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. She knew nothing of what was going on in Paris. She had already retired to her chamber when Toussaint had said that it appeared there was a row. She 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 was a smiling one. Like Jean Valjean, she had, a few hours previously, passed through that reaction of the soul which absolutely will not hear of unhappiness. 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, certainly today, and perhaps that very morning. 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. Youth quickly dries its eyes. It finds sorrow useless and does not accept it. 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. There are thoughts which play the trick of a dropped coin: they roll away and hide, and it is impossible to lay the memory on them. She was somewhat vexed at the useless little effort made by her memory. She told herself that it was very naughty 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. The narrator will show nothing of that sweet little flutter. 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. Cosette dressed herself very hastily, then 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 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. She had a confused consciousness of something horrible. 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. Every one in the house was still asleep. A country-like silence reigned. Not a shutter had been opened. Toussaint had not risen, and Cosette, naturally, thought that her father was asleep. She said to herself that her father had been unkind; but she counted on Marius. Now and then, she heard sharp shocks in the distance, and she said it was 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 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. 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 mother and her little ones, with the profound trouble which a nest produces on a virgin.
