Chapter 2
Volume 2: 2: Cosette · Book 2: 2: The Ship Orion
2: In Which a Couple of Lines Will Be Read Which Came, Perhaps, from the Evil One
Chapter 2Visible text2 paragraphs
BEFORE proceeding further, it will not be amiss to relate, in some detail, a singular incident which took place, about the same time, at Montfermeil, and which, perhaps, does not fall in badly with certain conjectures of the public authorities.
There exists, in the neighbourhood of Montfermeil, a very ancient superstition, all the more rare and precious from the fact that a popular superstition in the vicinity of Paris is like an aloe tree in Siberia. Now, we are of those who respect anything in the way of a rarity. Here, then, is the superstition of Montfermeil: they believe, there, that the Evil One has, from time immemorial, chosen the forest as the hiding-place for his treasure. The good wives of the vicinity affirm that it is no unusual thing to meet, at sundown, in the secluded portions of the woods, a black-looking man, resembling a waggoner or woodcutter, shod in wooden shoes, clad in breeches and sack of coarse linen, and recognisable from the circumstances that, instead of a cap or hat, he has two immense horns upon his head. That certainly ought to render him recognisable. This man is constantly occupied in digging holes. There .are three ways of dealing when you meet him.