Les Misérables
The whole shop seemed a palace to her: the doll was not a doll; it was
a vision. It was joy, splendor, riches, happiness, which appeared in a
sort of chimerical halo to that unhappy little being so profoundly
engulfed in gloomy and chilly misery. With the sad and innocent
sagacity of childhood, Cosette measured the abyss which separated her
from that doll. She said to herself that one must be a queen, or at
least a princess, to have a “thing” like that. She gazed at that
beautiful pink dress, that beautiful smooth hair, and she thought, “How
happy that doll must be!” She could not take her eyes from that
fantastic stall. The more she looked, the more dazzled she grew. She
thought she was gazing at paradise. There were other dolls behind the
large one, which seemed to her to be fairies and genii. The merchant,
who was pacing back and forth in front of his shop, produced on her
somewhat the effect of being the Eternal Father.
In this adoration she forgot everything, even the errand with which she
was charged.
All at once the Thénardier’s coarse voice recalled her to reality:
“What, you silly jade! you have not gone? Wait! I’ll give it to you! I
want to know what you are doing there! Get along, you little monster!”
The Thénardier had cast a glance into the street, and had caught sight
of Cosette in her ecstasy.
Cosette fled, dragging her pail, and taking the longest strides of
which she was capable.
CHAPTER V—THE LITTLE ONE ALL ALONE
As the Thénardier hostelry was in that part of the village which is
near the church, it was to the spring in the forest in the direction of
Chelles that Cosette was obliged to go for her water.
She did not glance at the display of a single other merchant. So long
as she was in Boulanger Lane and in the neighborhood of the church, the
lighted stalls illuminated the road; but soon the last light from the
last stall vanished. The poor child found herself in the dark. She
plunged into it. Only, as a certain emotion overcame her, she made as
much motion as possible with the handle of the bucket as she walked
along. This made a noise which afforded her company.
The further she went, the denser the darkness became. There was no one
in the streets. However, she did encounter a woman, who turned around
on seeing her, and stood still, muttering between her teeth: “Where can
that child be going? Is it a werewolf child?” Then the woman recognized
Cosette. “Well,” said she, “it’s the Lark!”
In this manner Cosette traversed the labyrinth of tortuous and deserted
streets which terminate in the village of Montfermeil on the side of
Chelles. So long as she had the houses or even the walls only on both
sides of her path, she proceeded with tolerable boldness. From time to
time she caught the flicker of a candle through the crack of a
shutter—this was light and life; there were people there, and it
reassured her. But in proportion as she advanced, her pace slackened
mechanically, as it were. When she had passed the corner of the last
house, Cosette paused. It had been hard to advance further than the
last stall; it became impossible to proceed further than the last
house. She set her bucket on the ground, thrust her hand into her hair,
and began slowly to scratch her head,—a gesture peculiar to children
when terrified and undecided what to do. It was no longer Montfermeil;
it was the open fields. Black and desert space was before her. She
gazed in despair at that darkness, where there was no longer any one,
where there were beasts, where there were spectres, possibly. She took
a good look, and heard the beasts walking on the grass, and she
distinctly saw spectres moving in the trees. Then she seized her bucket
again; fear had lent her audacity. “Bah!” said she; “I will tell him
that there was no more water!” And she resolutely re-entered
Montfermeil.
Hardly had she gone a hundred paces when she paused and began to
scratch her head again. Now it was the Thénardier who appeared to her,
with her hideous, hyena mouth, and wrath flashing in her eyes. The
child cast a melancholy glance before her and behind her. What was she
to do? What was to become of her? Where was she to go? In front of her
was the spectre of the Thénardier; behind her all the phantoms of the
night and of the forest. It was before the Thénardier that she
recoiled. She resumed her path to the spring, and began to run. She
emerged from the village, she entered the forest at a run, no longer
looking at or listening to anything. She only paused in her course when
her breath failed her; but she did not halt in her advance. She went
straight before her in desperation.
As she ran she felt like crying.
The nocturnal quivering of the forest surrounded her completely.
She no longer thought, she no longer saw. The immensity of night was
facing this tiny creature. On the one hand, all shadow; on the other,
an atom.
It was only seven or eight minutes’ walk from the edge of the woods to
the spring. Cosette knew the way, through having gone over it many
times in daylight. Strange to say, she did not get lost. A remnant of
instinct guided her vaguely. But she did not turn her eyes either to
right or to left, for fear of seeing things in the branches and in the
brushwood. In this manner she reached the spring.
It was a narrow, natural basin, hollowed out by the water in a clayey
soil, about two feet deep, surrounded with moss and with those tall,
crimped grasses which are called Henry IV.’s frills, and paved with
several large stones. A brook ran out of it, with a tranquil little
noise.
