"Sometimes," the miserable man replied.
It was, in fact, the Chain, which, leaving Bicêtre before daybreak, was taking the Mans road, to avoid Fontainebleau, where the king then was. This détour made the fearful journey last three or four days longer; but it surely may be prolonged to save a royal personage the sight of a punishment! Jean Valjean went home crushed; for such encounters are blows, and the recollections they leave behind resemble a concussion. While walking along the Rue de Babylone, Jean Valjean did not notice that Cosette asked him other questions about what they had just seen; perhaps he was himself too absorbed in his despondency to notice her remarks and answer them. At night, however, when Cosette left him to go to bed, he heard her say in a low voice, and as if speaking to herself: "I feel that if I were to meet one of those men in the street, I should die only from being so close to him."
Luckily, the next day after this tragic interlude, there were festivals in Paris on account of some official solemnity which I have forgotten, a review at the Champ de Mars, a quintain on the Seine, theatres in the Champs Élysées, fireworks at the Étoile, and illuminations everywhere. Jean Valjean, breaking through his habits, took Cosette to these rejoicings in order to make her forget the scene of the previous day, and efface, beneath the laughing tumult of all Paris, the abominable thing which had passed before her. The review, which seasoned the fête, rendered uniforms very natural; hence Jean Valjean put on his National Guard coat, with the vague inner feeling of a man who is seeking a refuge. However, the object of this jaunt seemed to be attained; Cosette, who made it a law to please her father, and to whom any festival was a novelty, accepted the distraction with the easy and light good-will of adolescents, and did not make too disdainful a pout at the porringer of joy which is called a public holiday. Hence Jean Valjean might believe that he had succeeded, and that no trace of the hideous vision remained. A few days after, one morning when the sun was shining, and both were on the garden steps,—another infraction of the rules which Jean Valjean seemed to have imposed on himself, and that habit of remaining in her chamber which sadness had caused Cosette to assume,—the girl, wearing a combing jacket, was standing in that morning négligé which adorably envelops maidens, and looks like a cloud over a star; and with her head in the light, her cheeks pink from a good night's rest, and gazed at softly by the old man, she was plucking the petals of a daisy. She did not know the delicious legend of, "I love you, a little, passionately," etc.,—for who could have taught it to her? She handled the flower instinctively and innocently, without suspecting that plucking a daisy to pieces is questioning a heart. If there were a fourth Grace called Melancholy, she had the air of that Grace when smiling. Jean Valjean was fascinated by the contemplation of these little fingers on this flower, forgetting everything in the radiance which surrounded the child. A red-breast was twittering in a bush hard by; and while clouds crossed the sky so gayly that you might have said that they had just been set at liberty, Cosette continued to pluck her flower attentively. She seemed to be thinking of something, but that something must be charming. All at once she turned her head on her shoulder, with the delicate slowness of a swan, and said to Jean Valjean, "Tell me, father, what the galleys are."
[BOOK IV.]
SUCCOR FROM BELOW MAY BE SUCCOR FROM ON HIGH.
[CHAPTER I.]
AN EXTERNAL WOUND AND AN INTERNAL CURE.
Their life thus gradually became overcast; only one amusement was left them which had formerly been a happiness, and that was to carry bread to those who were starving, and clothes to those who were cold. In these visits to the poor, in which Cosette frequently accompanied Jean Valjean, they found again some portion of their old expansiveness; and at times, when the day had been good, when a good deal of distress had been relieved, and many children warmed and re-animated, Cosette displayed a little gayety at night. It was at this period that they paid the visit to Jondrette's den. The day after that visit, Jean Valjean appeared at an early hour in the pavilion, calm as usual, but with a large wound in his left arm, which was very inflamed and venomous, which resembled a burn, and which he accounted for in some way or other. This wound kept him at home with a fever for more than a month, for he would not see any medical man, and when Cosette pressed him, he said, "Call in the dog-doctor." Cosette dressed his wound morning and night with an air of such divine and angelic happiness at being useful to him, that Jean Valjean felt all his old joy return, his fears and anxieties dissipated; and he gazed at Cosette, saying, "Oh, the excellent wound! the good hurt!"