Les Misérables
also hinted at being a baron, but this had produced no effect on
Cosette. She did not know the meaning of the word. Marius was Marius.
On her side, she had confided to him that she had been brought up at
the Petit-Picpus convent, that her mother, like his own, was dead, that
her father’s name was M. Fauchelevent, that he was very good, that he
gave a great deal to the poor, but that he was poor himself, and that
he denied himself everything though he denied her nothing.
Strange to say, in the sort of symphony which Marius had lived since he
had been in the habit of seeing Cosette, the past, even the most recent
past, had become so confused and distant to him, that what Cosette told
him satisfied him completely. It did not even occur to him to tell her
about the nocturnal adventure in the hovel, about Thénardier, about the
burn, and about the strange attitude and singular flight of her father.
Marius had momentarily forgotten all this; in the evening he did not
even know that there had been a morning, what he had done, where he had
breakfasted, nor who had spoken to him; he had songs in his ears which
rendered him deaf to every other thought; he only existed at the hours
when he saw Cosette. Then, as he was in heaven, it was quite natural
that he should forget earth. Both bore languidly the indefinable burden
of immaterial pleasures. Thus lived these somnambulists who are called
lovers.
Alas! Who is there who has not felt all these things? Why does there
come an hour when one emerges from this azure, and why does life go on
afterwards?
Loving almost takes the place of thinking. Love is an ardent
forgetfulness of all the rest. Then ask logic of passion if you will.
There is no more absolute logical sequence in the human heart than
there is a perfect geometrical figure in the celestial mechanism. For
Cosette and Marius nothing existed except Marius and Cosette. The
universe around them had fallen into a hole. They lived in a golden
minute. There was nothing before them, nothing behind. It hardly
occurred to Marius that Cosette had a father. His brain was dazzled and
obliterated. Of what did these lovers talk then? We have seen, of the
flowers, and the swallows, the setting sun and the rising moon, and all
sorts of important things. They had told each other everything except
everything. The everything of lovers is nothing. But the father, the
realities, that lair, the ruffians, that adventure, to what purpose?
And was he very sure that this nightmare had actually existed? They
were two, and they adored each other, and beyond that there was
nothing. Nothing else existed. It is probable that this vanishing of
hell in our rear is inherent to the arrival of paradise. Have we beheld
demons? Are there any? Have we trembled? Have we suffered? We no longer
know. A rosy cloud hangs over it.
So these two beings lived in this manner, high aloft, with all that
improbability which is in nature; neither at the nadir nor at the
zenith, between man and seraphim, above the mire, below the ether, in
the clouds; hardly flesh and blood, soul and ecstasy from head to foot;
already too sublime to walk the earth, still too heavily charged with
humanity to disappear in the blue, suspended like atoms which are
waiting to be precipitated; apparently beyond the bounds of destiny;
ignorant of that rut; yesterday, to-day, to-morrow; amazed, rapturous,
floating, soaring; at times so light that they could take their flight
out into the infinite; almost prepared to soar away to all eternity.
They slept wide-awake, thus sweetly lulled. Oh! splendid lethargy of
the real overwhelmed by the ideal.
Sometimes, beautiful as Cosette was, Marius shut his eyes in her
presence. The best way to look at the soul is through closed eyes.
Marius and Cosette never asked themselves whither this was to lead
them. They considered that they had already arrived. It is a strange
claim on man’s part to wish that love should lead to something.
CHAPTER III—THE BEGINNING OF SHADOW
Jean Valjean suspected nothing.
Cosette, who was rather less dreamy than Marius, was gay, and that
sufficed for Jean Valjean’s happiness. The thoughts which Cosette
cherished, her tender preoccupations, Marius’ image which filled her
heart, took away nothing from the incomparable purity of her beautiful,
chaste, and smiling brow. She was at the age when the virgin bears her
love as the angel his lily. So Jean Valjean was at ease. And then, when
two lovers have come to an understanding, things always go well; the
third party who might disturb their love is kept in a state of perfect
blindness by a restricted number of precautions which are always the
same in the case of all lovers. Thus, Cosette never objected to any of
Jean Valjean’s proposals. Did she want to take a walk? “Yes, dear
little father.” Did she want to stay at home? Very good. Did he wish to
pass the evening with Cosette? She was delighted. As he always went to
bed at ten o’clock, Marius did not come to the garden on such occasions
until after that hour, when, from the street, he heard Cosette open the
long glass door on the veranda. Of course, no one ever met Marius in
the daytime. Jean Valjean never even dreamed any longer that Marius was
in existence. Only once, one morning, he chanced to say to Cosette:
“Why, you have whitewash on your back!” On the previous evening,
Marius, in a transport, had pushed Cosette against the wall.
Old Toussaint, who retired early, thought of nothing but her sleep, and
was as ignorant of the whole matter as Jean Valjean.
Marius never set foot in the house. When he was with Cosette, they hid
themselves in a recess near the steps, in order that they might neither
be seen nor heard from the street, and there they sat, frequently
contenting themselves, by way of conversation, with pressing each
other’s hands twenty times a minute as they gazed at the branches of
the trees. At such times, a thunderbolt might have fallen thirty paces
from them, and they would not have noticed it, so deeply was the
reverie of the one absorbed and sunk in the reverie of the other.
