Chapter 99 five lonely little girls

Since the place of the Thenardier's inn in the village was near the chapel, Cosette was obliged to draw water from a spring in the woods beyond Chères. She no longer looks at items displayed by any vendors.As long as she walked in the area around Baker's Lane and the chapel, there were candles in the shops to light her way, but at last the last gleam of the last stall died away.The poor child went into darkness.She still had to go deeper into the darkness.She walked deeper into the darkness.However, because she was already a little nervous, she tried her best to shake the handle of the bucket as she walked.Then she has a voice to keep her company.

The further she went, the darker it became.The pedestrians on the street have disappeared.But she also met a woman, who stopped, turned and watched her go by, and said vaguely: "Where does this child go? Is she a little wolf?" Then the woman recognized Cosette, and said, "Oh, it's a lark!" In this way Cosette passed through the crooked, deserted, labyrinthine streets of the village of Montfermeil on the Chere side.As long as she saw people, and as long as her path had walls on either side, she walked quite boldly.Sometimes, she sees a ray of candlelight through the cracks in the window panels of a family's house, that is light, that is life, it means that there are people there, and her heart is at ease.But the more she walked, her steps seemed to slow down naturally.Cosette, when she had passed the corner of the last house, stopped suddenly.It was not easy to get past the last shop, and it was impossible to go beyond the last house.She put the bucket on the ground, ran her hand through her hair, and scratched her head slowly, the gesture of a child when he is so frightened that he loses his mind.It was no longer Montfermeil, but the field.Before her lay a dark and desolate open place.She looked at the dark place with no people, wild animals, and perhaps ghosts in horror.She looked carefully, she heard the beast walking in the grass, and clearly saw the ghost moving in the woods.So she picked up the bucket again, and the terror gave her courage: "Never mind him!" She said, "I told her it would be over if there was no water!" She turned back resolutely to Montfermeil.

She had just walked about a hundred steps when she stopped again and scratched her head.Now before her eyes was Madame Thenardier, a Madame Thenardier with a green face, fangs, and eyes that were blazing with anger.The child looked ahead and back with tears in his eyes.what to do?What will happen?Where are you going?Before her was the phantom of Madame Thenardier, and behind her the phantom that haunted the woods in the night.As a result she flinched before Madame Thenardier.She took the road to the spring again, and started to run.She ran out of the village and into the woods, not looking at anything, not listening to anything, not running until she was out of breath, but not stopping.She just kept going, not knowing anything.

As she hurried on, she wanted to cry. At night, the rustling of the forest surrounded her.She didn't think about it anymore, and she didn't look at it anymore.The boundless night is hostile to that little life. On the one hand, it is the whole dark world, and on the other hand, it is an atom. It only takes seven or eight minutes to walk from the edge of the forest to the edge of the spring.Cosette knew the road, for it was the one she used to take in the daytime.Strange to say, she was not lost.Some remaining instincts were guiding her.Her eyes looked neither to the right nor to the left, for fear of seeing something in the branches and grass.And so she reached the fountain.

It was a narrow natural pool formed by the flow from the clay, about two feet deep, surrounded by moss and a herb with scorched yellow spots called "Henry IV's muslin ruff". A few big rocks.Water flows out from the mouth of the pool, forming a stream. Cosette did not want to stop to catch her breath.It was dark all around, but she had a habit of coming to this spring.She stretched out her left hand and groped in the dark for a young oak leaning over the water, which she usually used as a handrail. She found a branch, climbed on it, bent down, and put the bucket into the water.She was so tense that her strength tripled instantly.As she stooped like that for water, she did not notice that the contents of the apron pocket had fallen into the pool.The fifteen-sou piece fell down.Cosette neither saw nor heard it fall.She lifted the bucket and put it on the grass, almost full of water.

After this, she felt tired all over and had no strength at all.She wanted to go back immediately, but her strength was exhausted filling the bucket of water, and she couldn't move a step.She had to sit down.She let herself fall on the grass, and crouched there unable to move. She closed her eyes, then opened them again, she didn't know why, but she had to do that. The water in the bucket rippled around her like tongues of white flame. Dark clouds rolled in the sky, like soot, covering her head.Heiye's miserable face seemed to be eyeing the child covetously. Jupiter is lying deep in the sky.

