It could not be her father, he was absent; it could not be Toussaint, she was in bed, and it was ten o’clock at night.
She stepped to the shutter of the drawing-room, which was closed, and laid her ear against it.
It seemed to her that it was the tread of a man, and that he was walking very softly.
She mounted rapidly to the first floor, to her own chamber, opened a small wicket in her shutter, and peeped into the garden.
The moon was at the full.
Everything could be seen as plainly as by day.
There was no one there.
She opened the window.
The garden was absolutely calm, and all that was visible was that the street was deserted as usual.
Cosette thought that she had been mistaken. She thought that she had heard a noise.
It was a hallucination produced by the melancholy and magnificent chorus of Weber, which lays open before the mind terrified depths, which trembles before the gaze like a dizzy forest, and in which one hears the crackling of dead branches beneath the uneasy tread of the huntsmen of whom one catches a glimpse through the twilight.
She thought no more about it.
Moreover, Cosette was not very timid by nature.
There flowed in her veins some of the blood of the bohemian and the adventuress who runs barefoot.
It will be remembered that she was more of a lark than a dove.
There was a foundation of wildness and bravery in her.
On the following day, at an earlier hour, towards nightfall, she was strolling in the garden.
In the midst of the confused thoughts which occupied her, she fancied that she caught for an instant a sound similar to that of the preceding evening, as though some one were walking beneath the trees in the dusk, and not very far from her; but she told herself that nothing so closely resembles a step on the grass as the friction of two branches which have moved from side to side, and she paid no heed to it.
Besides, she could see nothing.
She emerged from “the thicket”; she had still to cross a small lawn to regain the steps.
The moon, which had just risen behind her, cast Cosette’s shadow in front of her upon this lawn, as she came out from the shrubbery.
Cosette halted in alarm.
Beside her shadow, the moon outlined distinctly upon the turf another shadow, which was particularly startling and terrible, a shadow which had a round hat.
It was the shadow of a man, who must have been standing on the border of the clump of shrubbery, a few paces in the rear of Cosette.
She stood for a moment without the power to speak, or cry, or call, or stir, or turn her head.
Then she summoned up all her courage, and turned round resolutely.
There was no one there.
She glanced on the ground.
The figure had disappeared.
She re-entered the thicket, searched the corners boldly, went as far as the gate, and found nothing.
She felt herself absolutely chilled with terror.
Was this another hallucination?
What!
Two days in succession!
One hallucination might pass, but two hallucinations?
The disquieting point about it was, that the shadow had assuredly not been a phantom.
Phantoms do not wear round hats.
On the following day Jean Valjean returned.
Cosette told him what she thought she had heard and seen. She wanted to be reassured and to see her father shrug his shoulders and say to her:
“You are a little goose.”
Jean Valjean grew anxious.
“It cannot be anything,” said he.
He left her under some pretext, and went into the garden, and she saw him examining the gate with great attention.
During the night she woke up; this time she was sure, and she distinctly heard some one walking close to the flight of steps beneath her window.
She ran to her little wicket and opened it.
In point of fact, there was a man in the garden, with a large club in his hand.
Just as she was about to scream, the moon lighted up the man’s profile.
It was her father.
She returned to her bed, saying to herself:
“He is very uneasy!”