This is not the first time that Hugo has used supernatural language when describing the more frightening elements of the darkness, and I’m a big fan. I remember very similar language being used back when Valjean left the city and stole from Petit-Gervais. Some of the language used here is worth quoting:
No man walks alone through the night-time forest without a tremor. Shadows and trees form two awe-inspiring layers in which a chimerical reality resides. The inconceivable appears a spectral clarity almost at arm’s length, and we see, floating in space or in our mind, things as vague and intangible as the dreams of sleeping flowers. Wild shapes haunt the distance, the air we breathe is a black emptiness, we want to look back and are afraid. The hollows of night, all things grown stark, silent forms that vanish as we approach, the hint of unseen presences in the immensity of a tomb-like silence, tree-trunks and overhanging branches and tall quivering grass - against all this we have no defense; no man is so bold that he does not tremble and feel close to panic. There is something ugly at work, as though the very soul were becoming merged in darkness. And all this is inexpressibly terrible to a child. The dark forest is an apocalypse and the small wings of a child’s soul flutter in anguish beneath its overhanging boughs.
It is this kind of darkness that Cosette finds herself immersed in. Alone, carrying a pail fo water back from the spring that is far too large for such a tiny lark to handle on her own, she stumbles haltingly with long pauses between back toward the village. The longer she goes in this way the more terrified she becomes. She tries to pause longer so she can make it further but the fear keeps mounting, and now she has the added terror that by the time she gets back she will surely receive a beating atht eh hands of the mistress Thenardier.
It’s in this state that Cosette finally hits her breaking point. Still in the woods, but getting closer to home, Hugo tells us the following:
Coming to an old chestnut tree with which she was well acquainted, she made a last pause, longer than the previous ones, so that she might be properly rested, then bravely started again; but such was her despair that now she could not prevent herself from crying aloud - ‘Oh, God help me! Please, dear God!’
And suddenly she found that the bucket no longer weighed anything. A hand that seemed enormous had reached down and grasped the handle. Looking up, she saw a burly, erect form beside her in the darkness. The man had come up behind her without her hearing him, and he had taken the bucket from her without speaking a word.
There are instincts which respond to all the chance meetings in life. The little girl was not afraid.
We can only presume that this stranger, arriving at the exact moment that Cosette called out for divine assistance, is none other than Jean Valjean. I guess we’ll have to read on to see what happens next!
One small thing Hugo noted that seems worth filing away for later: the coin that Cosette was given to purchase bread with had tumbled into the spring while Cosette was filling the bucket, and Cosette did not seem to notice this in her state of distress. More to worry about for Cosette the lark.