The child didn't know the giant star, and she stared at it frantically, feeling frightened.The planet was indeed very close to the horizon at that time, and through a thick layer of fog, there was a terrible red light reflected.The fog, a dull purple in color, enlarged the image of the star as if it were a glowing wound. A cold wind blew across the field.It was pitch black in the woods, and there was no rustling of leaves, nor the half-blind light of a summer night.The tall branches dance ferociously.Withered bushes rustled in the glade.The tall weeds squirmed like eels in the cold wind.Zhenmang bent and stretched out, as if stretching out a long arm to grab someone.The clumps of hay rushed away in the wind, as if a catastrophe was approaching, and they were fleeing in a hurry.In every direction was a desolate open space.

The darkness makes people palpitate.Man must have light.Anyone who goes into a dark place will feel anxious.When the eyes see darkness, the mind loses peace.When there is a lunar eclipse, in pitch black places at night, it can be unsettling for even the hardiest of souls.Darkness and woods are two unfathomable things.Our fantasies often imagine that there is something real in the dark depths.There is something intangible that will appear vivid and vivid just a few paces before your eyes.We often see a vague, unattainable, ethereal scene floating in space or in our own minds like a dream of a reclining flower.There are often some shocking images in the sky.We often smell space in the dark.We get scared and want to look behind us.The emptiness of the night, the ferocious shapes, the silent silhouettes that disappear when approached to look at them, the scattered black shadows, the swaying bushes, the filthy pools that are as gray as dead, ghostly and ghostly, grave-like The silence, the possible ghosts, the drooping of the mysterious branches, the strange and frightening bare tree trunks, the clumps of weeds shivering in the wind, all of these are irresistible to people.The brave also tremble, and feel that disaster is at hand.People will feel uneasy, as if they feel that their souls have been solidified with the darkness.To a child there is an indescribable horror of the invasion of darkness.

A forest is a haunted place, and under its lonesome dome the sound of a bird's wings is horrific. Cosette didn't know what she felt, she just felt that she was controlled by the boundless darkness of the universe.What she felt at the time was not just terror, but something more terrifying than terror.She shivered.The shivering made her feel cold all the way to her heart, and no words could express the strange feeling.She opened her eyes in astonishment.It seemed to her that she would have to be here again at this very moment tomorrow night. Then, instinctively, to get out of a situation she didn't understand and which terrified her, she counted aloud one, two, three, four, up to ten, and then began again.In doing so, she could give herself a real sense of what was around her.She began to feel cold hands, which had been wet first while fetching water.She stood up.She was frightened again, a natural, uncontrollable fear.She had only one thought: to escape, to run, through the woods, across the fields, to where there were houses and windows and candles.She looked down and saw the bucket.She dared not flee without the pail of water, Madame Thenardier's majesty was too terrible.She held the handle on the bucket with both hands, and it was with all her strength that she lifted the bucket of water.

She walked more than ten steps like that, but the bucket of water was too full and heavy, so she had to put it down again.She took a breath, then picked up the bucket and walked forward, this time for a longer walk.But she had to stop again.After resting for a few seconds, she walked again.When she walked, she bent over and lowered her head, like an old woman. The weight of the bucket made her two thin arms straight and stiff, and the iron handle on the bucket also frozen her wet hands to wood.She had to stop and go, and every time she stopped, some water from the bucket splashed on her bare legs.Those things happened deep in the woods, at night, in winter, out of sight of human eyes, and it happened to an eight-year-old child.At that time only God saw the tragic process.

Maybe her mother saw it too, cough! Because there are things that make the eyes of the dead in the tomb open. She groaned with painful gasps, and sobs choked her throat, but she dared not cry, she was too afraid of Madame Thenardier, even at a distance.It had become her habit to imagine that Madame Thenardier was near her. But she couldn't go very far that way, and very slowly.She vainly tried to shorten the stay and to prolong the walk as long as possible.She guessed that if she walked that way, she would not be able to reach Montfermeil in an hour, and she would definitely be beaten by Madame Thenardier, and she was extremely anxious.Anxiety and the horror of being alone in the woods at night are twisted together.She was exhausted, but she was not out of the woods yet.She walked to an old oak tree that she knew well, and made one last longer pause for a good rest, then gathered all her strength, picked up the bucket, and summoned up her courage to move on.But the poor sad and hopeless child could not help crying out: "Oh! My God! My God!" At that moment, she suddenly felt that her bucket was not heavy at all.A hand, which seemed to her extremely thick, grabbed the handle and gently lifted the bucket.She looks up.A tall, upright black figure walked with her in the darkness.It was a man walking behind her without her noticing.The man, without a word, grabbed the handle of the bucket in her hand. Humans have the instinct to adapt to various encounters.The child is not afraid.