I was not expecting anything like what happens in this chapter. Valjean is drawn to a dim light in a distant window after the angelic voices have died down. He goes to find out what it may be.
Cautiously and carefully he begins to peer through this window, fearful that he might be seen and revealed to the searching soldiers and police on the other side of the building. As he begins to see into the building it seems to be a gathering space of some kind, and he slowly recognizes what seems to be a human form, laying flat on it’s face, hands clasped before it though laid to rest, with a shroud of some sort laid over it. Is this a corpse? Looking closer he sees a rope trailing out, tied around the neck of this body. Was this a suicide? A murder? contrasted with the beauty and holiness of the voices before he is deeply shaken and disturbed by this image but cannot look away. Fear increases and grows until he can’t take it anymore and he runs as fast as he can back to Cosette, who is wrapped in his coat in the shelter of the shed.
What is this place? What had he seen? What had he heard? Cosette sleeps and he meditates on the terrifying circumstances that he finds himself caught in. Hugo’s commentary here is fantastic and deserves to be quoted:
What was this place of nocturnal mystery where angel voices cried out to the soul and, when it answered the summons, offered it a vision of horror, promising the radiance of Heaven and providing the bleakness of the tomb?
What is this place indeed.