And her mother, no doubt, alas!
For there are things that make the dead open their eyes in their graves.
She panted with a sort of painful rattle; sobs contracted her throat, but she dared not weep, so afraid was she of the Thenardier, even at a distance:
it was her custom to imagine the Thenardier always present.
However, she could not make much headway in that manner, and she went on very slowly.
In spite of diminishing the length of her stops, and of walking as long as possible between them, she reflected with anguish that it would take her more than an hour to return to Montfermeil in this manner, and that the Thenardier would beat her. This anguish was mingled with her terror at being alone in the woods at night; she was worn out with fatigue, and had not yet emerged from the forest.
On arriving near an old chestnut-tree with which she was acquainted, made a last halt, longer than the rest, in order that she might get well rested; then she summoned up all her strength, picked up her bucket again, and courageously resumed her march, but the poor little desperate creature could not refrain from crying, "O my God! my God!"
At that moment she suddenly became conscious that her bucket no longer weighed anything at all:
a hand, which seemed to her enormous, had just seized the handle, and lifted it vigorously.
She raised her head.
A large black form, straight and erect, was walking beside her through the darkness; it was a man who had come up behind her, and whose approach she had not heard.
This man, without uttering a word, had seized the handle of the bucket which she was carrying.
There are instincts for all the encounters of life.
The child was not afraid.
BOOK THIRD.--ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE PROMISE MADE TO THE DEAD WOMAN
CHAPTER VI
WHICH POSSIBLY PROVES BOULATRUELLE'S INTELLIGENCE
On the afternoon of that same Christmas Day, 1823, a man had walked for rather a long time in the most deserted part of the Boulevard de l'Hopital in Paris.