Les Misérables
“I have waked you for the purpose of reassuring you,” said he; “look,
there is your shadow with the round hat.”
And he pointed out to her on the turf a shadow cast by the moon, and
which did indeed, bear considerable resemblance to the spectre of a man
wearing a round hat. It was the shadow produced by a chimney-pipe of
sheet iron, with a hood, which rose above a neighboring roof.
Cosette joined in his laughter, all her lugubrious suppositions were
allayed, and the next morning, as she was at breakfast with her father,
she made merry over the sinister garden haunted by the shadows of iron
chimney-pots.
Jean Valjean became quite tranquil once more; as for Cosette, she did
not pay much attention to the question whether the chimney-pot was
really in the direction of the shadow which she had seen, or thought
she had seen, and whether the moon had been in the same spot in the
sky.
She did not question herself as to the peculiarity of a chimney-pot
which is afraid of being caught in the act, and which retires when some
one looks at its shadow, for the shadow had taken the alarm when
Cosette had turned round, and Cosette had thought herself very sure of
this. Cosette’s serenity was fully restored. The proof appeared to her
to be complete, and it quite vanished from her mind, whether there
could possibly be any one walking in the garden during the evening or
at night.
A few days later, however, a fresh incident occurred.
CHAPTER III—ENRICHED WITH COMMENTARIES BY TOUSSAINT
In the garden, near the railing on the street, there was a stone bench,
screened from the eyes of the curious by a plantation of yoke-elms, but
which could, in case of necessity, be reached by an arm from the
outside, past the trees and the gate.
One evening during that same month of April, Jean Valjean had gone out;
Cosette had seated herself on this bench after sundown. The breeze was
blowing briskly in the trees, Cosette was meditating; an objectless
sadness was taking possession of her little by little, that invincible
sadness evoked by the evening, and which arises, perhaps, who knows,
from the mystery of the tomb which is ajar at that hour.
Perhaps Fantine was within that shadow.
Cosette rose, slowly made the tour of the garden, walking on the grass
drenched in dew, and saying to herself, through the species of
melancholy somnambulism in which she was plunged: “Really, one needs
wooden shoes for the garden at this hour. One takes cold.”
She returned to the bench.
As she was about to resume her seat there, she observed on the spot
which she had quitted, a tolerably large stone which had, evidently,
not been there a moment before.
Cosette gazed at the stone, asking herself what it meant. All at once
the idea occurred to her that the stone had not reached the bench all
by itself, that some one had placed it there, that an arm had been
thrust through the railing, and this idea appeared to alarm her. This
time, the fear was genuine; the stone was there. No doubt was possible;
she did not touch it, fled without glancing behind her, took refuge in
the house, and immediately closed with shutter, bolt, and bar the
door-like window opening on the flight of steps. She inquired of
Toussaint:—
“Has my father returned yet?”
“Not yet, Mademoiselle.”
[We have already noted once for all the fact that Toussaint stuttered.
May we be permitted to dispense with it for the future. The musical
notation of an infirmity is repugnant to us.]
Jean Valjean, a thoughtful man, and given to nocturnal strolls, often
returned quite late at night.
“Toussaint,” went on Cosette, “are you careful to thoroughly barricade
the shutters opening on the garden, at least with bars, in the evening,
and to put the little iron things in the little rings that close them?”
“Oh! be easy on that score, Miss.”
Toussaint did not fail in her duty, and Cosette was well aware of the
fact, but she could not refrain from adding:—
“It is so solitary here.”
“So far as that is concerned,” said Toussaint, “it is true. We might be
assassinated before we had time to say _ouf!_ And Monsieur does not
sleep in the house, to boot. But fear nothing, Miss, I fasten the
shutters up like prisons. Lone women! That is enough to make one
shudder, I believe you! Just imagine, what if you were to see men enter
your chamber at night and say: ‘Hold your tongue!’ and begin to cut
your throat. It’s not the dying so much; you die, for one must die, and
that’s all right; it’s the abomination of feeling those people touch
you. And then, their knives; they can’t be able to cut well with them!
Ah, good gracious!”
“Be quiet,” said Cosette. “Fasten everything thoroughly.”
Cosette, terrified by the melodrama improvised by Toussaint, and
possibly, also, by the recollection of the apparitions of the past
week, which recurred to her memory, dared not even say to her: “Go and
look at the stone which has been placed on the bench!” for fear of
opening the garden gate and allowing “the men” to enter. She saw that
all the doors and windows were carefully fastened, made Toussaint go
all over the house from garret to cellar, locked herself up in her own
chamber, bolted her door, looked under her couch, went to bed and slept
badly. All night long she saw that big stone, as large as a mountain
and full of caverns.
