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THE LITTLE ONE ALL ALONE
As the Thenardier hostelry was in that part of the village
which is near the church, it was to the spring in the forest in
the direction of Chelles that Cosette was obliged to go for her
water.
She did not glance at the display of a single other merchant.
So long as she was in Boulanger Lane and in the neighborhood
of the church, the lighted stalls illuminated the road; but soon
the last light from the last stall vanished.
The poor child found herself in the dark. She plunged into
it.
Only, as a certain emotion overcame her, she made as much
motion as possible with the handle of the bucket as she walked
along.
This made a noise which afforded her company.
The further she went, the denser the darkness became.
There was no one in the streets.
However, she did encounter a woman, who turned around on seeing
her, and stood still, muttering between her teeth: "Where
can that child be going?
Is it a werewolf child?"
Then the woman recognized Cosette.
"Well," said she, "it's the Lark!"
In this manner Cosette traversed the labyrinth of tortuous
and deserted streets which terminate in the village of Montfermeil
on the side of Chelles.
So long as she had the houses or even the walls only on both
sides of her path, she proceeded with tolerable boldness.
From time to time she caught the flicker of a candle through
the crack of a shutter--this was light and life; there were people
there, and it reassured her.
But in proportion as she advanced, her pace slackened mechanically,
as it were. When she had passed the corner of the last house,
Cosette paused. It had been hard to advance further than the last
stall; it became impossible to proceed further than the last house.
She set her bucket on the ground, thrust her hand into her hair,
and began slowly to scratch her head,--a gesture peculiar to children
when terrified and undecided what to do.
It was no longer Montfermeil; it was the open fields.
Black and desert space was before her. She gazed in despair
at that darkness, where there was no longer any one, where there
were beasts, where there were spectres, possibly. She took a good
look, and heard the beasts walking on the grass, and she distinctly
saw spectres moving in the trees.
Then she seized her bucket again; fear had lent her audacity.
"Bah!" said she; "I will tell him that there
was no more water!"
And she resolutely re-entered Montfermeil.
Hardly had she gone a hundred paces when she paused and began
to scratch her head again.
Now it was the Thenardier who appeared to her, with her hideous,
hyena mouth, and wrath flashing in her eyes. The child cast a
melancholy glance before her and behind her. What was she to do?
What was to become of her?
Where was she to go? In front of her was the spectre of the
Thenardier; behind her all the phantoms of the night and of the
forest.
It was before the Thenardier that she recoiled.
She resumed her path to the spring, and began to run.
She emerged from the village, she entered the forest at a
run, no longer looking at or listening to anything. She only paused
in her course when her breath failed her; but she did not halt
in her advance.
She went straight before her in desperation.
As she ran she felt like crying.
The nocturnal quivering of the forest surrounded her completely.
She no longer thought, she no longer saw.
The immensity of night was facing this tiny creature.
On the one hand, all shadow; on the other, an atom.
It was only seven or eight minutes' walk from the edge of
the woods to the spring.
Cosette knew the way, through having gone over it many times
in daylight.
Strange to say, she did not get lost. A remnant of instinct
guided her vaguely.
But she did not turn her eyes either to right or to left,
for fear of seeing things in the branches and in the brushwood.
In this manner she reached the spring.
It was a narrow, natural basin, hollowed out by the water
in a clayey soil, about two feet deep, surrounded with moss and
with those tall, crimped grasses which are called Henry IV.'s
frills, and paved with several large stones.
A brook ran out of it, with a tranquil little noise.
Cosette did not take time to breathe.
It was very dark, but she was in the habit of coming to this
spring.
She felt with her left hand in the dark for a young oak which
leaned over the spring, and which usually served to support her,
found one of its branches, clung to it, bent down, and plunged
the bucket in the water. She was in a state of such violent excitement
that her strength was trebled.
While thus bent over, she did not notice that the pocket of
her apron had emptied itself into the spring.
The fifteen-sou piece fell into the water.
Cosette neither saw nor heard it fall. She drew out the bucket
nearly full, and set it on the grass.
That done, she perceived that she was worn out with fatigue.
She would have liked to set out again at once, but the effort
required to fill the bucket had been such that she found it impossible
to take a step.
She was forced to sit down.
She dropped on the grass, and remained crouching there.
She shut her eyes; then she opened them again, without knowing
why, but because she could not do otherwise.
The agitated water in the bucket beside her was describing
circles which resembled tin serpents.
Overhead the sky was covered with vast black clouds, which
were like masses of smoke.
The tragic mask of shadow seemed to bend vaguely over the
child.
Jupiter was setting in the depths.
The child stared with bewildered eyes at this great star,
with which she was unfamiliar, and which terrified her.
The planet was, in fact, very near the horizon and was traversing
a dense layer of mist which imparted to it a horrible ruddy hue.
The mist, gloomily empurpled, magnified the star.
One would have called it a luminous wound.
A cold wind was blowing from the plain.
