Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [181]
Meanwhile, through the reverie into which he had fallen, he had heard for some time a singular noise. It sounded like a little bell that some one was shaking. This noise was in the garden. It was heard distinctly though feebly. It resembled the dimly heard tinkling of cow-bells in the pastures at night.
This noise made Jean Valjean turn.
He looked, and saw that there was some one in the garden.
Something which resembled a man was walking among the glass covers of the melon patch, rising up, stooping down, stopping, with a regular motion, as if he were drawing or stretching something upon the ground. This being appeared to limp.
Jean Valjean shuddered with the continual tremor of the outcast. To them everything is hostile and suspicious. They distrust the day because it helps to reveal them, and the night because it helps others to catch them. A moment ago he was shuddering because the garden was empty, now he shuddered because there was some one in it.
He fell again from chimerical terrors into real terrors. He said to himself that perhaps Javert and his spies had not gone away, that they had doubtless left somebody on the watch in the street; that, if this man should discover him in the garden, he would cry thief, and would deliver him up. He took the sleeping Cosette gently in his arms and carried her into the furthest corner of the shed behind a heap of old furniture that was out of use. Cosette did not stir.
From there he watched the strange motions of the man in the melon patch. It seemed very singular, but the sound of the bell followed every movement of the man. When the man approached, the sound approached; when he moved away, the sound moved away; if he made some sudden motion, a trill accompanied the motion; when he stopped, the noise ceased. It seemed evident that the bell was fastened to this man; but then what could that mean? what was this man to whom a bell was hung as to a ram or a cow?
While he was resolving these questions, he touched Cosette’s hands. They were icy.
“Oh! God!” said he.
He called to her in a low voice:
“Cosette!”
She did not open her eyes.
He shook her smartly.
She did not wake.
“Could she be dead?” said he, and he sprang up, shuddering from head to foot.
The most frightful thoughts rushed through his mind in confusion. There are moments when hideous suppositions besiege us like a throng of furies and violently force the portals of our brain. When those whom we love are in danger, our solicitude invents all sorts of crazy ideas. He remembered that sleep may be fatal in the open air in a cold night.
Cosette was pallid; she had fallen prostrate on the ground at his feet, making no sign.
He listened for her breathing; she was breathing; but with a respiration that appeared feeble and about to stop.
How should he get her warm again? how rouse her? All else was banished from his thoughts. He rushed desperately out of the ruin.
It was absolutely necessary that in less than a quarter of an hour Cosette should be in bed and before a fire.
9
THE MAN WITH THE BELL
HE WALKED straight to the man whom he saw in the garden. He had taken in his hand the roll of money which was in his vest-pocket.
This man had his head down, and did not see him coming. A few strides, Jean Valjean was at his side.
Jean Valjean approached him, exclaiming:
“A hundred francs!”
The man started and raised his eyes.
“A hundred francs for you,” continued Jean Valjean, “if you will give me refuge to-night.”
The moon shone full in Jean Valjean’s bewildered face.
“What, it is you, Father Madeleine!” said the man.
This name, thus pronounced, at this dark hour, in this unknown place, by this unknown man, made Jean Valjean start back.
He was ready for anything but that. The speaker was an old man, bent and lame, dressed much like a peasant, who had on his left knee a leather knee-cap from which hung a rather