At sunrise,—the property of the rising sun is to make us laugh at all
our terrors of the past night, and our laughter is in direct proportion
to our terror which they have caused,—at sunrise Cosette, when she
woke, viewed her fright as a nightmare, and said to herself: “What have
I been thinking of? It is like the footsteps that I thought I heard a
week or two ago in the garden at night! It is like the shadow of the
chimney-pot! Am I becoming a coward?” The sun, which was glowing
through the crevices in her shutters, and turning the damask curtains
crimson, reassured her to such an extent that everything vanished from
her thoughts, even the stone.
“There was no more a stone on the bench than there was a man in a round
hat in the garden; I dreamed about the stone, as I did all the rest.”
She dressed herself, descended to the garden, ran to the bench, and
broke out in a cold perspiration. The stone was there.
But this lasted only for a moment. That which is terror by night is
curiosity by day.
“Bah!” said she, “come, let us see what it is.”
She lifted the stone, which was tolerably large. Beneath it was
something which resembled a letter. It was a white envelope. Cosette
seized it. There was no address on one side, no seal on the other. Yet
the envelope, though unsealed, was not empty. Papers could be seen
inside.
Cosette examined it. It was no longer alarm, it was no longer
curiosity; it was a beginning of anxiety.
Cosette drew from the envelope its contents, a little notebook of
paper, each page of which was numbered and bore a few lines in a very
fine and rather pretty handwriting, as Cosette thought.
Cosette looked for a name; there was none. To whom was this addressed?
To her, probably, since a hand had deposited the packet on her bench.
From whom did it come? An irresistible fascination took possession of
her; she tried to turn away her eyes from the leaflets which were
trembling in her hand, she gazed at the sky, the street, the acacias
all bathed in light, the pigeons fluttering over a neighboring roof,
and then her glance suddenly fell upon the manuscript, and she said to
herself that she must know what it contained.
This is what she read.
CHAPTER IV—A HEART BENEATH A STONE
The reduction of the universe to a single being, the expansion of a
single being even to God, that is love.
Love is the salutation of the angels to the stars.
How sad is the soul, when it is sad through love!
What a void in the absence of the being who, by herself alone fills the
world! Oh! how true it is that the beloved being becomes God. One could
comprehend that God might be jealous of this had not God the Father of
all evidently made creation for the soul, and the soul for love.
The glimpse of a smile beneath a white crape bonnet with a lilac
curtain is sufficient to cause the soul to enter into the palace of
dreams.
God is behind everything, but everything hides God. Things are black,
creatures are opaque. To love a being is to render that being
transparent.
Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the
attitude of the body may be, the soul is on its knees.
Parted lovers beguile absence by a thousand chimerical devices, which
possess, however, a reality of their own. They are prevented from
seeing each other, they cannot write to each other; they discover a
multitude of mysterious means to correspond. They send each other the
song of the birds, the perfume of the flowers, the smiles of children,
the light of the sun, the sighings of the breeze, the rays of stars,
all creation. And why not? All the works of God are made to serve love.
Love is sufficiently potent to charge all nature with its messages.
Oh Spring! Thou art a letter that I write to her.
The future belongs to hearts even more than it does to minds. Love,
that is the only thing that can occupy and fill eternity. In the
infinite, the inexhaustible is requisite.
Love participates of the soul itself. It is of the same nature. Like
it, it is the divine spark; like it, it is incorruptible, indivisible,
imperishable. It is a point of fire that exists within us, which is
immortal and infinite, which nothing can confine, and which nothing can
extinguish. We feel it burning even to the very marrow of our bones,
and we see it beaming in the very depths of heaven.
Oh Love! Adorations! voluptuousness of two minds which understand each
other, of two hearts which exchange with each other, of two glances
which penetrate each other! You will come to me, will you not, bliss!
strolls by twos in the solitudes! Blessed and radiant days! I have
sometimes dreamed that from time to time hours detached themselves from
the lives of the angels and came here below to traverse the destinies
of men.
God can add nothing to the happiness of those who love, except to give
them endless duration. After a life of love, an eternity of love is, in
fact, an augmentation; but to increase in intensity even the ineffable
felicity which love bestows on the soul even in this world, is
impossible, even to God. God is the plenitude of heaven; love is the
plenitude of man.
You look at a star for two reasons, because it is luminous, and because
it is impenetrable. You have beside you a sweeter radiance and a
greater mystery, woman.
All of us, whoever we may be, have our respirable beings. We lack air
and we stifle. Then we die. To die for lack of love is horrible.
Suffocation of the soul.
When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred and angelic
unity, the secret of life has been discovered so far as they are
concerned; they are no longer anything more than the two boundaries of
the same destiny; they are no longer anything but the two wings of the
same spirit. Love, soar.
On the day when a woman as she passes before you emits light as she
walks, you are lost, you love. But one thing remains for you to do: to
think of her so intently that she is constrained to think of you.
What love commences can be finished by God alone.
True love is in despair and is enchanted over a glove lost or a
handkerchief found, and eternity is required for its devotion and its
hopes. It is composed both of the infinitely great and the infinitely
little.
If you are a stone, be adamant; if you are a plant, be the sensitive
plant; if you are a man, be love.