Chapter 246 Cosette's Fear

During the first half of April Jean Valjean made a journey.We know that every very long time, he will go out once in a while.Leave home for one or two days, up to three days at a time.Where is he going?No one knew, not even Cosette.But once, when he was leaving, Cosette drove him in a carriage until the entrance of a small dead-end alley, and she saw a few words at the corner: "Little Ban Lane".When he had reached that place he alighted from the carriage which took Cosette back to the Rue Babylon.Jean Valjean often made short excursions of this kind when his family was short of money.

Jean Valjean was therefore absent.Before leaving, he said, "I'll be back in about three days." Cosette remained alone in the drawing-room after the lamp was lit that day.To relieve her boredom, she lifted the lid of her piano, and sang, playing the accompaniment, "The Hunters Lost in the Woods," from Oriente, which is perhaps the most beautiful piece of music.After singing, she sat in a daze. Suddenly, she seemed to hear someone walking in the garden. Not her father, he was away, nor Toussaint, she was asleep.It was ten o'clock at night. The shutters in the living room were closed, and she went to put her ear to the shutters to listen.

It sounded like a man's footsteps, and they walked very slowly. She hurried upstairs to her bedroom, opened a small window over the shutter, and looked out into the garden.That's when the moon is full.Can see as clearly as in daytime. But there was no one in the garden. She opened the big window again.There was no movement in the garden, and she saw that the streets were as deserted as ever. Cosette thought to herself that she had made a mistake.What she thought she heard was actually an illusion caused by Weber's eerie chorus. What the song showed in people's artistic conception was a deep and terrifying scene, a shocking image of mountains and forests. There, people Can hear the dead twigs and brittle leaves breaking beneath the hunters' feet as they wander in the dreary twilight.

She doesn't think about it anymore. And Cosette was born with little knowledge of fear.In her veins, there was the blood of a woman who ran barefoot in the rivers and lakes and took risks.We remember that she was a lark, not a dove.She has a rough and brave temperament. The next day, early in the day, she went for a walk in the garden, just after dark.She was thinking about some troublesome things in her mind at the time, and she seemed to hear the sound of last night, as if someone was walking in the dark under the trees not far from her, stopping and going, stopping and walking, but She said to herself that there was nothing more like the sound of a person walking in the grass than two twigs rubbing against each other, and she stopped paying attention.Besides, she didn't see anything.

She came out of that "hazel".You also have to walk across a small lawn to get up the steps.The moon was rising behind her, and as she came out of the bushes it cast her shadow on the grass in front of her. Cosette stopped suddenly, startled. Beside her shadow, the moonlight cast distinctly on the grass a hideous and frightening figure, wearing a bowler hat. The shadow seemed to stand on the edge of the bush, behind Cosette, only a few steps away from her. She couldn't speak for a while, she didn't dare to shout or shout, she didn't dare to move or turn her head. Finally mustering up all her courage, she turned around suddenly.

Nobody. She looked at the ground again.The shadow was gone too. She went back into the bushes again, and plucked up her courage, and searched around the corners until she found the bars, but found nothing. She really felt like she was breaking out in a cold sweat.Is this another illusion?joke!For two days in a row!One illusion is fine, but what about two illusions?The most worrying thing was that the shadow was definitely not a ghost.Ghosts never wear round-brimmed hats. On the third day Jean Valjean returned home.Cosette related to him what she seemed to hear and see.She had hoped for some relief, expecting her father to shrug his shoulders and say to her, "You little girl is crazy."

Jean Valjean, on the other hand, seemed a little disturbed. "It cannot be said that there is no reason for it," he told her. He hesitated a few words, then left her to go into the garden, where Cosette saw him examining the iron gate carefully. She woke up in the middle of the night, and this time she could hear clearly, clearly, someone walking under her window, next to the steps.She ran to open the little window at the head of the window.Sure enough, there was a man in the garden, holding a thick wooden stick in his hand.She was about to yell, but she saw the silhouette of that person clearly from the moonlight.It turned out to be her father.

She fell asleep again, thinking to herself: "It seems that he has something on his mind!" Jean Valjean passed that night in the garden, and two more nights afterwards.Cosette could see him through the hole in her shutter. On the third day, the moon gradually disappeared and rose later. At about one o'clock in the middle of the night, she suddenly heard someone laughing, and then she heard her father's voice calling her. "Cosette!" She jumped out of bed hastily, put on her nightgown, and opened the window. Her father was standing on the grass below. "I woke you up to reassure you," he said, "and here is your shadow in the round hat."

At the same time he pointed out to her a shadow cast by the moonlight on the grass, which was indeed like the ghost of a man in a round hat.But only the shadow of a shrouded tin chimney on the roof of the house next door. Cosette laughed too, and all her ominous surmises dispelled, and the next day, when she was having breakfast with her father, she was talking and laughing at the haunted garden of the chimney ghost. Jean Valjean was completely silent again, and as for Cosette, she did not pay much attention to whether the chimney was indeed standing in the direction of the figure she had seen or thought she had seen, or whether the moon was at the same time in the sky. position.She didn't ask herself: "Why is the shadow of the chimney so weird? When someone looked at it, it was afraid of being caught on the spot, so it quickly shrank back." Because that night, when Cosette turned around, the shadow disappeared. Yes, Cosette was sure of it.Cosette was now completely relieved.She thought her father's explanation was complete, and even if someone might walk in the garden after dark or in the middle of the night, it would not make her guess again.

But a few days later, a new strange thing happened.