! One hallucination might pass, but two hallucinations? The disquieting point about it was, that the shadow had assuredly not been a phantom.
Phantoms do not wear round hats.
On the following day Jean Valjean returned.
Cosette told him what she thought she had heard and seen.
She wanted to be reassured and to see her father shrug his shoulders and say to her: "You are a little goose."
Jean Valjean grew anxious.
"It cannot be anything," said he.
He left her under some pretext, and went into the garden, and she saw him examining the gate with great attention.
During the night she woke up; this time she was sure, and she distinctly heard some one walking close to the flight of steps beneath her window. She ran to her little wicket and opened it.
In point of fact, there was a man in the garden, with a large club in his hand. Just as she was about to scream, the moon lighted up the man''s profile. It was her father.
She returned to her bed, saying to herself: "He is very uneasy!"
Jean Valjean passed that night and the two succeeding nights in the garden.
Cosette saw him through the hole in her shutter.
On the third night, the moon was on the wane, and had begun to rise later; at one o''clock in the morning, possibly, she heard a loud burst of laughter and her father''s voice calling her:--