Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [179]
Cosette watched him, stupefied, without saying a word. Jean Valjean’s charge and the name of the Thénardiess had made her dumb.
All at once, she heard Jean Valjean’s voice calling to her in a low whisper:
“Put your back against the wall.”
She obeyed.
“Don’t speak, and don’t be afraid,” added Jean Valjean.
And she felt herself lifted from the ground.
Before she had time to think where she was she was at the top of the wall.
Jean Valjean seized her, put her on his back, took her two little hands in his left hand, lay down flat and crawled along the top of the wall as far as the cut-off comer. As he had supposed, there was a building there, the roof of which sloped from the top of the wooden casing we have mentioned very nearly to the ground, with a gentle inclination, and just reaching to the lime-tree.
A fortunate circumstance, for the wall was much higher on this side than on the street. Jean Valjean saw the ground beneath him at a great depth.
He had just reached the inclined plane of the roof, and had not yet left the crest of the wall, when a violent uproar proclaimed the arrival of the patrol. He heard the thundering voice of Javert:
“Search the cul-de-sac! The Rue Droit Mur is guarded, the Petite Rue Picpus also. I’ll bet he’s in the cul-de-sac.”
The soldiers rushed into the Cul-de-sac Genrot.
Jean Valjean slid down the roof, keeping hold of Cosette, reached the lime-tree, and jumped to the ground. Whether from terror, or from courage, Cosette had not uttered a whisper. Her hands were a little scraped.
6
A MYSTERY BEGINS
JEAN VALJEAN found himself in a sort of garden, very large and of a singular appearance; one of those gloomy gardens which seem made to be seen in the winter and at night. This garden was oblong, with a row of tall poplars at the far end, some tall forest trees in the corners, and a clear space in the centre, where stood a very large isolated tree, then a few fruit trees, contorted and shaggy, like big bushes, some vegetable plots, a melon patch the glass covers of which shone in the moonlight, and an old well. There were here and there stone benches which seemed black with moss. The walks were bordered with sorry little shrubs perfectly straight. The grass covered half of them, and a green moss covered the rest.
Jean Valjean had on one side the building, down the roof of which he had come, a wood-pile, and behind the wood, against the wall, a stone statue, the mutilated face of which was now nothing but a shapeless mask which was seen dimly through the darkness.
The building was in ruins, but some unfurnished rooms could be distinguished in it, one of which was cluttered, and appeared to serve as a shed.
Jean Valjean’s first care had been to find his shoes, and put them on; then he entered the shed with Cosette. A man trying to escape never thinks himself sufficiently concealed. The child, thinking constantly of the Thénardiess, shared his instinct, and cowered down as low as she could.
Cosette trembled, and pressed closely to his side. They heard the tumultuous clamour of the patrol ransacking the cul-de-sac and the street, the clatter of their muskets against the stones, the calls of Javert to the watchmen he had stationed, and his curses mingled with words which they could not distinguish.
At the end of a quarter of an hour it seemed as though this stormy rumbling began to recede. Jean Valjean did not breathe.
He had placed his hand gently upon Cosette’s mouth.
But the solitude about him was so strangely calm that that frightful din, so furious