Limpid purity. Hours wholly white; almost all alike. This sort of love
is a recollection of lily petals and the plumage of the dove.
The whole extent of the garden lay between them and the street. Every
time that Marius entered and left, he carefully adjusted the bar of the
gate in such a manner that no displacement was visible.
He usually went away about midnight, and returned to Courfeyrac’s
lodgings. Courfeyrac said to Bahorel:—
“Would you believe it? Marius comes home nowadays at one o’clock in the
morning.”
Bahorel replied:—
“What do you expect? There’s always a petard in a seminary fellow.”
At times, Courfeyrac folded his arms, assumed a serious air, and said
to Marius:—
“You are getting irregular in your habits, young man.”
Courfeyrac, being a practical man, did not take in good part this
reflection of an invisible paradise upon Marius; he was not much in the
habit of concealed passions; it made him impatient, and now and then he
called upon Marius to come back to reality.
One morning, he threw him this admonition:—
“My dear fellow, you produce upon me the effect of being located in the
moon, the realm of dreams, the province of illusions, capital,
soap-bubble. Come, be a good boy, what’s her name?”
But nothing could induce Marius “to talk.” They might have torn out his
nails before one of the two sacred syllables of which that ineffable
name, Cosette, was composed. True love is as luminous as the dawn and
as silent as the tomb. Only, Courfeyrac saw this change in Marius, that
his taciturnity was of the beaming order.
During this sweet month of May, Marius and Cosette learned to know
these immense delights. To dispute and to say _you_ for _thou_, simply
that they might say _thou_ the better afterwards. To talk at great
length with very minute details, of persons in whom they took not the
slightest interest in the world; another proof that in that ravishing
opera called love, the libretto counts for almost nothing;
For Marius, to listen to Cosette discussing finery;
For Cosette, to listen to Marius talk in politics;
To listen, knee pressed to knee, to the carriages rolling along the Rue
de Babylone;
To gaze upon the same planet in space, or at the same glowworm gleaming
in the grass;
To hold their peace together; a still greater delight than
conversation;
Etc., etc.
In the meantime, divers complications were approaching.
One evening, Marius was on his way to the rendezvous, by way of the
Boulevard des Invalides. He habitually walked with drooping head. As he
was on the point of turning the corner of the Rue Plumet, he heard some
one quite close to him say:—
“Good evening, Monsieur Marius.”
He raised his head and recognized Éponine.
This produced a singular effect upon him. He had not thought of that
girl a single time since the day when she had conducted him to the Rue
Plumet, he had not seen her again, and she had gone completely out of
his mind. He had no reasons for anything but gratitude towards her, he
owed her his happiness, and yet, it was embarrassing to him to meet
her.
It is an error to think that passion, when it is pure and happy, leads
man to a state of perfection; it simply leads him, as we have noted, to
a state of oblivion. In this situation, man forgets to be bad, but he
also forgets to be good. Gratitude, duty, matters essential and
important to be remembered, vanish. At any other time, Marius would
have behaved quite differently to Éponine. Absorbed in Cosette, he had
not even clearly put it to himself that this Éponine was named Éponine
Thénardier, and that she bore the name inscribed in his father’s will,
that name, for which, but a few months before, he would have so
ardently sacrificed himself. We show Marius as he was. His father
himself was fading out of his soul to some extent, under the splendor
of his love.
He replied with some embarrassment:—
“Ah! so it’s you, Éponine?”
“Why do you call me _you?_ Have I done anything to you?”
“No,” he answered.
Certainly, he had nothing against her. Far from it. Only, he felt that
he could not do otherwise, now that he used _thou_ to Cosette, than say
_you_ to Éponine.
As he remained silent, she exclaimed:—
“Say—”
Then she paused. It seemed as though words failed that creature
formerly so heedless and so bold. She tried to smile and could not.
Then she resumed:—
“Well?”
Then she paused again, and remained with downcast eyes.
“Good evening, Mr. Marius,” said she suddenly and abruptly; and away
she went.
CHAPTER IV—A CAB RUNS IN ENGLISH AND BARKS IN SLANG
The following day was the 3d of June, 1832, a date which it is
necessary to indicate on account of the grave events which at that
epoch hung on the horizon of Paris in the state of lightning-charged
clouds. Marius, at nightfall, was pursuing the same road as on the
preceding evening, with the same thoughts of delight in his heart, when
he caught sight of Éponine approaching, through the trees of the
boulevard. Two days in succession—this was too much. He turned hastily
aside, quitted the boulevard, changed his course and went to the Rue
Plumet through the Rue Monsieur.
This caused Éponine to follow him to the Rue Plumet, a thing which she
had not yet done. Up to that time, she had contented herself with
watching him on his passage along the boulevard without ever seeking to
encounter him. It was only on the evening before that she had attempted
to address him.
So Éponine followed him, without his suspecting the fact. She saw him
displace the bar and slip into the garden.
She approached the railing, felt of the bars one after the other, and