CHAPTER II.
COSETTE'S FEARS.
In the first fortnight of April Jean Valjean went on a journey; this,as we know, occurred from time to time at very lengthened intervals,and he remained away one or two days at the most. Where did he go?No one knew, not even Cosette; once only she had accompanied him ina hackney coach, upon the occasion of one of these absences, to thecorner of a little lane which was called, "Impasse de la Planchette."He got out there, and the coach carried Cosette back to the Rue deBabylone. It was generally when money ran short in the house that JeanValjean took these trips. Jean Valjean, then, was absent; and he hadsaid, "I shall be back in three days." At night Cosette was alone inthe drawing-room, and in order to while away the time, she opened herpiano and began singing to her own accompaniment the song of Euryanthe,"Hunters wandering in the wood," which is probably the finest thingwe possess in the shape of music. When she had finished she remainedpassive. Suddenly she fancied she heard some one walking in the garden.It could not be her father, for he was away; and it could not beToussaint, as she was in bed, for it was ten o'clock at night. Cosettewas near the drawing-room shutters, which were closed, and put her earto them; and it seemed to her that it was the footfall of a man who waswalking very gently. She hurried up to her room on the first floor,opened a Venetian frame in her shutter, and looked out into the garden.The moon was shining bright as day, and there was nobody in it. Sheopened her window; the garden was perfectly calm, and all that could beseen of the street was as deserted as usual.
Cosette thought that she was mistaken, and she had supposed that sheheard the noise. It was an hallucination produced by Weber's gloomyand wonderful chorus, which opens before the mind bewildering depths;which trembles before the eye like a dizzy forest in which we hear thecracking of the dead branches under the restless feet of the hunters,of whom we catch a glimpse in the obscurity. She thought no more ofit. Moreover, Cosette was not naturally very timid: she had in herveins some of the blood of the gypsy, and the adventurer who goes aboutbarefooted. As we may remember, she was rather a lark than a dove, andshe had a stern and brave temper.
The next evening, at nightfall, she was walking about the garden. Inthe midst of the confused thoughts which occupied her mind, she fanciedshe could distinguish now and then a noise like that of the previousnight, as if some one were walking in the gloom under the trees notfar from her; but she said to herself that nothing so resembles thesound of a footfall on grass as the grating of two branches together,and she took no heed of it,--besides, she saw nothing. She left the"thicket," and had a small grass-plat to cross ere she reached thehouse. The moon, which had just risen behind her, projected Cosette'sshadow, as she left the clump of bushes, upon the grass in front ofher, and she stopped in terror. By the side of her shadow the moondistinctly traced on the grass another singularly startling andterrible shadow,--a shadow with a hat on its head. It was like theshadow of a man standing at the edge of the clump a few paces behindCosette. For a moment she was unable to speak or cry, or call out, orstir, or turn her head; but at last she collected all her courage andboldly turned round. There was nobody; she looked on the ground and theshadow had disappeared. She went back into the shrubs, bravely searchedin every corner, went as far as the railings, and discovered nothing.She felt really chilled. Was it again an hallucination? What! two daysin succession? One hallucination might pass, but two! The alarmingpoint was, that the shadow was most certainly not a ghost, for ghostsnever wear round hats.
The next day Jean Valjean returned, and Cosette told him what shefancied she had seen and heard. She expected to be reassured, and thather father would shrug his shoulders and say, "You are a little goose;"but Jean Valjean became anxious.
"Perhaps it is nothing," he said to her. He left her with some excuse,and went into the garden, where she saw him examine the railings withconsiderable attention. In the night she woke up. This time she wascertain, and she distinctly heard some one walking just under herwindows. She walked to her shutter and opened it. There was in thegarden really a man holding a large stick in his hand. At the momentwhen she was going to cry out, the moon lit up the man's face,--itwas her father. She went to bed again saying, "He seems really veryanxious!" Jean Valjean passed that and the two following nights inthe garden, and Cosette saw him through the hole in her shutter. Onthe third night the moon was beginning to rise later, and it mighthave been about one in the morning when she beard a hearty burst oflaughter, and her father's voice calling her:--
"Cosette!"
She leaped out of bed, put on her dressing-gown, and opened her window;her father was standing on the grass-plat below.
"I have woke you up to reassure you," he said; "look at this,--here'syour shadow in the round hat."
And he showed her on the grass a shadow which the moon designed, andwhich really looked rather like the spectre of a man wearing a roundhat. It was an outline produced by a zinc chimney-pot with a cowl,which rose above an adjoining roof. Cosette also began laughing,all her mournful suppositions fell away, and the next morning atbreakfast she jested at the ill-omened garden, haunted by the ghost ofchimney-pots. Jean Valjean quite regained his ease; as for Cosette,she did not notice particularly whether the chimney-pot were really inthe direction of the shadow which she had seen or fancied she saw,and whether the moon were in the same part of the heavens. She did notcross-question herself as to the singularity of a chimney-pot whichis afraid of being caught in the act, and retires when its shadow islooked at; for the shadow did retire when Cosette turned round, andshe fancied herself quite certain of that fact. Cosette became quitereassured, for the demonstration seemed to her perfect, and the thoughtleft her brain that there could have been any one walking about thegarden by night. A few days after, however, a fresh incident occurred.