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THE BEGINNING OF AN ENIGMA
Jean Valjean found himself in a sort of garden which was
very vast and of singular aspect; one of those melancholy gardens
which seem made to be 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 forest trees in the corners,
and an unshaded space in the centre, where could be seen a very
large, solitary tree, then several fruit-trees, gnarled and bristling
like bushes, beds of vegetables, a melon patch, whose glass frames
sparkled in the moonlight, and an old well. Here and there stood
stone benches which seemed black with moss. The alleys were bordered
with gloomy and very erect little shrubs. The grass had half taken
possession of them, and a green mould covered the rest.
Jean Valjean had beside him the building whose roof had served
him as a means of descent, a pile of fagots, and, behind the fagots,
directly against the wall, a stone statue, whose mutilated face
was no longer anything more than a shapeless mask which loomed
vaguely through the gloom.
The building was a sort of ruin, where dismantled chambers
were distinguishable, one of which, much encumbered, seemed to
serve as a shed.
The large building of the Rue Droit-Mur, which had a wing
on the Rue Petit-Picpus, turned two facades, at right angles,
towards this garden. These interior facades were even more tragic
than the exterior. All the windows were grated.
Not a gleam of light was visible at any one of them.
The upper story had scuttles like prisons. One of those facades
cast its shadow on the other, which fell over the garden like
an immense black pall.
No other house was visible.
The bottom of the garden was lost in mist and darkness.
Nevertheless, walls could be confusedly made out, which intersected
as though there were more cultivated land beyond, and the low
roofs of the Rue Polonceau.
Nothing more wild and solitary than this garden could be imagined.
There was no one in it, which was quite natural in view of the
hour; but it did not seem as though this spot were made for any
one to walk in, even in broad daylight.
Jean Valjean's first care had been to get hold of his shoes
and put them on again, then to step under the shed with Cosette.
A man who is fleeing never thinks himself sufficiently hidden.
The child, whose thoughts were still on the Thenardier, shared
his instinct for withdrawing from sight as much as possible.
Cosette trembled and pressed close to him.
They heard the tumultuous noise of the patrol searching the
blind alley and the streets; the blows of their gun-stocks against
the stones; Javert's appeals to the police spies whom he had posted,
and his imprecations mingled with words which could not be distinguished.
At the expiration of a quarter of an hour it seemed as though
that species of stormy roar were becoming more distant.
Jean Valjean held his breath.
He had laid his hand lightly on Cosette's mouth.
However, the solitude in which he stood was so strangely calm,
that this frightful uproar, close and furious as it was, did not
disturb him by so much as the shadow of a misgiving. It seemed
as though those walls had been built of the deaf stones of which
the Scriptures speak.
All at once, in the midst of this profound calm, a fresh sound
arose; a sound as celestial, divine, ineffable, ravishing, as
the other had been horrible.
It was a hymn which issued from the gloom, a dazzling burst
of 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 pure accents of virgins and the innocent accents of
children,-- voices which are not of the earth, and which resemble
those that the newborn infant still hears, and which the dying
man hears already. This song proceeded from the gloomy edifice
which towered above the garden.
At the moment when the hubbub of demons retreated, one would
have said that a choir of angels 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 of them, the man and the child, the penitent and the
innocent, felt that they must kneel.
These voices had this strange characteristic, that they did
not prevent the building from seeming to be deserted. It was a
supernatural chant in an uninhabited house.
While these voices were singing, Jean Valjean thought of nothing.
He no longer beheld the night; he beheld a blue sky.
It seemed to him that he felt those wings which we all have
within us, unfolding.
The song died away.
It may have lasted a long time.
Jean Valjean could not 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 had reassured him,--all
had vanished.
The breeze swayed a few dry weeds on the crest of the wall,
and they gave out a faint, sweet, melancholy sound.
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