Les Misérables, page 122
CHAPTER VI--THE BEGINNING OF AN ENIGMA
Jean Valjean found himself in a sort of garden which was very vast andof singular aspect; one of those melancholy gardens which seem made tobe looked at in winter and at night. This garden was oblong in shape,with an alley of large poplars at the further end, tolerably tall foresttrees in the corners, and an unshaded space in the centre, where couldbe seen a very large, solitary tree, then several fruit-trees, gnarledand bristling like bushes, beds of vegetables, a melon patch, whoseglass frames sparkled in the moonlight, and an old well. Here andthere stood stone benches which seemed black with moss. The alleys werebordered with gloomy and very erect little shrubs. The grass had halftaken possession of them, and a green mould covered the rest.
Jean Valjean had beside him the building whose roof had served him asa means of descent, a pile of fagots, and, behind the fagots, directlyagainst the wall, a stone statue, whose mutilated face was no longeranything more than a shapeless mask which loomed vaguely through thegloom.
The building was a sort of ruin, where dismantled chambers weredistinguishable, one of which, much encumbered, seemed to serve as ashed.
The large building of the Rue Droit-Mur, which had a wing on the RuePetit-Picpus, turned two façades, at right angles, towards this garden.These interior façades were even more tragic than the exterior. Allthe windows were grated. Not a gleam of light was visible at any one ofthem. The upper story had scuttles like prisons. One of those façadescast its shadow on the other, which fell over the garden like an immenseblack pall.
No other house was visible. The bottom of the garden was lost in mistand darkness. Nevertheless, walls could be confusedly made out, whichintersected as though there were more cultivated land beyond, and thelow roofs of the Rue Polonceau.
Nothing more wild and solitary than this garden could be imagined. Therewas no one in it, which was quite natural in view of the hour; but itdid not seem as though this spot were made for any one to walk in, evenin broad daylight.
Jean Valjean's first care had been to get hold of his shoes and put themon again, then to step under the shed with Cosette. A man who is fleeingnever thinks himself sufficiently hidden. The child, whose thoughts werestill on the Thénardier, shared his instinct for withdrawing from sightas much as possible.
Cosette trembled and pressed close to him. They heard the tumultuousnoise of the patrol searching the blind alley and the streets; the blowsof their gun-stocks against the stones; Javert's appeals to the policespies whom he had posted, and his imprecations mingled with words whichcould not be distinguished.
At the expiration of a quarter of an hour it seemed as though thatspecies of stormy roar were becoming more distant. Jean Valjean held hisbreath.
He had laid his hand lightly on Cosette's mouth.
However, the solitude in which he stood was so strangely calm, that thisfrightful uproar, close and furious as it was, did not disturb him by somuch as the shadow of a misgiving. It seemed as though those walls hadbeen built of the deaf stones of which the Scriptures speak.
All at once, in the midst of this profound calm, a fresh sound arose; asound as celestial, divine, ineffable, ravishing, as the other had beenhorrible. It was a hymn which issued from the gloom, a dazzling burstof prayer and harmony in the obscure and alarming silence of the night;women's voices, but voices composed at one and the same time of the pureaccents of virgins and the innocent accents of children,--voices whichare not of the earth, and which resemble those that the newborn infantstill hears, and which the dying man hears already. This song proceededfrom the gloomy edifice which towered above the garden. At the momentwhen the hubbub of demons retreated, one would have said that a choir ofangels was approaching through the gloom.
Cosette and Jean Valjean fell on their knees.
They knew not what it was, they knew not where they were; but both ofthem, the man and the child, the penitent and the innocent, felt thatthey must kneel.
These voices had this strange characteristic, that they did not preventthe building from seeming to be deserted. It was a supernatural chant inan uninhabited house.
While these voices were singing, Jean Valjean thought of nothing. He nolonger beheld the night; he beheld a blue sky. It seemed to him that hefelt those wings which we all have within us, unfolding.
The song died away. It may have lasted a long time. Jean Valjean couldnot have told. Hours of ecstasy are never more than a moment.
All fell silent again. There was no longer anything in the street;there was nothing in the garden. That which had menaced, that which hadreassured him,--all had vanished. The breeze swayed a few dry weedson the crest of the wall, and they gave out a faint, sweet, melancholysound.
