CHAPTER VI.
THE BEGINNING OF AN ENIGMA.
Jean Valjean found himself in a large garden of most singularappearance, one of those gloomy gardens that appear made to be lookedat in winter, and by night. This garden was of an oblong shape, witha walk of tall poplars at the end, tall shrubs in the corner, and anunshadowed space, in the centre of which an isolated tree could bedistinguished. There were also a few stunted fruit-trees bristlinglike brambles, vegetable plots, a melon-bed, whose frames glistenedin the moonlight, and an old well. Here and there were stone benchesthat seemed black with moss; the walks were bordered with smallgloomy-looking and upright shrubs; grass covered one half of the walks,and a green mould the other half.
Jean Valjean had by his side the building by help of whose roof hehad descended, a pile of fagots, and behind the latter, close to thewall, a stone statue whose mutilated face was merely a shapeless maskappearing indistinctly in the darkness. The building was a species ofruin, containing several dismantled rooms, of which one was apparentlyemployed as a shed. The large edifice of the Rue Droit-mur had twofaçades looking into this garden at right angles, and these façadeswere even more melancholy than those outside. All the windows werebarred, and not a single light could be seen, while at the upper windowthere were scuttles as in prisons. One of these frontages threw itsshadow upon the other, which fell back on the garden like an immenseblack cloth. No other house could be noticed, and the end of the gardenwas lost in mist and night. Still, walls could be indistinctly noticedintersecting each other, as if there were other gardens beyond, andthe low roofs in the Rue Polonceau. Nothing more stern and solitarythan this garden could well be imagined; there was no one in it, as wasnatural at such an hour, but it did not look as if the spot were madefor any one to walk in even in bright daylight.
Jean Valjean's first care was to put on his shoes and stockings again,and then enter the shed with Cosette. A man who is escaping neverconsiders himself sufficiently concealed, and the child, who was stillthinking of Madame Thénardier, shared his instinct for concealment.Cosette trembled and clung close to him: for she could hear thetumultuous noise of the patrol searching the street and lane, the blowsof musket-butts against the stones, Javert's appeals to the men whomhe had posted, and his oaths, mingled with words which could not bedistinguished. At the expiration of a quarter of an hour this speciesof stormy grumbling appeared to be retiring, and Jean Valjean couldscarce breathe. He had gently laid his hand on Cosette's mouth. Thesolitude in which he found himself was so strangely calm, however, thatthe furious uproar so close at hand did not even cast the shadow of atrouble over it. All at once in the midst of this profound calm a newsound burst forth,--a heavenly, divine, ineffable sound, as ravishingas the other had been horrible. It was a hymn, that issued from thedarkness, a dazzling blending of prayer and harmony in the dark andfearful silence of the night: female voices, but composed at once ofthe pure accent of virgins and the simple voices of children,--suchvoices as do not belong to earth, and resemble those which the new-bornstill hear, and the dying begin to hear. This chant came from thegloomy building that commanded the garden, and at the moment when thenoise of the demons was retiring it seemed like a choir of angelsapproaching in the dark. Cosette and Jean Valjean fell on their knees.They knew not what it was, they knew not where they were; but both manand child, the penitent and the innocent, felt that they must fall ontheir knees. The voices had this strangeness about them, that theydid not prevent the edifice from appearing deserted; it seemed likea supernatural chant in an uninhabited house. While the voices sang,Jean Valjean thought of nothing else; he no longer saw the night, butan azure sky. He fancied that the wings which we all of us have withinus were expanding in him. The singing ceased; it had probably lastedsome time, but Jean Valjean could not have said how long, for hours ofecstasy never occupy more than a minute. All had become silent again:there was no sound in the garden, no sound in the street; that whichthreatened, that which reassured, all had vanished. The wind shookon the coping of the wall some dry grass, which produced a soft andmelancholy sound.