Page 790 - les-miserables

den.
A being resembling a man was walking amid the bell-
glasses of the melon beds, rising, stooping, halting, with
regular movements, as though he were dragging or spread-
ing out something on the ground. This person appeared to
limp.
Jean Valjean shuddered with the continual tremor of the
unhappy. For them everything is hostile and suspicious.
They distrust the day because it enables people to see them,
and the night because it aids in surprising them. A little
while before he had shivered because the garden was desert-
ed, and now he shivered because there was some one there.
He fell back from chimerical terrors to real terrors. He
said to himself that Javert and the spies had, perhaps, not
taken their departure; that they had, no doubt, left people
on the watch in the street; that if this man should discover
him in the garden, he would cry out for help against thieves
and deliver him up. He took the sleeping Cosette gently in
his arms and carried her behind a heap of old furniture,
which was out of use, in the most remote corner of the shed.
Cosette did not stir.
From that point he scrutinized the appearance of the
being in the melon patch. The strange thing about it was,
that the sound of the bell followed each of this man’s move-
ments. When the man approached, the sound approached;
when the man retreated, the sound retreated; if he made any
hasty gesture, a tremolo accompanied the gesture; when he
halted, the sound ceased. It appeared evident that the bell
was attached to that man; but what could that signify? Who

790 Les Miserables