At that moment, Cosette awoke.
Her chamber was narrow, neat, unobtrusive, with a long sash-window,
facing the East on the back court-yard of the house.
Cosette knew nothing of what was going on in Paris. She had not been
there on the preceding evening, and she had already retired to her
chamber when Toussaint had said:
“It appears that there is a row.”
Cosette had slept only a few hours, but soundly. She had had sweet
dreams, which possibly arose from the fact that her little bed was very
white. Some one, who was Marius, had appeared to her in the light. She
awoke with the sun in her eyes, which, at first, produced on her the
effect of being a continuation of her dream. Her first thought on
emerging from this dream was a smiling one. Cosette felt herself
thoroughly reassured. Like Jean Valjean, she had, a few hours
previously, passed through that reaction of the soul which absolutely
will not hear of unhappiness. She began to cherish hope, with all her
might, without knowing why. Then she felt a pang at her heart. It was
three days since she had seen Marius. But she said to herself that he
must have received her letter, that he knew where she was, and that he
was so clever that he would find means of reaching her.—And that
certainly to-day, and perhaps that very morning.—It was broad daylight,
but the rays of light were very horizontal; she thought that it was
very early, but that she must rise, nevertheless, in order to receive
Marius.
She felt that she could not live without Marius, and that,
consequently, that was sufficient and that Marius would come. No
objection was valid. All this was certain. It was monstrous enough
already to have suffered for three days. Marius absent three days, this
was horrible on the part of the good God. Now, this cruel teasing from
on high had been gone through with. Marius was about to arrive, and he
would bring good news. Youth is made thus; it quickly dries its eyes;
it finds sorrow useless and does not accept it. Youth is the smile of
the future in the presence of an unknown quantity, which is itself. It
is natural to it to be happy. It seems as though its respiration were
made of hope.
Moreover, Cosette could not remember what Marius had said to her on the
subject of this absence which was to last only one day, and what
explanation of it he had given her. Every one has noticed with what
nimbleness a coin which one has dropped on the ground rolls away and
hides, and with what art it renders itself undiscoverable. There are
thoughts which play us the same trick; they nestle away in a corner of
our brain; that is the end of them; they are lost; it is impossible to
lay the memory on them. Cosette was somewhat vexed at the useless
little effort made by her memory. She told herself, that it was very
naughty and very wicked of her, to have forgotten the words uttered by
Marius.
She sprang out of bed and accomplished the two ablutions of soul and
body, her prayers and her toilet.
One may, in a case of exigency, introduce the reader into a nuptial
chamber, not into a virginal chamber. Verse would hardly venture it,
prose must not.
It is the interior of a flower that is not yet unfolded, it is
whiteness in the dark, it is the private cell of a closed lily, which
must not be gazed upon by man so long as the sun has not gazed upon it.
Woman in the bud is sacred. That innocent bud which opens, that
adorable half-nudity which is afraid of itself, that white foot which
takes refuge in a slipper, that throat which veils itself before a
mirror as though a mirror were an eye, that chemise which makes haste
to rise up and conceal the shoulder for a creaking bit of furniture or
a passing vehicle, those cords tied, those clasps fastened, those laces
drawn, those tremors, those shivers of cold and modesty, that exquisite
affright in every movement, that almost winged uneasiness where there
is no cause for alarm, the successive phases of dressing, as charming
as the clouds of dawn,—it is not fitting that all this should be
narrated, and it is too much to have even called attention to it.
The eye of man must be more religious in the presence of the rising of
a young girl than in the presence of the rising of a star. The
possibility of hurting should inspire an augmentation of respect. The
down on the peach, the bloom on the plum, the radiated crystal of the
snow, the wing of the butterfly powdered with feathers, are coarse
compared to that chastity which does not even know that it is chaste.
The young girl is only the flash of a dream, and is not yet a statue.
Her bed-chamber is hidden in the sombre part of the ideal. The
indiscreet touch of a glance brutalizes this vague penumbra. Here,
contemplation is profanation.
We shall, therefore, show nothing of that sweet little flutter of
Cosette’s rising.
An oriental tale relates how the rose was made white by God, but that
Adam looked upon her when she was unfolding, and she was ashamed and
turned crimson. We are of the number who fall speechless in the
presence of young girls and flowers, since we think them worthy of
veneration.
Cosette dressed herself very hastily, combed and dressed her hair,
which was a very simple matter in those days, when women did not swell
out their curls and bands with cushions and puffs, and did not put
crinoline in their locks. Then she opened the window and cast her eyes
around her in every direction, hoping to descry some bit of the street,
an angle of the house, an edge of pavement, so that she might be able
to watch for Marius there. But no view of the outside was to be had.
The back court was surrounded by tolerably high walls, and the outlook
was only on several gardens. Cosette pronounced these gardens hideous:
for the first time in her life, she found flowers ugly. The smallest
scrap of the gutter of the street would have met her wishes better. She
decided to gaze at the sky, as though she thought that Marius might
come from that quarter.
All at once, she burst into tears. Not that this was fickleness of
soul; but hopes cut in twain by dejection—that was her case. She had a
confused consciousness of something horrible. Thoughts were rife in the
air, in fact. She told herself that she was not sure of anything, that
to withdraw herself from sight was to be lost; and the idea that Marius
could return to her from heaven appeared to her no longer charming but
mournful.
Then, as is the nature of these clouds, calm returned to her, and hope
and a sort of unconscious smile, which yet indicated trust in God.
Every one in the house was still asleep. A country-like silence
reigned. Not a shutter had been opened. The porter’s lodge was closed.
Toussaint had not risen, and Cosette, naturally, thought that her
father was asleep. She must have suffered much, and she must have still
been suffering greatly, for she said to herself, that her father had
been unkind; but she counted on Marius. The eclipse of such a light was
decidedly impossible. Now and then, she heard sharp shocks in the
distance, and she said: “It is odd that people should be opening and
shutting their carriage gates so early.” They were the reports of the
cannon battering the barricade.
A few feet below Cosette’s window, in the ancient and perfectly black
cornice of the wall, there was a martin’s nest; the curve of this nest
formed a little projection beyond the cornice, so that from above it
was possible to look into this little paradise. The mother was there,
spreading her wings like a fan over her brood; the father fluttered
about, flew away, then came back, bearing in his beak food and kisses.
The dawning day gilded this happy thing, the great law, “Multiply,” lay
there smiling and august, and that sweet mystery unfolded in the glory
of the morning. Cosette, with her hair in the sunlight, her soul
absorbed in chimæras, illuminated by love within and by the dawn
without, bent over mechanically, and almost without daring to avow to
herself that she was thinking at the same time of Marius, began to gaze
at these birds, at this family, at that male and female, that mother
and her little ones, with the profound trouble which a nest produces on
a virgin.