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.