The forest was dark, not a leaf was moving; there were none
of the vague, fresh gleams of summertide.
Great boughs uplifted themselves in frightful wise. Slender
and misshapen bushes whistled in the clearings.
The tall grasses undulated like eels under the north wind.
The nettles seemed to twist long arms furnished with claws
in search of prey. Some bits of dry heather, tossed by the breeze,
flew rapidly by, and had the air of fleeing in terror before something
which was coming after. On all sides there were lugubrious stretches.
The darkness was bewildering.
Man requires light.
Whoever buries himself in the opposite of day feels his heart
contract.
When the eye sees black, the heart sees trouble.
In an eclipse in the night, in the sooty opacity, there is
anxiety even for the stoutest of hearts. No one walks alone in
the forest at night without trembling. Shadows and trees--two
formidable densities.
A chimerical reality appears in the indistinct depths.
The inconceivable is outlined a few paces distant from you
with a spectral clearness. One beholds floating, either in space
or in one's own brain, one knows not what vague and intangible
thing, like the dreams of sleeping flowers.
There are fierce attitudes on the horizon. One inhales the
effluvia of the great black void.
One is afraid to glance behind him, yet desirous of doing
so.
The cavities of night, things grown haggard, taciturn profiles
which vanish when one advances, obscure dishevelments, irritated
tufts, livid pools, the lugubrious reflected in the funereal,
the sepulchral immensity of silence, unknown but possible beings,
bendings of mysterious branches, alarming torsos of trees, long
handfuls of quivering plants,-- against all this one has no protection.
There is no hardihood which does not shudder and which does
not feel the vicinity of anguish. One is conscious of something
hideous, as though one's soul were becoming amalgamated with the
darkness.
This penetration of the shadows is indescribably sinister
in the case of a child.
Forests are apocalypses, and the beating of the wings of a
tiny soul produces a sound of agony beneath their monstrous vault.
Without understanding her sensations, Cosette was conscious
that she was seized upon by that black enormity of nature; it
was no longer terror alone which was gaining possession of her;
it was something more terrible even than terror; she shivered.
There are no words to express the strangeness of that shiver which
chilled her to the very bottom of her heart; her eye grew wild;
she thought she felt that she should not be able to refrain from
returning there at the same hour on the morrow.
Then, by a sort of instinct, she began to count aloud, one,
two, three, four, and so on up to ten, in order to escape from
that singular state which she did not understand, but which terrified
her, and, when she had finished, she began again; this restored
her to a true perception of the things about her. Her hands, which
she had wet in drawing the water, felt cold; she rose; her terror,
a natural and unconquerable terror, had returned:
she had but one thought now,--to flee at full speed through
the forest, across the fields to the houses, to the windows, to
the lighted candles.
Her glance fell upon the water which stood before her; such
was the fright which the Thenardier inspired in her, that she
dared not flee without that bucket of water: she seized the handle
with both hands; she could hardly lift the pail.
In this manner she advanced a dozen paces, but the bucket
was full; it was heavy; she was forced to set it on the ground
once more. She took breath for an instant, then lifted the handle
of the bucket again, and resumed her march, proceeding a little
further this time, but again she was obliged to pause.
After some seconds of repose she set out again.
She walked bent forward, with drooping head, like an old woman;
the weight of the bucket strained and stiffened her thin arms.
The iron handle completed the benumbing and freezing of her
wet and tiny hands; she was forced to halt from time to time,
and each time that she did so, the cold water which splashed from
the pail fell on her bare legs.
This took place in the depths of a forest, at night, in winter,
far from all human sight; she was a child of eight:
no one but God saw that sad thing at the moment.
And her mother, no doubt, alas!
For there are things that make the dead open their eyes in
their graves.
She panted with a sort of painful rattle; sobs contracted
her throat, but she dared not weep, so afraid was she of the Thenardier,
even at a distance:
it was her custom to imagine the Thenardier always present.
However, she could not make much headway in that manner, and
she went on very slowly.
In spite of diminishing the length of her stops, and of walking
as long as possible between them, she reflected with anguish that
it would take her more than an hour to return to Montfermeil in
this manner, and that the Thenardier would beat her. This anguish
was mingled with her terror at being alone in the woods at night;
she was worn out with fatigue, and had not yet emerged from the
forest.
On arriving near an old chestnut-tree with which she was acquainted,
made a last halt, longer than the rest, in order that she might
get well rested; then she summoned up all her strength, picked
up her bucket again, and courageously resumed her march, but the
poor little desperate creature could not refrain from crying,
"O my God! my God!"
At that moment she suddenly became conscious that her bucket
no longer weighed anything at all:
a hand, which seemed to her enormous, had just seized the
handle, and lifted it vigorously.
She raised her head.
A large black form, straight and erect, was walking beside
her through the darkness; it was a man who had come up behind
her, and whose approach she had not heard.
This man, without uttering a word, had seized the handle of
the bucket which she was carrying.
There are instincts for all the encounters of life.
The child was not afraid.
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