Jean Valjean finds himself in a sort of garden which is 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 is oblong, 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 can 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 sparkle in the moonlight, and an old well. Here and there stand stone benches which seem black with moss. The alleys are bordered with gloomy and very erect little shrubs. The grass has half taken possession of them, and a green mould covers the rest. Jean Valjean has beside him the building whose roof has 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 is no longer anything more than a shapeless mask which looms vaguely through the gloom. The building is a sort of ruin, where dismantled chambers are distinguishable, one of which, much encumbered, seems to serve as a shed. The large building of the Rue Droit-Mur, which has a wing on the Rue Petit-Picpus, turns two facades, at right angles, towards this garden. These interior facades are even more tragic than the exterior. All the windows are grated. Not a gleam of light is visible at any one of them. The upper story has scuttles like prisons. One of those facades casts its shadow on the other, which falls over the garden like an immense black pall. No other house is visible. The bottom of the garden is lost in mist and darkness. Nevertheless, walls can be confusedly made out, which intersect 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 has 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 are still on the Thenardier, shares his instinct for withdrawing from sight as much as possible. Cosette trembled and pressed close to him. They hear 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 has posted, and his imprecations mingled with words which cannot be distinguished. At the expiration of a quarter of an hour it seems as though that species of stormy roar were becoming more distant. Jean Valjean holds his breath. He has laid his hand lightly on Cosette's mouth. However, the solitude in which he stands is so strangely calm that this frightful uproar, close and furious as it is, does 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.
