Page 781 - les-miserables

CHAPTER VI

THE BEGINNING

OF AN ENIGMA

Jean Valjean found himself in a sort of garden which
was very vast and of singular aspect; one of those melan-
choly gardens which seem made to be looked at in winter
and at night. This garden was oblong in shape, with an alley
of large poplars at the further end, tolerably tall forest trees
in the corners, and an unshaded space in the centre, where
could be seen a very large, solitary tree, then several fruit-
trees, gnarled and bristling like bushes, beds of vegetables,
a melon patch, whose glass frames sparkled in the moon-
light, and an old well. Here and there stood stone benches
which seemed black with moss. The alleys were bordered
with gloomy and very erect little shrubs. The grass had half
taken possession of them, and a green mould covered the
rest.
Jean Valjean had beside him the building whose roof
had served him as a means of descent, a pile of fagots, and,
behind the fagots, directly against the wall, a stone statue,
whose mutilated face was no longer anything more than a

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