Les Misérables
On the day when their eyes met at last, and said to each other those
first, obscure, and ineffable things which the glance lisps, Cosette
did not immediately understand. She returned thoughtfully to the house
in the Rue de l’Ouest, where Jean Valjean, according to his custom, had
come to spend six weeks. The next morning, on waking, she thought of
that strange young man, so long indifferent and icy, who now seemed to
pay attention to her, and it did not appear to her that this attention
was the least in the world agreeable to her. She was, on the contrary,
somewhat incensed at this handsome and disdainful individual. A
substratum of war stirred within her. It struck her, and the idea
caused her a wholly childish joy, that she was going to take her
revenge at last.
Knowing that she was beautiful, she was thoroughly conscious, though in
an indistinct fashion, that she possessed a weapon. Women play with
their beauty as children do with a knife. They wound themselves.
The reader will recall Marius’ hesitations, his palpitations, his
terrors. He remained on his bench and did not approach. This vexed
Cosette. One day, she said to Jean Valjean: “Father, let us stroll
about a little in that direction.” Seeing that Marius did not come to
her, she went to him. In such cases, all women resemble Mahomet. And
then, strange to say, the first symptom of true love in a young man is
timidity; in a young girl it is boldness. This is surprising, and yet
nothing is more simple. It is the two sexes tending to approach each
other and assuming, each the other’s qualities.
That day, Cosette’s glance drove Marius beside himself, and Marius’
glance set Cosette to trembling. Marius went away confident, and
Cosette uneasy. From that day forth, they adored each other.
The first thing that Cosette felt was a confused and profound
melancholy. It seemed to her that her soul had become black since the
day before. She no longer recognized it. The whiteness of soul in young
girls, which is composed of coldness and gayety, resembles snow. It
melts in love, which is its sun.
Cosette did not know what love was. She had never heard the word
uttered in its terrestrial sense. On the books of profane music which
entered the convent, _amour_ (love) was replaced by _tambour_ (drum) or
_pandour_. This created enigmas which exercised the imaginations of the
_big girls_, such as: _Ah, how delightful is the drum! _ or, _Pity is
not a pandour_. But Cosette had left the convent too early to have
occupied herself much with the “drum.” Therefore, she did not know what
name to give to what she now felt. Is any one the less ill because one
does not know the name of one’s malady?
She loved with all the more passion because she loved ignorantly. She
did not know whether it was a good thing or a bad thing, useful or
dangerous, eternal or temporary, allowable or prohibited; she loved.
She would have been greatly astonished, had any one said to her: “You
do not sleep? But that is forbidden! You do not eat? Why, that is very
bad! You have oppressions and palpitations of the heart? That must not
be! You blush and turn pale, when a certain being clad in black appears
at the end of a certain green walk? But that is abominable!” She would
not have understood, and she would have replied: “What fault is there
of mine in a matter in which I have no power and of which I know
nothing?”
It turned out that the love which presented itself was exactly suited
to the state of her soul. It was a sort of admiration at a distance, a
mute contemplation, the deification of a stranger. It was the
apparition of youth to youth, the dream of nights become a reality yet
remaining a dream, the longed-for phantom realized and made flesh at
last, but having as yet, neither name, nor fault, nor spot, nor
exigence, nor defect; in a word, the distant lover who lingered in the
ideal, a chimæra with a form. Any nearer and more palpable meeting
would have alarmed Cosette at this first stage, when she was still half
immersed in the exaggerated mists of the cloister. She had all the
fears of children and all the fears of nuns combined. The spirit of the
convent, with which she had been permeated for the space of five years,
was still in the process of slow evaporation from her person, and made
everything tremble around her. In this situation he was not a lover, he
was not even an admirer, he was a vision. She set herself to adoring
Marius as something charming, luminous, and impossible.
As extreme innocence borders on extreme coquetry, she smiled at him
with all frankness.
Every day, she looked forward to the hour for their walk with
impatience, she found Marius there, she felt herself unspeakably happy,
and thought in all sincerity that she was expressing her whole thought
when she said to Jean Valjean:—
“What a delicious garden that Luxembourg is!”
Marius and Cosette were in the dark as to one another. They did not
address each other, they did not salute each other, they did not know
each other; they saw each other; and like stars of heaven which are
separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing at each other.
It was thus that Cosette gradually became a woman and developed,
beautiful and loving, with a consciousness of her beauty, and in
ignorance of her love. She was a coquette to boot through her
ignorance.
