Victor Hugo Fullscreen Les Miserables 1 (1862)

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What was to become of her? Where was she to go?

In front of her was the spectre of the Thenardier; behind her all the phantoms of the night and of the forest.

It was before the Thenardier that she recoiled.

She resumed her path to the spring, and began to run.

She emerged from the village, she entered the forest at a run, no longer looking at or listening to anything.

She only paused in her course when her breath failed her; but she did not halt in her advance.

She went straight before her in desperation.

As she ran she felt like crying.

The nocturnal quivering of the forest surrounded her completely.

She no longer thought, she no longer saw.

The immensity of night was facing this tiny creature.

On the one hand, all shadow; on the other, an atom.

It was only seven or eight minutes’ walk from the edge of the woods to the spring.

Cosette knew the way, through having gone over it many times in daylight.

Strange to say, she did not get lost.

A remnant of instinct guided her vaguely.

But she did not turn her eyes either to right or to left, for fear of seeing things in the branches and in the brushwood.

In this manner she reached the spring.

It was a narrow, natural basin, hollowed out by the water in a clayey soil, about two feet deep, surrounded with moss and with those tall, crimped grasses which are called Henry IV.‘s frills, and paved with several large stones.

A brook ran out of it, with a tranquil little noise.

Cosette did not take time to breathe.

It was very dark, but she was in the habit of coming to this spring.

She felt with her left hand in the dark for a young oak which leaned over the spring, and which usually served to support her, found one of its branches, clung to it, bent down, and plunged the bucket in the water.

She was in a state of such violent excitement that her strength was trebled.

While thus bent over, she did not notice that the pocket of her apron had emptied itself into the spring. The fifteen-sou piece fell into the water.

Cosette neither saw nor heard it fall.

She drew out the bucket nearly full, and set it on the grass.

That done, she perceived that she was worn out with fatigue.

She would have liked to set out again at once, but the effort required to fill the bucket had been such that she found it impossible to take a step.

She was forced to sit down.

She dropped on the grass, and remained crouching there.

She shut her eyes; then she opened them again, without knowing why, but because she could not do otherwise.

The agitated water in the bucket beside her was describing circles which resembled tin serpents.

Overhead the sky was covered with vast black clouds, which were like masses of smoke.

The tragic mask of shadow seemed to bend vaguely over the child.

Jupiter was setting in the depths.

The child stared with bewildered eyes at this great star, with which she was unfamiliar, and which terrified her.

The planet was, in fact, very near the horizon and was traversing a dense layer of mist which imparted to it a horrible ruddy hue.

The mist, gloomily empurpled, magnified the star.

One would have called it a luminous wound.

A cold wind was blowing from the plain.

The forest was dark, not a leaf was moving; there were none of the vague, fresh gleams of summertide.

Great boughs uplifted themselves in frightful wise.

Slender and misshapen bushes whistled in the clearings.

The tall grasses undulated like eels under the north wind.

The nettles seemed to twist long arms furnished with claws in search of prey.

Some bits of dry heather, tossed by the breeze, flew rapidly by, and had the air of fleeing in terror before something which was coming after.

On all sides there were lugubrious stretches.

The darkness was bewildering.

Man requires light.