________________________________________________
_ During the first fortnight in April, Jean Valjean took a journey.
This, as the reader knows, happened from time to time, at very
long intervals. He remained absent a day or two days at the utmost.
Where did he go? No one knew, not even Cosette. Once only,
on the occasion of one of these departures, she had accompanied him
in a hackney-coach as far as a little blind-alley at the corner
of which she read: Impasse de la Planchette. There he alighted,
and the coach took Cosette back to the Rue de Babylone. It was
usually when money was lacking in the house that Jean Valjean took
these little trips.
So Jean Valjean was absent. He had said: "I shall return
in three days."
That evening, Cosette was alone in the drawing-room. In order to get
rid of her ennui, she had opened her piano-organ, and had begun
to sing, accompanying herself the while, the chorus from Euryanthe:
"Hunters astray in the wood!" which is probably the most beautiful
thing in all the sphere of music. When she had finished, she remained
wrapped in thought.
All at once, it seemed to her that she heard the sound of footsteps
in the garden.
It could not be her father, he was absent; it could not be Toussaint,
she was in bed, and it was ten o'clock at night.
She stepped to the shutter of the drawing-room, which was closed,
and laid her ear against it.
It seemed to her that it was the tread of a man, and that he was
walking very softly.
She mounted rapidly to the first floor, to her own chamber,
opened a small wicket in her shutter, and peeped into the garden.
The moon was at the full. Everything could be seen as plainly as
by day.
There was no one there.
She opened the window. The garden was absolutely calm, and all
that was visible was that the street was deserted as usual.
Cosette thought that she had been mistaken. She thought that she
had heard a noise. It was a hallucination produced by the melancholy
and magnificent chorus of Weber, which lays open before the mind
terrified depths, which trembles before the gaze like a dizzy forest,
and in which one hears the crackling of dead branches beneath
the uneasy tread of the huntsmen of whom one catches a glimpse
through the twilight.
She thought no more about it.
Moreover, Cosette was not very timid by nature. There flowed
in her veins some of the blood of the bohemian and the adventuress
who runs barefoot. It will be remembered that she was more of a lark
than a dove. There was a foundation of wildness and bravery in her.
On the following day, at an earlier hour, towards nightfall, she was
strolling in the garden. In the midst of the confused thoughts
which occupied her, she fancied that she caught for an instant a sound
similar to that of the preceding evening, as though some one were
walking beneath the trees in the dusk, and not very far from her;
but she told herself that nothing so closely resembles a step on
the grass as the friction of two branches which have moved from side
to side, and she paid no heed to it. Besides, she could see nothing.
She emerged from "the thicket"; she had still to cross a small lawn
to regain the steps.
The moon, which had just risen behind her, cast Cosette's shadow
in front of her upon this lawn, as she came out from the shrubbery.
Cosette halted in alarm.
Beside her shadow, the moon outlined distinctly upon the turf
another shadow, which was particularly startling and terrible,
a shadow which had a round hat.
It was the shadow of a man, who must have been standing on the border
of the clump of shrubbery, a few paces in the rear of Cosette.
She stood for a moment without the power to speak, or cry, or call,
or stir, or turn her head.
Then she summoned up all her courage, and turned round resolutely.
There was no one there.
She glanced on the ground. The figure had disappeared.
She re-entered the thicket, searched the corners boldly, went as far
as the gate, and found nothing.
She felt herself absolutely chilled with terror. Was this
another hallucination? What! Two days in succession!
One hallucination might pass, but two hallucinations?
The disquieting point about it was, that the
shadow had assuredly not been a phantom. Phantoms do not wear round hats.
On the following day Jean Valjean returned. Cosette told him what
she thought she had heard and seen. She wanted to be reassured
and to see her father shrug his shoulders and say to her:
"You are a little goose."
Jean Valjean grew anxious.
"It cannot be anything," said he.
He left her under some pretext, and went into the garden, and she
saw him examining the gate with great attention.
During the night she woke up; this time she was sure, and she distinctly
heard some one walking close to the flight of steps beneath her window.
She ran to her little wicket and opened it. In point of fact,
there was a man in the garden, with a large club in his hand.
Just as she was about to scream, the moon lighted up the man's profile.
It was her father. She returned to her bed, saying to herself:
"He is very uneasy!"
Jean Valjean passed that night and the two succeeding nights
in the garden. Cosette saw him through the hole in her shutter.
On the third night, the moon was on the wane, and had begun
to rise later; at one o'clock in the morning, possibly, she heard
a loud burst of laughter and her father's voice calling her:--
"Cosette!"
She jumped out of bed, threw on her dressing-gown, and opened
her window.
Her father was standing on the grass-plot below.
"I have waked you for the purpose of reassuring you," said he;
"look, there is your shadow with the round hat."
And he pointed out to her on the turf a shadow cast by the moon,
and which did indeed, bear considerable resemblance to the spectre of a
man wearing a round hat. It was the shadow produced by a chimney-pipe
of sheet iron, with a hood, which rose above a neighboring roof.
Cosette joined in his laughter, all her lugubrious suppositions
were allayed, and the next morning, as she was at breakfast
with her father, she made merry over the sinister garden haunted
by the shadows of iron chimney-pots.
Jean Valjean became quite tranquil once more; as for Cosette,
she did not pay much attention to the question whether the chimney-pot
was really in the direction of the shadow which she had seen,
or thought she had seen, and whether the moon had been in the same
spot in the sky.
She did not question herself as to the peculiarity of a chimney-pot
which is afraid of being caught in the act, and which retires
when some one looks at its shadow, for the shadow had taken
the alarm when Cosette had turned round, and Cosette had thought
herself very sure of this. Cosette's serenity was fully restored.
The proof appeared to her to be complete, and it quite vanished
from her mind, whether there could possibly be any one walking
in the garden during the evening or at night.
A few days later, however, a fresh incident occurred. _
Read next: VOLUME IV: BOOK FIFTH - THE END OF WHICH DOES NOT RESEMBLE THE BEGINNING: CHAPTER III. Enriched with Commentaries by Toussaint
Read previous: VOLUME IV: BOOK FIFTH - THE END OF WHICH DOES NOT RESEMBLE THE BEGINNING: CHAPTER I. Solitude and Barracks Combined
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