662 Les Miserables
torsos of trees, long handfuls of quivering plants,— against
all this one has no protection. There is no hardihood which
does not shudder and which does not feel the vicinity of an-
guish. One is conscious of something hideous, as though
one’s soul were becoming amalgamated with the darkness.
This penetration of the shadows is indescribably sinister in
the case of a child.
Forests are apocalypses, and the beating of the wings of
a tiny soul produces a sound of agony beneath their mon-
strous vault.
Without understanding her sensations, Cosette was
conscious that she was seized upon by that black enormity
of nature; it was no longer terror alone which was gain-
ing possession of her; it was something more terrible even
than terror; she shivered. There are no words to express the
strangeness of that shiver which chilled her to the very bot-
tom of her heart; her eye grew wild; she thought she felt that
she should not be able to refrain from returning there at the
same hour on the morrow.
Then, by a sort of instinct, she began to count aloud, one,
two, three, four, and so on up to ten, in order to escape from
that singular state which she did not understand, but which
terrified her, and, when she had finished, she began again;
this restored her to a true perception of the things about
her. Her hands, which she had wet in drawing the water, felt
cold; she rose; her terror, a natural and unconquerable ter-
ror, had returned: she had but one thought now,—to flee at
full speed through the forest, across the fields to the houses,
to the windows, to the lighted candles. Her glance fell upon