Cosette uneasy. Any other child than she would have given vent to loud shrieks long before. She contented herself with plucking Jean Valjean by the skirt of his coat. They could hear the sound of the patrol’s approach ever more and more distinctly.
“Father,” said she, in a very low voice, “I am afraid. Who is coming yonder?”
“Hush!” replied the unhappy man; “it is Madame Thénardier.”
Cosette shuddered. He added:—
“Say nothing. Don’t interfere with me. If you cry out, if you weep, the Thénardier is lying in wait for you. She is coming to take you back.”
Then, without haste, but without making a useless movement, with firm and curt precision, the more remarkable at a moment when the patrol and Javert might come upon him at any moment, he undid his cravat, passed it round Cosette’s body under the armpits, taking care that it should not hurt the child, fastened this cravat to one end of the rope, by means of that knot which seafaring men call a “swallow knot,” took the other end of the rope in his teeth, pulled off his shoes and stockings, which he threw over the wall, stepped upon the mass of masonry, and began to raise himself in the angle of the wall and the gable with as much solidity and certainty as though he had the rounds of a ladder under his feet and elbows. Half a minute had not elapsed when he was resting on his knees on the wall.
Cosette gazed at him in stupid amazement, without uttering a word. Jean Valjean’s injunction, and the name of Madame Thénardier, had chilled her blood.
All at once she heard Jean Valjean’s voice crying to her, though in a very low tone:—
“Put your back against the wall.”