Page 958 - les-miserables

CHAPTER VIII

A SUCCESSFUL

INTERROGATORY

An hour later, in the darkness of night, two men and a
child presented themselves at No. 62 Rue Petit-Picpus. The
elder of the men lifted the knocker and rapped.
They were Fauchelevent, Jean Valjean, and Cosette.
The two old men had gone to fetch Cosette from the
fruiterer’s in the Rue du Chemin-Vert, where Fauchelevent
had deposited her on the preceding day. Cosette had passed
these twenty-four hours trembling silently and understand-
ing nothing. She trembled to such a degree that she wept.
She had neither eaten nor slept. The worthy fruit-seller had
plied her with a hundred questions, without obtaining any
other reply than a melancholy and unvarying gaze. Cosette
had betrayed nothing of what she had seen and heard dur-
ing the last two days. She divined that they were passing
through a crisis. She was deeply conscious that it was nec-
essary to ‘be good.’ Who has not experienced the sovereign
power of those two words, pronounced with a certain ac-
cent in the ear of a terrified little being: Say nothing! Fear is

958 Les Miserables