As the Thenardier hostelry is in that part of the village near the church, it is to the spring in the forest in the direction of Chelles that Cosette is obliged to go for her water. She does not glance at the display of a single other merchant. So long as she is in Boulanger Lane and near the church, the lighted stalls illuminate the road. Soon the last light from the last stall vanishes. The poor child finds herself in the dark. She plunges into it. Only, as a certain emotion overcomes her, she makes as much motion as possible with the handle of the bucket as she walks. This makes a noise which affords her company. She encounters a woman who turns around, mutters whether it is a werewolf child, then recognises Cosette. Well, said she, it is the Lark. Cosette traverses the labyrinth of tortuous and deserted streets that terminate on the Chelles side. So long as she has houses or even walls on both sides, she proceeds with tolerable boldness. From time to time she catches the flicker of a candle through the crack of a shutter. This is light and life. There are people there, and it reassures her. When she has passed the corner of the last house, Cosette pauses. It has been hard to advance further than the last stall. It becomes impossible to proceed further than the last house. She sets her bucket on the ground, thrusts her hand into her hair, and begins slowly to scratch her head, a gesture peculiar to children when terrified and undecided. It is no longer Montfermeil. It is the open fields. Black and desert space is before her. She gazes in despair at that darkness, where there is no longer anyone, where there are beasts, where there are spectres, possibly. She takes a good look, hears the beasts walking on the grass, and distinctly sees spectres moving in the trees. Then she seizes her bucket again. Fear has lent her audacity. Bah, said she, I will tell him that there was no more water. And she resolutely re-enters Montfermeil.
Hardly has she gone a hundred paces when she pauses and scratches her head again. Now it is the Thenardier who appears to her, with her hideous hyena mouth, and wrath flashing in her eyes. The child casts a melancholy glance before her and behind her. In front of her is the spectre of the Thenardier. Behind her are all the phantoms of the night and of the forest. It is before the Thenardier that she recoils. She resumes her path to the spring and begins to run. She enters the forest at a run, no longer looking at or listening to anything. She only pauses when her breath fails her, but she does not halt in her advance. As she runs she feels like crying. The nocturnal quivering of the forest surrounds her completely. She no longer thinks, she no longer sees. The immensity of night is facing this tiny creature. On the one hand, all shadow. On the other, an atom. It is only seven or eight minutes' walk from the edge of the woods to the spring. Cosette knows the way from having gone over it many times in daylight. Strange to say, she does not get lost. A remnant of instinct guides her vaguely. She does not turn her eyes to right or to left, for fear of seeing things in the branches. In this manner she reaches the spring. It is a narrow natural basin, about two feet deep, surrounded with moss and those tall crimped grasses called Henry the Fourth's frills, and paved with several large stones. A brook runs out of it with a tranquil little noise. Cosette does not take time to breathe. She feels with her left hand in the dark for a young oak which usually serves to support her, clings to a branch, bends down, and plunges the bucket in the water. She is in a state of such violent excitement that her strength is trebled. While thus bent over, she does not notice that the pocket of her apron has emptied itself into the spring. The fifteen-sou piece falls into the water. Cosette neither sees nor hears it fall. She draws out the bucket nearly full and sets it on the grass. That done, she perceives that she is worn out. She is forced to sit down. She drops on the grass and remains crouching there. Overhead the sky is covered with vast black clouds like masses of smoke. The tragic mask of shadow seems to bend vaguely over the child. Jupiter is setting in the depths. The child stares with bewildered eyes at this great star, with which she is unfamiliar, and which terrifies her. The planet is very near the horizon and is traversing a dense layer of mist which imparts to it a horrible ruddy hue. The mist, gloomily empurpled, magnifies the star. One would have called it a luminous wound.
She begins to count aloud, one, two, three, four, up to ten, in order to escape from that singular state which she does not understand, and when she has finished she begins again. This restores her to a true perception of the things about her. Her hands, which she has wet in drawing the water, feel cold. She rises. She has 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 falls upon the water. Such is the fright which the Thenardier inspires in her that she dares not flee without that bucket. She seizes the handle with both hands. She can hardly lift the pail. She advances a dozen paces, is forced to set it down, takes breath, lifts it again, proceeds a little further, and is obliged to pause. She walks bent forward, with drooping head, like an old woman. The weight of the bucket strains and stiffens her thin arms. The iron handle completes the benumbing and freezing of her wet and tiny hands. Each time she halts, the cold water which splashes from the pail falls on her bare legs. This takes place in the depths of a forest, at night, in winter, far from all human sight. She is a child of eight. No one but God sees that sad thing at the moment. And her mother, no doubt. She pants with a sort of painful rattle. Sobs contract her throat, but she dares not weep, so afraid is she of the Thenardier, even at a distance. It is her custom to imagine the Thenardier always present. She reflects with anguish that it will take her more than an hour to return to Montfermeil in this manner, and that the Thenardier will beat her. On arriving near an old chestnut-tree with which she is acquainted, she makes a last halt, then summons up all her strength and courageously resumes her march. The poor little desperate creature cannot refrain from crying, O my God, my God. At that moment she suddenly becomes conscious that her bucket no longer weighs anything at all. A hand, which seems to her enormous, has just seized the handle and lifted it vigorously. She raises her head. A large black form, straight and erect, is walking beside her through the darkness. It is a man who has come up behind her, and whose approach she has not heard. This man, without uttering a word, has seized the handle of the bucket which she was carrying. There are instincts for all the encounters of life. The child was not afraid.
