Part 188 (2/2)
Cosette, terrified by the melodrama improvised by Toussaint, and possibly, 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 at the stone which has been placed on the bench!” for fear of opening the garden gate and allowing ”the men” to enter. She saw that all the doors and windows were carefully fastened, made Toussaint go all over the house 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 full of caverns.
At sunrise,--the property of the rising sun is to make us laugh at all our terrors of the past night, and our laughter is in direct proportion to our terror which they have caused,--at sunrise Cosette, when she woke, viewed her fright as a nightmare, and said to herself: ”What have I been thinking of? It is like the footsteps that I thought I heard a week or two ago in the garden at night! It is like the shadow of the chimney-pot! Am I becoming a coward?” The sun, which was glowing through the crevices in her shutters, and turning the damask curtains crimson, rea.s.sured her to such an extent that everything vanished from her thoughts, even the stone.
”There was no more a stone on the bench than there was a man in a round hat 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, and broke out in a cold perspiration. The stone was there.
But this lasted only for a moment. That which is terror by night is curiosity by day.
”Bah!” said she, ”come, let us see what it is.”
She lifted the stone, which was tolerably large. Beneath it was something which resembled a letter. It was a white envelope. Cosette seized it. There was no address on one side, no seal on the other.
Yet the envelope, though unsealed, was not empty. Papers could be seen inside.
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 and rather 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 possession of her; she tried to turn away her eyes from the leaflets which were trembling in her hand, she gazed at the sky, the street, the acacias all bathed in light, the pigeons fluttering over a neighboring roof, and then her glance suddenly fell upon the ma.n.u.script, and she said to herself that she must know what it contained.
This is what she read.
CHAPTER IV--A HEART BENEATH A STONE
[Ill.u.s.tration: Cosette with Letter 4b4-5-cosette-after-letter]
The reduction of the universe to a single being, the expansion of a single being even to G.o.d, that is love.
Love is the salutation of the angels to the stars.
How sad is the soul, when it is sad through love!
What a void in the absence of the being who, by herself alone fills the world! Oh! how true it is that the beloved being becomes G.o.d. One could comprehend that G.o.d might be jealous of this had not G.o.d the Father of all evidently made creation for the soul, and the soul for love.
The glimpse of a smile beneath a white c.r.a.pe bonnet with a lilac curtain is sufficient to cause the soul to enter into the palace of dreams.
G.o.d is behind everything, but everything hides G.o.d. Things are black, creatures are opaque. To love a being is to render that being transparent.
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