CHAPTER X

DAWN


At that moment, Cosette awoke.

Her chamber was narrow, neat, unobtrusive, with a long sash-window,
facing the East on the back court-yard of the house.

Cosette knew nothing of what was going on in Paris. She had not
been there on the preceding evening, and she had already retired
to her chamber when Toussaint had said:

"It appears that there is a row."

Cosette had slept only a few hours, but soundly. She had had
sweet dreams, which possibly arose from the fact that her little
bed was very white. Some one, who was Marius, had appeared to her
in the light. She awoke with the sun in her eyes, which, at first,
produced on her the effect of being a continuation of her dream.
Her first thought on emerging from this dream was a smiling one.
Cosette felt herself thoroughly reassured. Like Jean Valjean,
she had, a few hours previously, passed through that reaction
of the soul which absolutely will not hear of unhappiness.
She began to cherish hope, with all her might, without knowing why.
Then she felt a pang at her heart. It was three days since she
had seen Marius. But she said to herself that he must have received
her letter, that he knew where she was, and that he was so clever
that he would find means of reaching her.--And that certainly
to-day, and perhaps that very morning.--It was broad daylight,
but the rays of light were very horizontal; she thought that it
was very early, but that she must rise, nevertheless, in order to
receive Marius.

She felt that she could not live without Marius, and that,
consequently, that was sufficient and that Marius would come.
No objection was valid. All this was certain. It was monstrous enough
already to have suffered for three days. Marius absent three days,
this was horrible on the part of the good God. Now, this cruel
teasing from on high had been gone through with. Marius was about
to arrive, and he would bring good news. Youth is made thus;
it quickly dries its eyes; it finds sorrow useless and does not
accept it. Youth is the smile of the future in the presence of an
unknown quantity, which is itself. It is natural to it to be happy.
It seems as though its respiration were made of hope.

Moreover, Cosette could not remember what Marius had said to her
on the subject of this absence which was to last only one day,
and what explanation of it he had given her. Every one has noticed
with what nimbleness a coin which one has dropped on the ground rolls
away and hides, and with what art it renders itself undiscoverable.
There are thoughts which play us the same trick; they nestle away
in a corner of our brain; that is the end of them; they are lost;
it is impossible to lay the memory on them. Cosette was somewhat vexed
at the useless little effort made by her memory. She told herself,
that it was very naughty and very wicked of her, to have forgotten
the words uttered by Marius.

She sprang out of bed and accomplished the two ablutions of soul
and body, her prayers and her toilet.

One may, in a case of exigency, introduce the reader into
a nuptial chamber, not into a virginal chamber. Verse would
hardly venture it, prose must not.

It is the interior of a flower that is not yet unfolded, it is
whiteness in the dark, it is the private cell of a closed lily,
which must not be gazed upon by man so long as the sun has not
gazed upon it. Woman in the bud is sacred. That innocent bud
which opens, that adorable half-nudity which is afraid of itself,
that white foot which takes refuge in a slipper, that throat
which veils itself before a mirror as though a mirror were an eye,
that chemise which makes haste to rise up and conceal the shoulder
for a creaking bit of furniture or a passing vehicle, those cords tied,
those clasps fastened, those laces drawn, those tremors, those shivers
of cold and modesty, that exquisite affright in every movement,
that almost winged uneasiness where there is no cause for alarm,
the successive phases of dressing, as charming as the clouds of dawn,--
it is not fitting that all this should be narrated, and it is too much
to have even called attention to it.

The eye of man must be more religious in the presence of the rising
of a young girl than in the presence of the rising of a star.
The possibility of hurting should inspire an augmentation of respect.
The down on the peach, the bloom on the plum, the radiated crystal of
the snow, the wing of the butterfly powdered with feathers, are coarse
compared to that chastity which does not even know that it is chaste.
The young girl is only the flash of a dream, and is not yet a statue.
Her bed-chamber is hidden in the sombre part of the ideal.
The indiscreet touch of a glance brutalizes this vague penumbra.
Here, contemplation is profanation.

We shall, therefore, show nothing of that sweet little flutter
of Cosette's rising.

An oriental tale relates how the rose was made white by God,
but that Adam looked upon her when she was unfolding, and she
was ashamed and turned crimson. 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 chimeras, 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.