Les Misérables, v. 2/5: Cosette Read online

  CHAPTER I.

  ON THE NIVELLES ROAD.

  On a fine May morning last year (1861) a wayfarer, the person whois telling this story, was coming from Nivelles, and was proceedingtoward La Hulpe. He was on foot and following, between two rows oftrees, a wide paved road which undulates over a constant successionof hills, that raise the road and let it fall again, and form, as itwere, enormous waves. He had passed Lillois and Bois-Seigneur Isaac,and noticed in the west the slate-covered steeple of Braine l'Alleud,which looks like an overturned vase. He had just left behind him a woodupon a hill, and at the angle of a cross-road, by the side of a sort ofworm-eaten gallows which bore the inscription, "Old barrier, No. 4," awine-shop, having on its front the following notice: "The Four Winds,Échabeau, private coffee-house."

  About half a mile beyond this pot-house, he reached a small valley,in which there is a stream that runs through an arch formed in thecauseway. The clump of trees, wide-spread but very green, which fillsthe valley on one side of the road, is scattered on the other over thefields, and runs gracefully and capriciously toward Braine l'Alleud.On the right, and skirting the road, were an inn, a four-wheeled cartin front of the door, a large bundle of hop-poles, a plough, a pileof dry shrubs near a quick-set hedge, lime smoking in a square hole,and a ladder lying along an old shed with straw partitions. A girlwas hoeing in a field, where a large yellow bill--probably of a showat some Kermesse--was flying in the wind. At the corner of the inn, abadly-paved path ran into the bushes by the side of a pond, on which aflotilla of ducks was navigating. The wayfarer turned into this path.

  After proceeding about one hundred yards, along a wall of the 15thcentury, surmounted by a coping of crossed bricks, he found himself infront of a large arched stone gate, with a rectangular moulding, in thestern style of Louis XIV., supported by two flat medallions. A severefaçade was over this gate; a wall perpendicular to the façade almostjoined the gate and flanked it at a right angle. On the grass-plat infront of the gate lay three harrows, through which the May flowerswere growing pell-mell. The gate was closed by means of two decrepitfolding-doors, ornamented by an old rusty hammer.

  The sun was delightful, and the branches made that gentle May rustling,which seems to come from nests even more than from the wind. A littlebird, probably in love, was singing with all its might. The wayfarerstooped and looked at a rather large circular excavation in the stoneto the right of the gate, which resembled a sphere. At this moment thegates opened and a peasant woman came out. She saw the wayfarer andnoticed what he was looking at.

  "It was a French cannon-ball that made it," she said, and then added:"What you see higher up there, on the gate near a nail, is the hole ofa heavy shell, which did not penetrate the wood."

  "What is the name of this place?" the wayfarer asked.

  "Hougomont," said the woman.

  The wayfarer drew himself up, he walked a few steps, and then lookedover the hedge. He could see on the horizon through the trees a speciesof mound, and on this mound something which, at a distance, resembled alion. He was on the battlefield of Waterloo.