Page 659 - les-miserables

glance before her and behind her. What was she to do?
What was to become of her? Where was she to go? In front
of her was the spectre of the Thenardier; behind her all the
phantoms of the night and of the forest. It was before the
Thenardier that she recoiled. She resumed her path to the
spring, and began to run. She emerged from the village, she
entered the forest at a run, no longer looking at or listen-
ing to anything. She only paused in her course when her
breath failed her; but she did not halt in her advance. She
went straight before her in desperation.
As she ran she felt like crying.
The nocturnal quivering of the forest surrounded her
completely.
She no longer thought, she no longer saw. The immensity
of night was facing this tiny creature. On the one hand, all
shadow; on the other, an atom.
It was only seven or eight minutes’ walk from the edge
of the woods to the spring. Cosette knew the way, through
having gone over it many times in daylight. Strange to say,
she did not get lost. A remnant of instinct guided her vague-
ly. But she did not turn her eyes either to right or to left, for
fear of seeing things in the branches and in the brushwood.
In this manner she reached the spring.
It was a narrow, natural basin, hollowed out by the water
in a clayey soil, about two feet deep, surrounded with moss
and with those tall, crimped grasses which are called Henry
IV.’s frills, and paved with several large stones. A brook ran
out of it, with a tranquil little noise.
Cosette did not take time to breathe. It was very dark, but

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