She wove garlands of poppies, which she placed
on her head, and which, crossed and penetrated with sunlight, glowing
until they flamed, formed for her rosy face a crown of burning embers.

Even after their life had grown sad, they kept up their custom of early
strolls.

One morning in October, therefore, tempted by the serene perfection of
the autumn of 1831, they set out, and found themselves at break of
day near the Barriere du Maine. It was not dawn, it was daybreak; a
delightful and stern moment. A few constellations here and there in the
deep, pale azure, the earth all black, the heavens all white, a quiver
amid the blades of grass, everywhere the mysterious chill of twilight. A
lark, which seemed mingled with the stars, was carolling at a prodigious
height, and one would have declared that that hymn of pettiness calmed
immensity. In the East, the Valde-Grace projected its dark mass on the
clear horizon with the sharpness of steel; Venus dazzlingly brilliant
was rising behind that dome and had the air of a soul making its escape
from a gloomy edifice.

All was peace and silence; there was no one on the road; a few stray
laborers, of whom they caught barely a glimpse, were on their way to
their work along the side-paths.

Jean Valjean was sitting in a cross-walk on some planks deposited at the
gate of a timber-yard. His face was turned towards the highway, his back
towards the light; he had forgotten the sun which was on the point of
rising; he had sunk into one of those profound absorptions in which the
mind becomes concentrated, which imprison even the eye, and which are
equivalent to four walls. There are meditations which may be called
vertical; when one is at the bottom of them, time is required to return
to earth. Jean Valjean had plunged into one of these reveries. He was
thinking of Cosette, of the happiness that was possible if nothing came
between him and her, of the light with which she filled his life, a
light which was but the emanation of her soul. He was almost happy in
his revery. Cosette, who was standing beside him, was gazing at the
clouds as they turned rosy.

All at once Cosette exclaimed: "Father, I should think some one was
coming yonder." Jean Valjean raised his eyes.

Cosette was right. The causeway which leads to the ancient Barriere du
Maine is a prolongation, as the reader knows, of the Rue de Sevres,
and is cut at right angles by the inner boulevard. At the elbow of the
causeway a