Hugo starts this chapter by helping locate us in time. It’s Christmas night, 1823. This puts us roughly two months after Valjean made his daring rescue aboard the Orion and proceeded to dive off the mast and escape. Now we find this mysterious man that Hugo slowly reveals to be Valjean (the very man who took the bucket from Cosette in our last chapter) making his way to Montfermeil.
He doesn’t stay on the road, instead he diverts into the woods, and engages in a careful examination of a couple of particular trees and the ground between them. As readers, we can’t help but remember that these are the very woods where Valjean hid his riches. They are also the very woods where Thenardier questioned the man who saw Valjean burying his riches. Hugo pulls together a multi-threaded knot here, and we must assume that Valjean is returning to recover his money and to secure Cosette.
The reality is that though he knows where Cosette resides and who has guardianship over Cosette, he has never seen her before and she has no idea who he is or what fate has befallen her mother (if she remembers her mother at all). Into this tragic reality we find ourselves thrust. We’ve seen the darkness of the night and the terror it causes. We’ve seen the horrors that the Thenardiers have wrought for young Cosette. We’ve seen the divine intervention of Valjean stumbling upon Cosette right as she cried out for help from God. Now we must see where it all takes us.