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DAWN
At that moment, Cosette awoke.
Her chamber was narrow, neat, unobtrusive, with a long sash-window,
facing the East on the back court-yard of the house.
Cosette knew nothing of what was going on in Paris.
She had not been there on the preceding evening, and she had
already retired to her chamber when Toussaint had said:
"It appears that there is a row."
Cosette had slept only a few hours, but soundly.
She had had sweet dreams, which possibly arose from the fact
that her little bed was very white.
Some one, who was Marius, had appeared to her in the light.
She awoke with the sun in her eyes, which, at first, produced
on her the effect of being a continuation of her dream. Her first
thought on emerging from this dream was a smiling one. Cosette
felt herself thoroughly reassured.
Like Jean Valjean, she had, a few hours previously, passed
through that reaction of the soul which absolutely will not hear
of unhappiness. She began to cherish hope, with all her might,
without knowing why. Then she felt a pang at her heart.
It was three days since she had seen Marius.
But she said to herself that he must have received her letter,
that he knew where she was, and that he was so clever that he
would find means of reaching her.--And that certainly to-day,
and perhaps that very morning.--It was broad daylight, but the
rays of light were very horizontal; she thought that it was very
early, but that she must rise, nevertheless, in order to receive
Marius.
She felt that she could not live without Marius, and that,
consequently, that was sufficient and that Marius would come.
No objection was valid.
All this was certain.
It was monstrous enough already to have suffered for three
days.
Marius absent three days, this was horrible on the part of
the good God.
Now, this cruel teasing from on high had been gone through
with.
Marius was about to arrive, and he would bring good news.
Youth is made thus; it quickly dries its eyes; it finds sorrow
useless and does not accept it.
Youth is the smile of the future in the presence of an unknown
quantity, which is itself.
It is natural to it to be happy. It seems as though its respiration
were made of hope.
Moreover, Cosette could not remember what Marius had said
to her on the subject of this absence which was to last only one
day, and what explanation of it he had given her.
Every one has noticed with what nimbleness a coin which one
has dropped on the ground rolls away and hides, and with what
art it renders itself undiscoverable. There are thoughts which
play us the same trick; they nestle away in a corner of our brain;
that is the end of them; they are lost; it is impossible to lay
the memory on them.
Cosette was somewhat vexed at the useless little effort made
by her memory.
She told herself, that it was very naughty and very wicked
of her, to have forgotten the words uttered by Marius.
She sprang out of bed and accomplished the two ablutions of
soul and body, her prayers and her toilet.
One may, in a case of exigency, introduce the reader into
a nuptial chamber, not into a virginal chamber.
Verse would hardly venture it, prose must not.
It is the interior of a flower that is not yet unfolded, it
is whiteness in the dark, it is the private cell of a closed lily,
which must not be gazed upon by man so long as the sun has not
gazed upon it.
Woman in the bud is sacred.
That innocent bud which opens, that adorable half-nudity which
is afraid of itself, that white foot which takes refuge in a slipper,
that throat which veils itself before a mirror as though a mirror
were an eye, that chemise which makes haste to rise up and conceal
the shoulder for a creaking bit of furniture or a passing vehicle,
those cords tied, those clasps fastened, those laces drawn, those
tremors, those shivers of cold and modesty, that exquisite affright
in every movement, that almost winged uneasiness where there is
no cause for alarm, the successive phases of dressing, as charming
as the clouds of dawn,-- it is not fitting that all this should
be narrated, and it is too much to have even called attention
to it.
The eye of man must be more religious in the presence of the
rising of a young girl than in the presence of the rising of a
star. The possibility of hurting should inspire an augmentation
of respect. The down on the peach, the bloom on the plum, the
radiated crystal of
the snow, the wing of the butterfly powdered with feathers, are
coarse compared to that chastity which does not even know that
it is chaste. The young girl is only the flash of a dream, and
is not yet a statue. Her bed-chamber is hidden in the sombre part
of the ideal. The indiscreet touch of a glance brutalizes this
vague penumbra. Here, contemplation is profanation.
We shall, therefore, show nothing of that sweet little flutter
of Cosette's rising.
An oriental tale relates how the rose was made white by God,
but that Adam looked upon her when she was unfolding, and she
was ashamed and turned crimson.
We are of the number who fall speechless in the presence of
young girls and flowers, since we think them worthy of veneration.
Cosette dressed herself very hastily, combed and dressed her
hair, which was a very simple matter in those days, when women
did not swell out their curls and bands with cushions and puffs,
and did not put crinoline in their locks.
Then she opened the window and cast her eyes around her in
every direction, hoping to descry some bit of the street, an angle
of the house, an edge of pavement, so that she might be able to
watch for Marius there.
But no view of the outside was to be had.
The back court was surrounded by tolerably high walls, and
the outlook was only on several gardens. Cosette pronounced these
gardens hideous:
for the first time in her life, she found flowers ugly.
The smallest scrap of the gutter of the street would have
met her wishes better.
She decided to gaze at the sky, as though she thought that
Marius might come from that quarter.
All at once, she burst into tears.
Not that this was fickleness of soul; but hopes cut in twain
by dejection--that was her case. She had a confused consciousness
of something horrible.
Thoughts were rife in the air, in fact.
She told herself that she was not sure of anything, that to
withdraw herself from sight was to be lost; and the idea that
Marius could return to her from heaven appeared to her no longer
charming but mournful.
Then, as is the nature of these clouds, calm returned to her,
and hope and a sort of unconscious smile, which yet indicated
trust in God.
Every one in the house was still asleep.
A country-like silence reigned. Not a shutter had been opened.
The porter's lodge was closed. Toussaint had not risen, and
Cosette, naturally, thought that her father was asleep.
She must have suffered much, and she must have still been
suffering greatly, for she said to herself, that her father had
been unkind; but she counted on Marius.
The eclipse of such a light was decidedly impossible.
Now and then, she heard sharp shocks in the distance, and
she said:
"It is odd that people should be opening and shutting
their carriage gates so early." They were the reports of
the cannon battering the barricade.
A few feet below Cosette's window, in the ancient and perfectly
black cornice of the wall, there was a martin's nest; the curve
of this nest formed a little projection beyond the cornice, so
that from above it was possible to look into this little paradise.
The mother was there, spreading her wings like a fan over her
brood; the father fluttered about, flew away, then came back,
bearing in his beak food and kisses.
The dawning day gilded this happy thing, the great law, "Multiply,"
lay there smiling and august, and that sweet mystery unfolded
in the glory of the morning.
Cosette, with her hair in the sunlight, her soul absorbed
in chimeras, illuminated by love within and by the dawn without,
bent over mechanically, and almost without daring to avow to herself
that she was thinking at the same time of Marius, began to gaze
at these birds, at this family, at that male and female, that
mother and her little ones, with the profound trouble which a
nest produces on a virgin.
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