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_ As the Thenardier 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 Thenardier 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 Thenardier; behind her all
the phantoms of the night and of the forest. It was before the
Thenardier 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 Thenardier 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.
She panted with a sort of painful rattle; sobs contracted her throat,
but she dared not weep, so afraid was she of the Thenardier,
even at a distance: it was her custom to imagine the Thenardier
always present.
However, she could not make much headway in that manner, and she went
on very slowly. In spite of diminishing the length of her stops,
and of walking as long as possible between them, she reflected
with anguish that it would take her more than an hour to return to
Montfermeil in this manner, and that the Thenardier would beat her.
This anguish was mingled with her terror at being alone in the woods
at night; she was worn out with fatigue, and had not yet emerged from
the forest. On arriving near an old chestnut-tree with which she
was acquainted, made a last halt, longer than the rest, in order
that she might get well rested; then she summoned up all her strength,
picked up her bucket again, and courageously resumed her march,
but the poor little desperate creature could not refrain from crying,
"O my God! my God!"
At that moment she suddenly became conscious that her bucket no longer
weighed anything at all: a hand, which seemed to her enormous,
had just seized the handle, and lifted it vigorously. She raised
her head. A large black form, straight and erect, was walking beside
her through the darkness; it was a man who had come up behind her,
and whose approach she had not heard. This man, without uttering
a word, had seized the handle of the bucket which she was carrying.
There are instincts for all the encounters of life.
The child was not afraid. _
Read next: VOLUME II - COSETTE: BOOK THIRD - ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE PROMISE MADE TO THE DEAD WOMAN: CHAPTER VI. Which possibly proves Boulatruelle's Intelligence
Read previous: VOLUME II - COSETTE: BOOK THIRD - ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE PROMISE MADE TO THE DEAD WOMAN: CHAPTER IV. Entrance on the Scene of a Doll
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