sunk in the deeper, and now it burst out anew and fired her whole being. This letter was like a spark dropped from that other soul into hers. She felt the conflagration rekindling. She was penetrated by every word of the manuscript: “Oh, yes!” said she, “how I recognise all this! This is what I had already read in his eyes.”
As she finished it for the third time, Lieutenant Théodule returned before the grating, and rattled his spurs on the pavement. Cosette mechanically raised her eyes. She thought him flat, stupid, silly, useless, conceited, odious, impertinent, and very ugly. The officer thought it his duty to smile. She turned away insulted and indignant. She would have been glad to have thrown something at his head.
She fled, went back to the house and shut herself up in her room to read over the manuscript again, to learn it by heart, and to muse. When she had read it well, she kissed it, and put it in her bosom.
It was done. Cosette had fallen back into the profound seraphic love. The abyss of Eden had reopened.
5 (6)
THE OLD ARE MADE TO GO OUT WHEN CONVENIENT
WHEN EVENING CAME, Jean Valjean went out; Cosette dressed herself. She arranged her hair in the manner which best became her, and she put on a dress the neck of which, as it had received one cut of the scissors too much, and as, by this slope, it allowed the turn of the neck to be seen, was, as young girls say, “a little immodest.” It was not the least in the world immodest, but it was prettier than otherwise. She did all this without knowing why.
Did she expect a visit? no.
At dusk, she went down to the garden. Toussaint was busy in her kitchen, which looked out upon the back-yard.
She began to walk under the branches, putting them aside with her hand from time to time, because there were some that were very low.
She thus reached the bench.
The stone was still there.
She sat down, and laid her soft white hand upon that stone as if she would caress it and thank it.
All at once, she had that indefinable impression which we feel, though we see nothing, when there is somebody standing behind us.
She turned her head and arose.
It was he.
He was bareheaded. He appeared pale and thin. She hardly discerned his black dress. The twilight dimmed his fine forehead, and covered his eyes with darkness. He had, under a vei
l of incomparable sweetness, something of death and of night. His face was lighted by the light of a dying day, and by the thought of a departing soul.
It seemed as if he was not yet a phantom, and was now no longer a man.
His hat was lying a few steps distant in the shrubbery.
Cosette, ready to faint, did not utter a cry. She drew back slowly, for she felt herself attracted forward. He did not stir. Through the sad and ineffable something which enwrapped him, she felt the look of his eyes, which she did not see.
Cosette, in retreating, encountered a tree, and leaned against it. But for this tree, she would have fallen.
Then she heard his voice, that voice which she had never really heard, hardly rising above the rustling of the leaves, and murmuring:
“Forgive me, I am here. My heart is bursting, I could not live as I was, I have come. Have you read what I placed there, on this bench? do you recognise me at all? do not be afraid of me. It is a long time now, do you remember the day when you looked upon me? it was at the Luxembourg Gardens, near the Gladiator. And the day when you passed before me? it was the 16th of June and the 2nd of July. It will soon be a year. For a very long time now, I have not seen you at all. I asked the chairkeeper, she told me that she saw you no more. You lived in the Rue de l‘Ouest, on the fourth floor front, in a new house, you see that I know! I followed you. What was I to do? And then you disappeared. I thought I saw you pass once when I was reading the papers under the arches of the Odéon. I ran. But no. It was a person who had a hat like yours. At night, I come here. Do not be afraid, nobody sees me. I come for a near look at your windows. I walk very softly that you may not hear, for perhaps you would be afraid. The other evening I was behind you, you turned round, I fled. Once I heard you sing. I was happy. Does it disturb you that I should hear you sing through the shutter? it can do you no harm. It cannot, can it? See, you are my angel, let me come sometimes; I believe I am going to die. If you but knew! I adore you! Pardon me, I am talking to you, I do not know what I am saying to you, perhaps I annoy you, do I annoy you?”
