Les Misérables, page 124
CHAPTER VIII--THE ENIGMA BECOMES DOUBLY MYSTERIOUS
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 gazedat 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 shouldneed nothing except for her, he should fear nothing except for her. Hewas not even conscious that he was very cold, since he had taken off hiscoat to cover her.
Nevertheless, athwart this revery into which he had fallen he had heardfor some time a peculiar noise. It was like the tinkling of a bell. Thissound proceeded from the garden. It could be heard distinctly thoughfaintly. It resembled the faint, vague music produced by the bells ofcattle 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 melonbeds, rising, stooping, halting, with regular movements, as though hewere dragging or spreading out something on the ground. This personappeared to limp.
Jean Valjean shuddered with the continual tremor of the unhappy. Forthem everything is hostile and suspicious. They distrust the daybecause it enables people to see them, and the night because it aidsin surprising them. A little while before he had shivered because thegarden was deserted, and now he shivered because there was some onethere.
He fell back from chimerical terrors to real terrors. He said to himselfthat Javert and the spies had, perhaps, not taken their departure; thatthey had, no doubt, left people on the watch in the street; that if thisman should discover him in the garden, he would cry out for help againstthieves and deliver him up. He took the sleeping Cosette gently in hisarms and carried her behind a heap of old furniture, which was out ofuse, in the most remote corner of the shed. Cosette did not stir.
From that point he scrutinized the appearance of the being in themelon patch. The strange thing about it was, that the sound of the bellfollowed each of this man's movements. When the man approached, thesound approached; when the man retreated, the sound retreated; if hemade any hasty gesture, a tremolo accompanied the gesture; when hehalted, the sound ceased. It appeared evident that the bell was attachedto that man; but what could that signify? Who was this man who had abell suspended about him like a ram or an ox?
As he put these questions to himself, he touched Cosette's hands. Theywere 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, quiveringfrom head to foot.
The most frightful thoughts rushed pell-mell through his mind. Thereare moments when hideous surmises assail us like a cohort of furies, andviolently force the partitions of our brains. When those we love are inquestion, our prudence invents every sort of madness. He remembered thatsleep in the open air on a cold night may be fatal.
Cosette was pale, and had fallen at full length on the ground at hisfeet, without a movement.
He listened to her breathing: she still breathed, but with a respirationwhich 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 thatwas not connected with this vanished from his thoughts. He rushed wildlyfrom the ruin.
It was absolutely necessary that Cosette should be in bed and beside afire in less than a quarter of an hour.
