As Cosette read, she gradually fell into thought. At the very moment
when she raised her eyes from the last line of the note-book, the
handsome officer passed triumphantly in front of the gate,—it was his
hour; Cosette thought him hideous.
She resumed her contemplation of the book. It was written in the most
charming of chirography, thought Cosette; in the same hand, but with
divers inks, sometimes very black, again whitish, as when ink has been
added to the inkstand, and consequently on different days. It was,
then, a mind which had unfolded itself there, sigh by sigh,
irregularly, without order, without choice, without object, hap-hazard.
Cosette had never read anything like it. This manuscript, in which she
already perceived more light than obscurity, produced upon her the
effect of a half-open sanctuary. Each one of these mysterious lines
shone before her eyes and inundated her heart with a strange radiance.
The education which she had received had always talked to her of the
soul, and never of love, very much as one might talk of the firebrand
and not of the flame. This manuscript of fifteen pages suddenly and
sweetly revealed to her all of love, sorrow, destiny, life, eternity,
the beginning, the end. It was as if a hand had opened and suddenly
flung upon her a handful of rays of light. In these few lines she felt
a passionate, ardent, generous, honest nature, a sacred will, an
immense sorrow, and an immense despair, a suffering heart, an ecstasy
fully expanded. What was this manuscript? A letter. A letter without
name, without address, without date, without signature, pressing and
disinterested, an enigma composed of truths, a message of love made to
be brought by an angel and read by a virgin, an appointment made beyond
the bounds of earth, the love-letter of a phantom to a shade. It was an
absent one, tranquil and dejected, who seemed ready to take refuge in
death and who sent to the absent love, his lady, the secret of fate,
the key of life, love. This had been written with one foot in the grave
and one finger in heaven. These lines, which had fallen one by one on
the paper, were what might be called drops of soul.
Now, from whom could these pages come? Who could have penned them?
Cosette did not hesitate a moment. One man only.
He!
Day had dawned once more in her spirit; all had reappeared. She felt an
unheard-of joy, and a profound anguish. It was he! he who had written!
he was there! it was he whose arm had been thrust through that railing!
While she was forgetful of him, he had found her again! But had she
forgotten him? No, never! She was foolish to have thought so for a
single moment. She had always loved him, always adored him. The fire
had been smothered, and had smouldered for a time, but she saw all
plainly now; it had but made headway, and now it had burst forth
afresh, and had inflamed her whole being. This note-book was like a
spark which had fallen from that other soul into hers. She felt the
conflagration starting up once more.
She imbued herself thoroughly with every word of the manuscript: “Oh
yes!” said she, “how perfectly I recognize all that! That is what I had
already read in his eyes.” As she was finishing it for the third time,
Lieutenant Théodule passed the gate once more, and rattled his spurs
upon the pavement. Cosette was forced to raise her eyes. She thought
him insipid, silly, stupid, useless, foppish, displeasing, impertinent,
and extremely ugly. The officer thought it his duty to smile at her.
She turned away as in shame and indignation. She would gladly have
thrown something at his head.
She fled, re-entered the house, and shut herself up in her chamber to
peruse the manuscript once more, to learn it by heart, and to dream.
When she had thoroughly mastered it she kissed it and put it in her
bosom.
All was over, Cosette had fallen back into deep, seraphic love. The
abyss of Eden had yawned once more.
All day long, Cosette remained in a sort of bewilderment. She scarcely
thought, her ideas were in the state of a tangled skein in her brain,
she could not manage to conjecture anything, she hoped through a
tremor, what? vague things. She dared make herself no promises, and she
did not wish to refuse herself anything. Flashes of pallor passed over
her countenance, and shivers ran through her frame. It seemed to her,
at intervals, that she was entering the land of chimæras; she said to
herself: “Is this reality?” Then she felt of the dear paper within her
bosom under her gown, she pressed it to her heart, she felt its angles
against her flesh; and if Jean Valjean had seen her at the moment, he
would have shuddered in the presence of that luminous and unknown joy,
which overflowed from beneath her eyelids.—“Oh yes!” she thought, “it
is certainly he! This comes from him, and is for me!”
And she told herself that an intervention of the angels, a celestial
chance, had given him back to her.
Oh transfiguration of love! Oh dreams! That celestial chance, that
intervention of the angels, was a pellet of bread tossed by one thief
to another thief, from the Charlemagne Courtyard to the Lion’s Ditch,
over the roofs of La Force.