The Enigma Becomes Doubly Mysterious — Les Misérables

The child has laid her head on a stone and fallen asleep. He sits down beside her and begins to think. Little by little, as he gazes at her, he grows calm and regains possession of his freedom of mind. He clearly perceives this truth, the foundation of his life henceforth, that so long as she is there, so long as he has her near him, he shall need nothing except for her, he shall fear nothing except for her. He is not even conscious that he is very cold, since he has taken off his coat to cover her. Nevertheless, athwart this reverie into which he has fallen, he has heard for some time a peculiar noise. It is like the tinkling of a bell. This sound proceeds from the garden. It can be heard distinctly though faintly. It resembles the faint, vague music produced by the bells of cattle at night in the pastures. This noise makes Valjean turn round. He looks and sees that there is someone in the garden. A being resembling a man is walking amid the bell-glasses of the melon beds, rising, stooping, halting, with regular movements, as though he were dragging or spreading out something on the ground. This person appears to limp.

Jean Valjean shudders with the continual tremor of the unhappy. For them everything is hostile and suspicious. They distrust the day because it enables people to see them, and the night because it aids in surprising them. A little while before he had shivered because the garden was deserted, and now he shivers because there is someone there. He falls back from chimerical terrors to real terrors. He says to himself that Javert and the spies have, perhaps, not taken their departure, that they have, no doubt, left people on the watch in the street, that if this man should discover him in the garden, he would cry out for help against thieves and deliver him up. He takes the sleeping Cosette gently in his arms and carries her behind a heap of old furniture, which is out of use, in the most remote corner of the shed. Cosette does not stir. From that point he scrutinizes the appearance of the being in the melon patch. The strange thing about it is that the sound of the bell follows each of this man's movements. When the man approaches, the sound approaches. When the man retreats, the sound retreats. If he makes any hasty gesture, a tremolo accompanies the gesture. When he halts, the sound ceases. It appears evident that the bell is attached to that man. But what could that signify? Who was this man who had a bell suspended about him like a ram or an ox?

As he puts these questions to himself, he touches Cosette's hands. They are icy cold. Ah, good God, he cried. He speaks to her in a low voice. Cosette. She does not open her eyes. He shakes her vigorously. She does not wake. Is she dead? he says to himself, and springs to his feet, quivering from head to foot. The most frightful thoughts rush pell-mell through his mind. There are moments when hideous surmises assail us like a cohort of furies, and violently force the partitions of our brains. When those we love are in question, our prudence invents every sort of madness. He remembers that sleep in the open air on a cold night may be fatal. Cosette is pale, and has fallen at full length on the ground at his feet, without a movement. He listens to her breathing. She still breathes, but with a respiration which seems to him weak and on the point of extinction. How is he to warm her back to life? How is he to rouse her? All that is not connected with this vanishes from his thoughts. He rushes wildly from the ruin. It was absolutely necessary that Cosette should be in bed and beside a fire in less than a quarter of an hour.