CHAPTER III--ENRICHED WITH COMMENTARIES BY TOUSSAINT

  In the garden, near the railing on the street, there was a stone bench,screened from the eyes of the curious by a plantation of yoke-elms,but which could, in case of necessity, be reached by an arm from theoutside, past the trees and the gate.

  One evening during that same month of April, Jean Valjean had gone out;Cosette had seated herself on this bench after sundown. The breeze wasblowing briskly in the trees, Cosette was meditating; an objectlesssadness was taking possession of her little by little, that invinciblesadness evoked by the evening, and which arises, perhaps, who knows,from the mystery of the tomb which is ajar at that hour.

  Perhaps Fantine was within that shadow.

  Cosette rose, slowly made the tour of the garden, walking on thegrass drenched in dew, and saying to herself, through the species ofmelancholy somnambulism in which she was plunged: "Really, one needswooden shoes for the garden at this hour. One takes cold."

  She returned to the bench.

  As she was about to resume her seat there, she observed on the spotwhich she had quitted, a tolerably large stone which had, evidently, notbeen there a moment before.

  Cosette gazed at the stone, asking herself what it meant. All at oncethe idea occurred to her that the stone had not reached the bench all byitself, that some one had placed it there, that an arm had been thrustthrough the railing, and this idea appeared to alarm her. This time, thefear was genuine; the stone was there. No doubt was possible; she didnot touch it, fled without glancing behind her, took refuge in thehouse, and immediately closed with shutter, bolt, and bar the door-likewindow opening on the flight of steps. She inquired of Toussaint:--

  "Has my father returned yet?"

  "Not yet, Mademoiselle."

  [We have already noted once for all the fact that Toussaint stuttered.May we be permitted to dispense with it for the future. The musicalnotation of an infirmity is repugnant to us.]

  Jean Valjean, a thoughtful man, and given to nocturnal strolls, oftenreturned quite late at night.

  "Toussaint," went on Cosette, "are you careful to thoroughly barricadethe shutters opening on the garden, at least with bars, in the evening,and to put the little iron things in the little rings that close them?"

  "Oh! be easy on that score, Miss."

  Toussaint did not fail in her duty, and Cosette was well aware of thefact, but she could not refrain from adding:--

  "It is so solitary here."

  "So far as that is concerned," said Toussaint, "it is true. We mightbe assassinated before we had time to say _ouf!_ And Monsieur doesnot sleep in the house, to boot. But fear nothing, Miss, I fastenthe shutters up like prisons. Lone women! That is enough to make oneshudder, I believe you! Just imagine, what if you were to see men enteryour chamber at night and say: 'Hold your tongue!' and begin to cutyour throat. It's not the dying so much; you die, for one must die, andthat's all right; it's the abomination of feeling those people touchyou. And then, their knives; they can't be able to cut well with them!Ah, good gracious!"

  "Be quiet," said Cosette. "Fasten everything thoroughly."

  Cosette, terrified by the melodrama improvised by Toussaint, andpossibly, also, by the recollection of the apparitions of the past week,which recurred to her memory, dared not even say to her: "Go and look atthe stone which has been placed on the bench!" for fear of opening thegarden gate and allowing "the men" to enter. She saw that all the doorsand windows were carefully fastened, made Toussaint go all over thehouse from garret to cellar, locked herself up in her own chamber,bolted her door, looked under her couch, went to bed and slept badly.All night long she saw that big stone, as large as a mountain and fullof caverns.

  At sunrise,--the property of the rising sun is to make us laugh at allour terrors of the past night, and our laughter is in direct proportionto our terror which they have caused,--at sunrise Cosette, when shewoke, viewed her fright as a nightmare, and said to herself: "What haveI been thinking of? It is like the footsteps that I thought I heard aweek or two ago in the garden at night! It is like the shadow of thechimney-pot! Am I becoming a coward?" The sun, which was glowing throughthe crevices in her shutters, and turning the damask curtains crimson,reassured her to such an extent that everything vanished from herthoughts, even the stone.

  "There was no more a stone on the bench than there was a man in a roundhat in the garden; I dreamed about the stone, as I did all the rest."

  She dressed herself, descended to the garden, ran to the bench, andbroke out in a cold perspiration. The stone was there.

  But this lasted only for a moment. That which is terror by night iscuriosity by day.

  "Bah!" said she, "come, let us see what it is."

  She lifted the stone, which was tolerably large. Beneath it wassomething which resembled a letter. It was a white envelope. Cosetteseized it. There was no address on one side, no seal on the other.Yet the envelope, though unsealed, was not empty. Papers could be seeninside.

  Cosette examined it. It was no longer alarm, it was no longer curiosity;it was a beginning of anxiety.

  Cosette drew from the envelope its contents, a little notebook of paper,each page of which was numbered and bore a few lines in a very fine andrather pretty handwriting, as Cosette thought.

  Cosette looked for a name; there was none. To whom was this addressed?To her, probably, since a hand had deposited the packet on her bench.From whom did it come? An irresistible fascination took possessionof her; she tried to turn away her eyes from the leaflets which weretrembling in her hand, she gazed at the sky, the street, the acaciasall bathed in light, the pigeons fluttering over a neighboring roof,and then her glance suddenly fell upon the manuscript, and she said toherself that she must know what it contained.

  This is what she read.