CHAPTER VII—TO ONE SADNESS OPPOSE A SADNESS AND A HALF
All situations have their instincts. Old and eternal Mother Nature
warned Jean Valjean in a dim way of the presence of Marius. Jean
Valjean shuddered to the very bottom of his soul. Jean Valjean saw
nothing, knew nothing, and yet he scanned with obstinate attention, the
darkness in which he walked, as though he felt on one side of him
something in process of construction, and on the other, something which
was crumbling away. Marius, also warned, and, in accordance with the
deep law of God, by that same Mother Nature, did all he could to keep
out of sight of “the father.” Nevertheless, it came to pass that Jean
Valjean sometimes espied him. Marius’ manners were no longer in the
least natural. He exhibited ambiguous prudence and awkward daring. He
no longer came quite close to them as formerly. He seated himself at a
distance and pretended to be reading; why did he pretend that? Formerly
he had come in his old coat, now he wore his new one every day; Jean
Valjean was not sure that he did not have his hair curled, his eyes
were very queer, he wore gloves; in short, Jean Valjean cordially
detested this young man.
Cosette allowed nothing to be divined. Without knowing just what was
the matter with her she was convinced that there was something in it,
and that it must be concealed.
There was a coincidence between the taste for the toilet which had
recently come to Cosette, and the habit of new clothes developed by
that stranger which was very repugnant to Jean Valjean. It might be
accidental, no doubt, certainly, but it was a menacing accident.
He never opened his mouth to Cosette about this stranger. One day,
however, he could not refrain from so doing, and, with that vague
despair which suddenly casts the lead into the depths of its despair,
he said to her: “What a very pedantic air that young man has!”
Cosette, but a year before only an indifferent little girl, would have
replied: “Why, no, he is charming.” Ten years later, with the love of
Marius in her heart, she would have answered: “A pedant, and
insufferable to the sight! You are right!”—At the moment in life and
the heart which she had then attained, she contented herself with
replying, with supreme calmness: “That young man!”
As though she now beheld him for the first time in her life.
“How stupid I am!” thought Jean Valjean. “She had not noticed him. It
is I who have pointed him out to her.”
Oh, simplicity of the old! oh, the depth of children!
It is one of the laws of those fresh years of suffering and trouble, of
those vivacious conflicts between a first love and the first obstacles,
that the young girl does not allow herself to be caught in any trap
whatever, and that the young man falls into every one. Jean Valjean had
instituted an undeclared war against Marius, which Marius, with the
sublime stupidity of his passion and his age, did not divine. Jean
Valjean laid a host of ambushes for him; he changed his hour, he
changed his bench, he forgot his handkerchief, he came alone to the
Luxembourg; Marius dashed headlong into all these snares; and to all
the interrogation marks planted by Jean Valjean in his pathway, he
ingenuously answered “yes.” But Cosette remained immured in her
apparent unconcern and in her imperturbable tranquillity, so that Jean
Valjean arrived at the following conclusion: “That ninny is madly in
love with Cosette, but Cosette does not even know that he exists.”
Nonetheless did he bear in his heart a mournful tremor. The minute when
Cosette would love might strike at any moment. Does not everything
begin with indifference?
Only once did Cosette make a mistake and alarm him. He rose from his
seat to depart, after a stay of three hours, and she said: “What,
already?”
Jean Valjean had not discontinued his trips to the Luxembourg, as he
did not wish to do anything out of the way, and as, above all things,
he feared to arouse Cosette; but during the hours which were so sweet
to the lovers, while Cosette was sending her smile to the intoxicated
Marius, who perceived nothing else now, and who now saw nothing in all
the world but an adored and radiant face, Jean Valjean was fixing on
Marius flashing and terrible eyes. He, who had finally come to believe
himself incapable of a malevolent feeling, experienced moments when
Marius was present, in which he thought he was becoming savage and
ferocious once more, and he felt the old depths of his soul, which had
formerly contained so much wrath, opening once more and rising up
against that young man. It almost seemed to him that unknown craters
were forming in his bosom.
What! he was there, that creature! What was he there for? He came
creeping about, smelling out, examining, trying! He came, saying: “Hey!
Why not?” He came to prowl about his, Jean Valjean’s, life! to prowl
about his happiness, with the purpose of seizing it and bearing it
away!
Jean Valjean added: “Yes, that’s it! What is he in search of? An
adventure! What does he want? A love affair! A love affair! And I?
What! I have been first, the most wretched of men, and then the most
unhappy, and I have traversed sixty years of life on my knees, I have
suffered everything that man can suffer, I have grown old without
having been young, I have lived without a family, without relatives,
without friends, without life, without children, I have left my blood
on every stone, on every bramble, on every mile-post, along every wall,
I have been gentle, though others have been hard to me, and kind,
although others have been malicious, I have become an honest man once
more, in spite of everything, I have repented of the evil that I have
done and have forgiven the evil that has been done to me, and at the
moment when I receive my recompense, at the moment when it is all over,
at the moment when I am just touching the goal, at the moment when I
have what I desire, it is well, it is good, I have paid, I have earned
it, all this is to take flight, all this will vanish, and I shall lose
Cosette, and I shall lose my life, my joy, my soul, because it has
pleased a great booby to come and lounge at the Luxembourg.”
Then his eyes were filled with a sad and extraordinary gleam.
It was no longer a man gazing at a man; it was no longer an enemy
surveying an enemy. It was a dog scanning a thief.
The reader knows the rest. Marius pursued his senseless course. One day