Page 783 - les-miserables

the tumultuous noise of the patrol searching the blind al-
ley and the streets; the blows of their gun-stocks against
the stones; Javert’s appeals to the police spies whom he had
posted, and his imprecations mingled with words which
could not be distinguished.
At the expiration of a quarter of an hour it seemed as
though that species of stormy roar were becoming more
distant. Jean Valjean held his breath.
He had laid his hand lightly on Cosette’s mouth.
However, the solitude in which he stood was so strangely
calm, that this frightful uproar, close and furious as it was,
did not disturb him by so much as the shadow of a misgiv-
ing. It seemed as though those walls had been built of the
deaf stones of which the Scriptures speak.
All at once, in the midst of this profound calm, a fresh
sound arose; a sound as celestial, divine, ineffable, ravish-
ing, as the other had been horrible. It was a hymn which
issued from the gloom, a dazzling burst of prayer and har-
mony in the obscure and alarming silence of the night;
women’s voices, but voices composed at one and the same
time of the pure accents of virgins and the innocent accents
of children,— voices which are not of the earth, and which
resemble those that the newborn infant still hears, and
which the dying man hears already. This song proceeded
from the gloomy edifice which towered above the garden.
At the moment when the hubbub of demons retreated, one
would have said that a choir of angels was approaching
through the gloom.
Cosette and Jean Valjean fell on their knees.

783