Cosette did not hesitate a moment.
One man only.
He!
Day had dawned once more in her spirit; all had reappeared.
She felt an unheard-of joy, and a profound anguish.
It was he! he who had written! he was there! it was he whose arm had been thrust through that railing!
While she was forgetful of him, he had found her again!
But had she forgotten him?
No, never!
She was foolish to have thought so for a single moment.
She had always loved him, always adored him.
The fire had been smothered, and had smouldered for a time, but she saw all plainly now; it had but made headway, and now it had burst forth afresh, and had inflamed her whole being.
This note-book was like a spark which had fallen from that other soul into hers.
She felt the conflagration starting up once more.
She imbued herself thoroughly with every word of the manuscript:
“Oh yes!” said she, “how perfectly I recognize all that!
That is what I had already read in his eyes.”
As she was finishing it for the third time, Lieutenant Theodule passed the gate once more, and rattled his spurs upon the pavement.
Cosette was forced to raise her eyes.
She thought him insipid, silly, stupid, useless, foppish, displeasing, impertinent, and extremely ugly.
The officer thought it his duty to smile at her.
She turned away as in shame and indignation.
She would gladly have thrown something at his head.
She fled, re-entered the house, and shut herself up in her chamber to peruse the manuscript once more, to learn it by heart, and to dream.
When she had thoroughly mastered it she kissed it and put it in her bosom.
All was over, Cosette had fallen back into deep, seraphic love.
The abyss of Eden had yawned once more.
All day long, Cosette remained in a sort of bewilderment.
She scarcely thought, her ideas were in the state of a tangled skein in her brain, she could not manage to conjecture anything, she hoped through a tremor, what? vague things.
She dared make herself no promises, and she did not wish to refuse herself anything.
Flashes of pallor passed over her countenance, and shivers ran through her frame.
It seemed to her, at intervals, that she was entering the land of chim?ras; she said to herself:
“Is this reality?”
Then she felt of the dear paper within her bosom under her gown, she pressed it to her heart, she felt its angles against her flesh; and if Jean Valjean had seen her at the moment, he would have shuddered in the presence of that luminous and unknown joy, which overflowed from beneath her eyelids.—“Oh yes!” she thought, “it is certainly he!
This comes from him, and is for me!”
And she told herself that an intervention of the angels, a celestial chance, had given him back to her.
Oh transfiguration of love!
Oh dreams!
That celestial chance, that intervention of the angels, was a pellet of bread tossed by one thief to another thief, from the Charlemagne Courtyard to the Lion’s Ditch, over the roofs of La Force.
CHAPTER VI—OLD PEOPLE ARE MADE TO GO OUT OPPORTUNELY
When evening came, Jean Valjean went out; Cosette dressed herself.
She arranged her hair in the most becoming manner, and she put on a dress whose bodice had received one snip of the scissors too much, and which, through this slope, permitted a view of the beginning of her throat, and was, as young girls say, “a trifle indecent.”
It was not in the least indecent, but it was prettier than usual.
She made her toilet thus without knowing why she did so.
Did she mean to go out?
No.
Was she expecting a visitor?
No.
At dusk, she went down to the garden.
Toussaint was busy in her kitchen, which opened on the back yard.