Full trunks would have required porters, and porters are witnesses.
A fiacre had been summoned to the door on the Rue de Babylone, and they had taken their departure.
It was with difficulty that Toussaint had obtained permission to pack up a little linen and clothes and a few toilet articles.
Cosette had taken only her portfolio and her blotting-book.
Jean Valjean, with a view to augmenting the solitude and the mystery of this departure, had arranged to quit the pavilion of the Rue Plumet only at dusk, which had allowed Cosette time to write her note to Marius.
They had arrived in the Rue de l’Homme Arme after night had fully fallen.
They had gone to bed in silence.
The lodgings in the Rue de l’Homme Arme were situated on a back court, on the second floor, and were composed of two sleeping-rooms, a dining-room and a kitchen adjoining the dining-room, with a garret where there was a folding-bed, and which fell to Toussaint’s share.
The dining-room was an antechamber as well, and separated the two bedrooms.
The apartment was provided with all necessary utensils.
People re-acquire confidence as foolishly as they lose it; human nature is so constituted.
Hardly had Jean Valjean reached the Rue de l’Homme Arme when his anxiety was lightened and by degrees dissipated.
There are soothing spots which act in some sort mechanically on the mind.
An obscure street, peaceable inhabitants. Jean Valjean experienced an indescribable contagion of tranquillity in that alley of ancient Paris, which is so narrow that it is barred against carriages by a transverse beam placed on two posts, which is deaf and dumb in the midst of the clamorous city, dimly lighted at midday, and is, so to speak, incapable of emotions between two rows of lofty houses centuries old, which hold their peace like ancients as they are.
There was a touch of stagnant oblivion in that street.
Jean Valjean drew his breath once more there.
How could he be found there?
His first care was to place the inseparable beside him.
He slept well.
Night brings wisdom; we may add, night soothes.
On the following morning he awoke in a mood that was almost gay.
He thought the dining-room charming, though it was hideous, furnished with an old round table, a long sideboard surmounted by a slanting mirror, a dilapidated armchair, and several plain chairs which were encumbered with Toussaint’s packages.
In one of these packages Jean Valjean’s uniform of a National Guard was visible through a rent.
As for Cosette, she had had Toussaint take some broth to her room, and did not make her appearance until evening.
About five o’clock, Toussaint, who was going and coming and busying herself with the tiny establishment, set on the table a cold chicken, which Cosette, out of deference to her father, consented to glance at.
That done, Cosette, under the pretext of an obstinate sick headache, had bade Jean Valjean good night and had shut herself up in her chamber.
Jean Valjean had eaten a wing of the chicken with a good appetite, and with his elbows on the table, having gradually recovered his serenity, had regained possession of his sense of security.
While he was discussing this modest dinner, he had, twice or thrice, noticed in a confused way, Toussaint’s stammering words as she said to him:
“Monsieur, there is something going on, they are fighting in Paris.”
But absorbed in a throng of inward calculations, he had paid no heed to it.
To tell the truth, he had not heard her.
He rose and began to pace from the door to the window and from the window to the door, growing ever more serene.
With this calm, Cosette, his sole anxiety, recurred to his thoughts.
Not that he was troubled by this headache, a little nervous crisis, a young girl’s fit of sulks, the cloud of a moment, there would be nothing left of it in a day or two; but he meditated on the future, and, as was his habit, he thought of it with pleasure.
After all, he saw no obstacle to their happy life resuming its course.
At certain hours, everything seems impossible, at others everything appears easy; Jean Valjean was in the midst of one of these good hours.
They generally succeed the bad ones, as day follows night, by virtue of that law of succession and of contrast which lies at the very foundation of nature, and which superficial minds call antithesis.
In this peaceful street where he had taken refuge, Jean Valjean got rid of all that had been troubling him for some time past.
This very fact, that he had seen many shadows, made him begin to perceive a little azure.
To have quitted the Rue Plumet without complications or incidents was one good step already accomplished.
Perhaps it would be wise to go abroad, if only for a few months, and to set out for London.
Well, they would go.
What difference did it make to him whether he was in France or in England, provided he had Cosette beside him?
Cosette was his nation. Cosette sufficed for his happiness; the idea that he, perhaps, did not suffice for Cosette’s happiness, that idea which had formerly been the cause of his fever and sleeplessness, did not even present itself to his mind.
He was in a state of collapse from all his past sufferings, and he was fully entered on optimism.
Cosette was by his side, she seemed to be his; an optical illusion which every one has experienced.
He arranged in his own mind, with all sorts of felicitous devices, his departure for England with Cosette, and he beheld his felicity reconstituted wherever he pleased, in the perspective of his reverie.
As he paced to and fro with long strides, his glance suddenly encountered something strange.
In the inclined mirror facing him which surmounted the sideboard, he saw the four lines which follow:—
“My dearest, alas! my father insists on our setting out immediately.