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_ The child had laid her head on a stone and fallen asleep.
He sat down beside her and began to think. Little by little,
as he gazed at her, he grew calm and regained possession of his
freedom of mind.
He clearly perceived this truth, the foundation of his life henceforth,
that so long as she was there, so long as he had her near him,
he should need nothing except for her, he should fear nothing
except for her. He was not even conscious that he was very cold,
since he had taken off his coat to cover her.
Nevertheless, athwart this revery into which he had fallen he had
heard for some time a peculiar noise. It was like the tinkling
of a bell. This sound proceeded from the garden. It could be heard
distinctly though faintly. It resembled the faint, vague music
produced by the bells of cattle at night in the pastures.
This noise made Valjean turn round.
He looked and saw that there was some one in the garden.
A being resembling a man was walking amid the bell-glasses of the
melon beds, rising, stooping, halting, with regular movements,
as though he were dragging or spreading out something on the ground.
This person appeared to limp.
Jean Valjean shuddered with the continual tremor of the unhappy.
For them everything is hostile and suspicious. They distrust the day
because it enables people to see them, and the night because it
aids in surprising them. A little while before he had shivered
because the garden was deserted, and now he shivered because there
was some one there.
He fell back from chimerical terrors to real terrors. He said
to himself that Javert and the spies had, perhaps, not taken
their departure; that they had, no doubt, left people on the watch
in the street; that if this man should discover him in the garden,
he would cry out for help against thieves and deliver him up.
He took the sleeping Cosette gently in his arms and carried her behind
a heap of old furniture, which was out of use, in the most remote
corner of the shed. Cosette did not stir.
From that point he scrutinized the appearance of the being in the
melon patch. The strange thing about it was, that the sound of the
bell followed each of this man's movements. When the man approached,
the sound approached; when the man retreated, the sound retreated;
if he made any hasty gesture, a tremolo accompanied the gesture;
when he halted, the sound ceased. It appeared evident that the
bell was attached to that man; but what could that signify?
Who was this man who had a bell suspended about him like a ram or
an ox?
As he put these questions to himself, he touched Cosette's hands.
They were icy cold.
"Ah! good God!" he cried.
He spoke to her in a low voice:--
"Cosette!"
She did not open her eyes.
He shook her vigorously.
She did not wake.
"Is she dead?" he said to himself, and sprang to his feet,
quivering from head to foot.
The most frightful thoughts rushed pell-mell through his mind.
There are moments when hideous surmises assail us like a cohort
of furies, and violently force the partitions of our brains.
When those we love are in question, our prudence invents every sort
of madness. He remembered that sleep in the open air on a cold night
may be fatal.
Cosette was pale, and had fallen at full length on the ground
at his feet, without a movement.
He listened to her breathing: she still breathed, but with a
respiration which seemed to him weak and on the point of extinction.
How was he to warm her back to life? How was he to rouse her?
All that was not connected with this vanished from his thoughts.
He rushed wildly from the ruin.
It was absolutely necessary that Cosette should be in bed and beside
a fire in less than a quarter of an hour. _
Read next: VOLUME II - COSETTE: BOOK FIFTH - FOR A BLACK HUNT, A MUTE PACK: HAPTER IX. The Man with the Bell
Read previous: VOLUME II - COSETTE: BOOK FIFTH - FOR A BLACK HUNT, A MUTE PACK: HAPTER VII. Continuation of the Enigma
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