This said, Gavroche went away, or, to speak more correctly, resumed his birdlike flight to the spot whence he had escaped. He plunged again into the darkness, as if there were a hole there, with the rigid rapidity of a projectile: the lane of l'Homme Armé became once again silent and solitary. In a twinkling, this strange lad, who had shadows and dreams within him, buried himself in the gloom of these rows of black houses, and was lost in it like smoke in darkness, and it might have been fancied that he was dispersed, had vanished, had not, a few minutes after his disappearance, a noisy breakage of glass, and the splendid echo of a lamp falling on the pavement, suddenly reawakened the indignant citizens. It was Gavroche passing along the Rue de Chaume.
[CHAPTER III.]
WHILE COSETTE AND TOUSSAINT SLEEP.
Jean Valjean re-entered with Marius's letter: he groped his way up-stairs, pleased with the darkness like an owl that holds its prey, gently opened and closed the door, listened whether he could hear any sound, convinced himself that Cosette and Toussaint were, according to all appearances, asleep, and plunged into the Fumade lighting-bottle three or four matches before he could procure a spark, for his hand trembled so, as what he had just done was a robbery. At last his candle was lit, he sat down at the table, opened the letter, and read. In such violent emotions men do not read, they hurl down, so to speak, the paper they hold, clutch it like a victim, crumple it, bury in it the nails of their fury or delight, they run to the end, they dash at the beginning: the attention is feverish, it understands the essential facts, it seizes on one point, and all the rest disappears. In the note from Marius to Cosette Jean Valjean only saw these words,—
"I die: when you read this my soul will be near you."
In the presence of this line he felt a horrible bedazzlement; he remained for a moment as if crushed by the change of emotion which took place in him. He gazed at Marius's letter with a species of drunken amazement, he had before his eyes this splendor,—the death of the hated being. He uttered a frightful cry of internal joy. So all was over, and the dénouement arrived more quickly than he could have dared to hope. The being that encumbered his destiny was disappearing; he went away of his own accord, freely and willingly, without his doing anything in the matter, without any fault on the part of him, Jean Valjean; "that man" was going to die, perhaps was already dead. Here his fever made its calculations; "No, he is not yet dead. The letter was evidently written to be read by Cosette on the next morning: since the two volleys he had heard between eleven o'clock and midnight nothing had occurred: the barricade would not be seriously attacked till daybreak; but no matter, from the moment when 'that man' is mixed up in this war, he is lost, he is caught in the cog-wheels." Jean Valjean felt himself delivered; he was going to find himself once more alone with Cosette; the rivalry ceased and the future began again. He need only keep the note in his pocket, and Cosette would never know what had become of "that man;" "I have only to let things take their course. That man cannot escape, and if he is not dead yet, it is certain that he is going to die. What happiness!" All this said internally, he became gloomy: he went down and aroused the porter. About an hour later Jean Valjean left the house in the uniform of a National Guard and armed. The porter had easily obtained for him in the neighborhood the articles to complete his equipment: he had a loaded musket and a full cartouche-box. He proceeded in the direction of the markets.