Jean Valjean shuddered with the continual tremor of the unhappy.
For them everything is hostile and suspicious.
They distrust the day because it enables people to see them, and the night because it aids in surprising them.
A little while before he had shivered because the garden was deserted, and now he shivered because there was some one there.
He fell back from chimerical terrors to real terrors.
He said to himself that Javert and the spies had, perhaps, not taken their departure; that they had, no doubt, left people on the watch in the street; that if this man should discover him in the garden, he would cry out for help against thieves and deliver him up.
He took the sleeping Cosette gently in his arms and carried her behind a heap of old furniture, which was out of use, in the most remote corner of the shed.
Cosette did not stir.
From that point he scrutinized the appearance of the being in the melon patch.
The strange thing about it was, that the sound of the bell followed each of this man’s movements.
When the man approached, the sound approached; when the man retreated, the sound retreated; if he made any hasty gesture, a tremolo accompanied the gesture; when he halted, the sound ceased.
It appeared evident that the bell was attached to that man; but what could that signify?
Who was this man who had a bell suspended about him like a ram or an ox?
As he put these questions to himself, he touched Cosette’s hands.
They were icy cold.
“Ah! good God!” he cried. He spoke to her in a low voice:— “Cosette!”
She did not open her eyes.
He shook her vigorously.
She did not wake.
“Is she dead?” he said to himself, and sprang to his feet, quivering from head to foot.
The most frightful thoughts rushed pell-mell through his mind.
There are moments when hideous surmises assail us like a cohort of furies, and violently force the partitions of our brains.
When those we love are in question, our prudence invents every sort of madness.
He remembered that sleep in the open air on a cold night may be fatal.
Cosette was pale, and had fallen at full length on the ground at his feet, without a movement.
He listened to her breathing: she still breathed, but with a respiration which seemed to him weak and on the point of extinction.
How was he to warm her back to life?
How was he to rouse her?
All that was not connected with this vanished from his thoughts.
He rushed wildly from the ruin.
It was absolutely necessary that Cosette should be in bed and beside a fire in less than a quarter of an hour.
CHAPTER IX—THE MAN WITH THE BELL
He walked straight up to the man whom he saw in the garden.
He had taken in his hand the roll of silver which was in the pocket of his waistcoat.
The man’s head was bent down, and he did not see him approaching.
In a few strides Jean Valjean stood beside him.
Jean Valjean accosted him with the cry:— “One hundred francs!”
The man gave a start and raised his eyes.
“You can earn a hundred francs,” went on Jean Valjean, “if you will grant me shelter for this night.”
The moon shone full upon Jean Valjean’s terrified countenance.
“What! so it is you, Father Madeleine!” said the man.
That name, thus pronounced, at that obscure hour, in that unknown spot, by that strange man, made Jean Valjean start back.
He had expected anything but that.
The person who thus addressed him was a bent and lame old man, dressed almost like a peasant, who wore on his left knee a leather knee-cap, whence hung a moderately large bell.
His face, which was in the shadow, was not distinguishable.
However, the goodman had removed his cap, and exclaimed, trembling all over:— “Ah, good God!
How come you here, Father Madeleine?
Where did you enter? Dieu-Jesus!
Did you fall from heaven?
There is no trouble about that: if ever you do fall, it will be from there.