At nightfall, at the moment when light disappears, and before all in winter, at the hour when the evening breeze is tearing from the elms their last rusty leaves, when the darkness is profound and starless, and when the moon and the wind make rents in the clouds, this boulevard became really terrifying. The black outlines were lost in the gloom, and the passer-by could not refrain from thinking of the countless gallows traditions of the spot. This solitude, in which so many crimes had been committed, had something awful about it; traps could almost be foreseen in the darkness, all the confused shapes of the darkness appeared suspicious, and the long, hollow squares noticed between the trees seemed graves. By day it was ugly, in the evening lugubrious, and at night sinister. In the summer twilight a few old women might be seen sitting under the elms upon raw, rotted benches; these worthy old ladies had a partiality for begging. Even at the time of which we write, however, this quarter, which looked more superannuated than ancient, was striving to transform itself, and any one who wished to see it was obliged to make haste, for each day some detail disappeared from the ensemble. For the last twenty years the Orleans railway station has been by the side of the old faubourg, and has worked it up; for wherever a station is built on the skirt of a capital it is the death of a suburb and the birth of a town. Round these centres of popular movement, at the rolling of these mighty machines, under the breath of these monstrous horses of civilization which devour coal and snort fire, the earth trembles, and opens to swallow up the old abodes of men and bring forth new ones; the old houses crumble away, and new ones rise in their place.
From the day when the Orleans railway station invaded the territory of the Salpêtrière, the old narrow streets that border the Jardin des Plantes have been shaken down, traversed as they are three or four times a day by those currents of diligences, hackney coaches, and omnibuses, which, within a given time, drive back the houses on both sides: for it is a curious though perfectly true fact that, just as in large capitals the sun makes the fronts of houses grow and expand to the south, the frequent passing of vehicles widens streets. The symptoms of a new life are visible in the remotest corners of this old provincial district; pavement is being laid down and is beginning to extend to spots where there are as yet no wayfarers. One memorable morning in July, 1845, the bitumen caldrons were suddenly seen smoking there, and on that day it may be said that civilization reached the Rue de l'Oursine, and that Paris entered the Faubourg St. Marceau.
[CHAPTER II.]
THE NEST OF AN OWL AND A LINNET.
Jean Valjean stopped before No. 50-52. Like the dull bird, he had selected this deserted spot in which to build his nest. He felt in his pocket, took out a latch-key, opened and carefully shut the door again, and went upstairs, still carrying Cosette on his back. When he reached the landing he took from his pocket a key, with which he opened another door. The room he entered was a sort of spacious garret, furnished with a mattress laid on the ground, a table, and a few chairs. There was a burning stove in the corner, and the boulevard lamp faintly illumined this poor interior. At the end of the room was a closet with a poor bedstead, to which Jean Valjean carried the child and laid her on it, without awaking her. He struck a light and lit a candle,—all this had been prepared on the previous day,—and he then began gazing at Cosette with a look full of ecstasy, in which the expression of kindness and tenderness almost attained delirium. The little girl, with that calm confidence which only appertains to extreme strength and extreme weakness, had fallen asleep without knowing with whom she was, and continued to sleep without knowing where she was. Jean Valjean bent down and kissed the child's hand. Nine months previously he had kissed her mother's hand, who bad also just fallen asleep, and the same painful, religious, poignant feeling filled his heart. He knelt down by the side of Cosette's bed.
Long after daybreak the child was still asleep. A pale beam of the December sun filtered through the window and made large strips of light and shadow on the ceiling. Suddenly a heavily-laden wagon, passing along the boulevard, shook the house like a blast of wind and made it tremble from top to bottom.
"Yes, Madame," Cosette cried, waking with a start, "I am coming directly."
And she jumped out of bed, her eyelids still half closed by the weight of sleep, and stretched out her arms to a corner of the wall.
"Oh, goodness, my broom!" she said.