We are of the number who fall speechless in the presence of young girls and flowers, since we think them worthy of veneration.
Cosette dressed herself very hastily, combed and dressed her hair, which was a very simple matter in those days, when women did not swell out their curls and bands with cushions and puffs, and did not put crinoline in their locks.
Then she opened the window and cast her eyes around her in every direction, hoping to descry some bit of the street, an angle of the house, an edge of pavement, so that she might be able to watch for Marius there.
But no view of the outside was to be had.
The back court was surrounded by tolerably high walls, and the outlook was only on several gardens.
Cosette pronounced these gardens hideous: for the first time in her life, she found flowers ugly.
The smallest scrap of the gutter of the street would have met her wishes better.
She decided to gaze at the sky, as though she thought that Marius might come from that quarter.
All at once, she burst into tears.
Not that this was fickleness of soul; but hopes cut in twain by dejection—that was her case.
She had a confused consciousness of something horrible.
Thoughts were rife in the air, in fact.
She told herself that she was not sure of anything, that to withdraw herself from sight was to be lost; and the idea that Marius could return to her from heaven appeared to her no longer charming but mournful.
Then, as is the nature of these clouds, calm returned to her, and hope and a sort of unconscious smile, which yet indicated trust in God.
Every one in the house was still asleep.
A country-like silence reigned.
Not a shutter had been opened.
The porter’s lodge was closed. Toussaint had not risen, and Cosette, naturally, thought that her father was asleep.
She must have suffered much, and she must have still been suffering greatly, for she said to herself, that her father had been unkind; but she counted on Marius.
The eclipse of such a light was decidedly impossible.
Now and then, she heard sharp shocks in the distance, and she said:
“It is odd that people should be opening and shutting their carriage gates so early.”
They were the reports of the cannon battering the barricade.
A few feet below Cosette’s window, in the ancient and perfectly black cornice of the wall, there was a martin’s nest; the curve of this nest formed a little projection beyond the cornice, so that from above it was possible to look into this little paradise.
The mother was there, spreading her wings like a fan over her brood; the father fluttered about, flew away, then came back, bearing in his beak food and kisses.
The dawning day gilded this happy thing, the great law, “Multiply,” lay there smiling and august, and that sweet mystery unfolded in the glory of the morning.
Cosette, with her hair in the sunlight, her soul absorbed in chim?ras, illuminated by love within and by the dawn without, bent over mechanically, and almost without daring to avow to herself that she was thinking at the same time of Marius, began to gaze at these birds, at this family, at that male and female, that mother and her little ones, with the profound trouble which a nest produces on a virgin.
CHAPTER XI—THE SHOT WHICH MISSES NOTHING AND KILLS NO ONE
The assailants’ fire continued.
Musketry and grape-shot alternated, but without committing great ravages, to tell the truth.
The top alone of the Corinthe facade suffered; the window on the first floor, and the attic window in the roof, riddled with buckshot and biscaiens, were slowly losing their shape.
The combatants who had been posted there had been obliged to withdraw.
However, this is according to the tactics of barricades; to fire for a long while, in order to exhaust the insurgents’ ammunition, if they commit the mistake of replying.
When it is perceived, from the slackening of their fire, that they have no more powder and ball, the assault is made.
Enjolras had not fallen into this trap; the barricade did not reply.
At every discharge by platoons, Gavroche puffed out his cheek with his tongue, a sign of supreme disdain.
“Good for you,” said he, “rip up the cloth. We want some lint.”
Courfeyrac called the grape-shot to order for the little effect which it produced, and said to the cannon:
“You are growing diffuse, my good fellow.”
One gets puzzled in battle, as at a ball.
It is probable that this silence on the part of the redoubt began to render the besiegers uneasy, and to make them fear some unexpected incident, and that they felt the necessity of getting a clear view behind that heap of paving-stones, and of knowing what was going on behind that impassable wall which received blows without retorting.
The insurgents suddenly perceived a helmet glittering in the sun on a neighboring roof.
A fireman had placed his back against a tall chimney, and seemed to be acting as sentinel.
His glance fell directly down into the barricade.
“There’s an embarrassing watcher,” said Enjolras.
Jean Valjean had returned Enjolras’ rifle, but he had his own gun.
Without saying a word, he took aim at the fireman, and, a second later, the helmet, smashed by a bullet, rattled noisily into the street.
The terrified soldier made haste to disappear.
A second observer took his place.
This one was an officer.