Cosette did not take time to breathe. It was very dark, but she was in
the habit of coming to this spring. She felt with her left hand in the
dark for a young oak which leaned over the spring, and which usually
served to support her, found one of its branches, clung to it, bent
down, and plunged the bucket in the water. She was in a state of such
violent excitement that her strength was trebled. While thus bent over,
she did not notice that the pocket of her apron had emptied itself into
the spring. The fifteen-sou piece fell into the water. Cosette neither
saw nor heard it fall. She drew out the bucket nearly full, and set it
on the grass.
That done, she perceived that she was worn out with fatigue. She would
have liked to set out again at once, but the effort required to fill
the bucket had been such that she found it impossible to take a step.
She was forced to sit down. She dropped on the grass, and remained
crouching there.
She shut her eyes; then she opened them again, without knowing why, but
because she could not do otherwise. The agitated water in the bucket
beside her was describing circles which resembled tin serpents.
Overhead the sky was covered with vast black clouds, which were like
masses of smoke. The tragic mask of shadow seemed to bend vaguely over
the child.
Jupiter was setting in the depths.
The child stared with bewildered eyes at this great star, with which
she was unfamiliar, and which terrified her. The planet was, in fact,
very near the horizon and was traversing a dense layer of mist which
imparted to it a horrible ruddy hue. The mist, gloomily empurpled,
magnified the star. One would have called it a luminous wound.
A cold wind was blowing from the plain. The forest was dark, not a leaf
was moving; there were none of the vague, fresh gleams of summertide.
Great boughs uplifted themselves in frightful wise. Slender and
misshapen bushes whistled in the clearings. The tall grasses undulated
like eels under the north wind. The nettles seemed to twist long arms
furnished with claws in search of prey. Some bits of dry heather,
tossed by the breeze, flew rapidly by, and had the air of fleeing in
terror before something which was coming after. On all sides there were
lugubrious stretches.
The darkness was bewildering. Man requires light. Whoever buries
himself in the opposite of day feels his heart contract. When the eye
sees black, the heart sees trouble. In an eclipse in the night, in the
sooty opacity, there is anxiety even for the stoutest of hearts. No one
walks alone in the forest at night without trembling. Shadows and
trees—two formidable densities. A chimerical reality appears in the
indistinct depths. The inconceivable is outlined a few paces distant
from you with a spectral clearness. One beholds floating, either in
space or in one’s own brain, one knows not what vague and intangible
thing, like the dreams of sleeping flowers. There are fierce attitudes
on the horizon. One inhales the effluvia of the great black void. One
is afraid to glance behind him, yet desirous of doing so. The cavities
of night, things grown haggard, taciturn profiles which vanish when one
advances, obscure dishevelments, irritated tufts, livid pools, the
lugubrious reflected in the funereal, the sepulchral immensity of
silence, unknown but possible beings, bendings of mysterious branches,
alarming torsos of trees, long handfuls of quivering plants,—against
all this one has no protection. There is no hardihood which does not
shudder and which does not feel the vicinity of anguish. One is
conscious of something hideous, as though one’s soul were becoming
amalgamated with the darkness. This penetration of the shadows is
indescribably sinister in the case of a child.
Forests are apocalypses, and the beating of the wings of a tiny soul
produces a sound of agony beneath their monstrous vault.
Without understanding her sensations, Cosette was conscious that she
was seized upon by that black enormity of nature; it was no longer
terror alone which was gaining possession of her; it was something more
terrible even than terror; she shivered. There are no words to express
the strangeness of that shiver which chilled her to the very bottom of
her heart; her eye grew wild; she thought she felt that she should not
be able to refrain from returning there at the same hour on the morrow.
Then, by a sort of instinct, she began to count aloud, one, two, three,
four, and so on up to ten, in order to escape from that singular state
which she did not understand, but which terrified her, and, when she
had finished, she began again; this restored her to a true perception
of the things about her. Her hands, which she had wet in drawing the
water, felt cold; she rose; her terror, a natural and unconquerable
terror, had returned: she had but one thought now,—to flee at full
speed through the forest, across the fields to the houses, to the
windows, to the lighted candles. Her glance fell upon the water which
stood before her; such was the fright which the Thénardier inspired in
her, that she dared not flee without that bucket of water: she seized
the handle with both hands; she could hardly lift the pail.
In this manner she advanced a dozen paces, but the bucket was full; it
was heavy; she was forced to set it on the ground once more. She took
breath for an instant, then lifted the handle of the bucket again, and
resumed her march, proceeding a little further this time, but again she
was obliged to pause. After some seconds of repose she set out again.
She walked bent forward, with drooping head, like an old woman; the
weight of the bucket strained and stiffened her thin arms. The iron
handle completed the benumbing and freezing of her wet and tiny hands;
she was forced to halt from time to time, and each time that she did
so, the cold water which splashed from the pail fell on her bare legs.
This took place in the depths of a forest, at night, in winter, far
from all human sight; she was a child of eight: no one but God saw that
sad thing at the moment.
And her mother, no doubt, alas!
For there are things that make the dead open their eyes in their
graves.