e sun, which was glowing through
the crevices in her shutters, and turning the damask curtains crimson,
reassured her to such an extent that everything vanished from her
thoughts, even the stone.

"There was no more a stone on the bench than there was a man in a round
hat in the garden; I dreamed about the stone, as I did all the rest."

She dressed herself, descended to the garden, ran to the bench, and
broke out in a cold perspiration. The stone was there.

But this lasted only for a moment. That which is terror by night is
curiosity by day.

"Bah!" said she, "come, let us see what it is."

She lifted the stone, which was tolerably large. Beneath it was
something which resembled a letter. It was a white envelope. Cosette
seized it. There was no address on one side, no seal on the other.
Yet the envelope, though unsealed, was not empty. Papers could be seen
inside.

Cosette examined it. It was no longer alarm, it was no longer curiosity;
it was a beginning of anxiety.

Cosette drew from the envelope its contents, a little notebook of paper,
each page of which was numbered and bore a few lines in a very fine and
rather pretty handwriting, as Cosette thought.

Cosette looked for a name; there was none. To whom was this addressed?
To her, probably, since a hand had deposited the packet on her bench.
From whom did it come? An irresistible fascination took possession
of her; she tried to turn away her eyes from the leaflets which were
trembling in her hand, she gazed at the sky, the street, the acacias
all bathed in light, the pigeons fluttering over a neighboring roof,
and then her glance suddenly fell upon the manuscript, and she said to
herself that she must know what it contained.

This is what she read.

CHAPTER IV--A HEART BENEATH A STONE

[Illustration: Cosette with Letter 4b4-5-cosette-after-letter]

The reduction of the universe to a single being, the expansion of a
single being even to God, that is love.

Love is the salutation of the angels to the stars.

How sad is the soul, when it is sad through love!

What a void in the absence of the being who, by herself alone fills the
world! Oh! how true it is that the beloved being becomes God. One could
comprehend that God might be jealous of this had not God the Father of
all evidently made creation for the soul, and the soul for love.

The glimpse of a smile beneath a white crape bonnet with a lilac curtain
is sufficient to cause the