She raised the stone, which was of some size, and there was something under it that resembled a letter; it was an envelope of white paper. Cosette seized it; there was no address on it, and it was not sealed up. Still, the envelope, though open, was not empty, for papers could be seen inside. Cosette no longer suffered from terror, nor was it curiosity; it was a commencement of anxiety. Cosette took out a small quire of paper, each page of which was numbered, and bore several lines written in a very nice and delicate hand, so Cosette thought. She looked for a name, but there was none; for a signature, but there was none either. For whom was the packet intended? Probably for herself, as a hand had laid it on the bench. From whom did it come? An irresistible fascination seized upon her; she tried to turn her eyes away from these pages, which trembled in her hand. She looked at the sky, the street, the acacias all bathed in light, the pigeons circling round an adjoining roof, and then her eye settled on the manuscript, and she said to herself that she must know what was inside it. This is what she read. CHAPTER IV. A HEART UNDER A STONE. The reduction of the Universe to a single being, the expansion of a single being as far as God,--such is love. Love is the salutation of the angels to the stars. How sad the soul is when it is sad through love! What a void is the absence of the being who of her own self fills the world! Oh, how true it is that the beloved being becomes God! We might understand how God might be jealous, had not the Father of all evidently made creation for the soul, and the soul for love. The soul only needs to see a smile in a white crape bonnet in order to enter the palace of dreams. God is behind everything, but everything conceals God. Things are black and creatures are opaque, but to love a being is to render her transparent. Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when the soul is kneeling, no matter what the attitude of the body may be. Separated lovers cheat absence by a thousand chimerical things, which, however, have their reality. They are prevented seeing each other, and they cannot write, but they find a number of mysterious ways to correspond. They send to each other the song of birds, the light of the sun, the sighs of the breeze, the rays of the stars, and the whole of creation; and why should they not? All the works of God are made to serve love. Love is sufficiently powerful to interest all nature with its messages. Oh, Spring, thou art a letter which I write to her. The future belongs even more to hearts than to minds. Loving is the only thing which can occupy and fill the immensity, for the infinite needs the inexhaustible.