Les Misérables
“Oh! How good this is! How comfortable this is! There; I no longer
suffer.”
She remained silent for a moment, then she turned her face with an
effort, and looked at Marius.
“Do you know what, Monsieur Marius? It puzzled me because you entered
that garden; it was stupid, because it was I who showed you that house;
and then, I ought to have said to myself that a young man like you—”
She paused, and overstepping the sombre transitions that undoubtedly
existed in her mind, she resumed with a heartrending smile:—
“You thought me ugly, didn’t you?”
She continued:—
“You see, you are lost! Now, no one can get out of the barricade. It
was I who led you here, by the way! You are going to die, I count upon
that. And yet, when I saw them taking aim at you, I put my hand on the
muzzle of the gun. How queer it is! But it was because I wanted to die
before you. When I received that bullet, I dragged myself here, no one
saw me, no one picked me up, I was waiting for you, I said: ‘So he is
not coming!’ Oh, if you only knew. I bit my blouse, I suffered so! Now
I am well. Do you remember the day I entered your chamber and when I
looked at myself in your mirror, and the day when I came to you on the
boulevard near the washerwomen? How the birds sang! That was a long
time ago. You gave me a hundred sous, and I said to you: ‘I don’t want
your money.’ I hope you picked up your coin? You are not rich. I did
not think to tell you to pick it up. The sun was shining bright, and it
was not cold. Do you remember, Monsieur Marius? Oh! How happy I am!
Every one is going to die.”
She had a mad, grave, and heart-breaking air. Her torn blouse disclosed
her bare throat.
As she talked, she pressed her pierced hand to her breast, where there
was another hole, and whence there spurted from moment to moment a
stream of blood, like a jet of wine from an open bung-hole.
Marius gazed at this unfortunate creature with profound compassion.
“Oh!” she resumed, “it is coming again, I am stifling!”
She caught up her blouse and bit it, and her limbs stiffened on the
pavement.
At that moment the young cock’s crow executed by little Gavroche
resounded through the barricade.
The child had mounted a table to load his gun, and was singing gayly
the song then so popular:—
“En voyant Lafayette,
Le gendarme répète:—
Sauvons nous! sauvons nous!
sauvons nous!”
“On beholding Lafayette,
The gendarme repeats:—
Let us flee! let us flee!
let us flee!
Éponine raised herself and listened; then she murmured:—
“It is he.”
And turning to Marius:—
“My brother is here. He must not see me. He would scold me.”
“Your brother?” inquired Marius, who was meditating in the most bitter
and sorrowful depths of his heart on the duties to the Thénardiers
which his father had bequeathed to him; “who is your brother?”
“That little fellow.”
“The one who is singing?”
“Yes.”
Marius made a movement.
“Oh! don’t go away,” said she, “it will not be long now.”
She was sitting almost upright, but her voice was very low and broken
by hiccoughs.
At intervals, the death rattle interrupted her. She put her face as
near that of Marius as possible. She added with a strange expression:—
“Listen, I do not wish to play you a trick. I have a letter in my
pocket for you. I was told to put it in the post. I kept it. I did not
want to have it reach you. But perhaps you will be angry with me for it
when we meet again presently? Take your letter.”
She grasped Marius’ hand convulsively with her pierced hand, but she no
longer seemed to feel her sufferings. She put Marius’ hand in the
pocket of her blouse. There, in fact, Marius felt a paper.
“Take it,” said she.
Marius took the letter.
She made a sign of satisfaction and contentment.
“Now, for my trouble, promise me—”
And she stopped.
“What?” asked Marius.
“Promise me!”
“I promise.”
“Promise to give me a kiss on my brow when I am dead.—I shall feel it.”
She dropped her head again on Marius’ knees, and her eyelids closed. He
thought the poor soul had departed. Éponine remained motionless. All at
once, at the very moment when Marius fancied her asleep forever, she
slowly opened her eyes in which appeared the sombre profundity of
death, and said to him in a tone whose sweetness seemed already to
proceed from another world:—
“And by the way, Monsieur Marius, I believe that I was a little bit in
love with you.”
She tried to smile once more and expired.
CHAPTER VII—GAVROCHE AS A PROFOUND CALCULATOR OF DISTANCES
Marius kept his promise. He dropped a kiss on that livid brow, where
the icy perspiration stood in beads.
This was no infidelity to Cosette; it was a gentle and pensive farewell
to an unhappy soul.
It was not without a tremor that he had taken the letter which Éponine
had given him. He had immediately felt that it was an event of weight.
He was impatient to read it. The heart of man is so constituted that
the unhappy child had hardly closed her eyes when Marius began to think
of unfolding this paper.
He laid her gently on the ground, and went away. Something told him
that he could not peruse that letter in the presence of that body.
He drew near to a candle in the tap-room. It was a small note, folded
and sealed with a woman’s elegant care. The address was in a woman’s
hand and ran:—
“To Monsieur, Monsieur Marius Pontmercy, at M. Courfeyrac’s, Rue de la
Verrerie, No. 16.”
He broke the seal and read:—
“My dearest, alas! my father insists on our setting out immediately.
We shall be this evening in the Rue de l’Homme Armé, No. 7.
In a week we shall be in England. COSETTE. June 4th.”
Such was the innocence of their love that Marius was not even
acquainted with Cosette’s handwriting.
What had taken place may be related in a few words. Éponine had been
the cause of everything. After the evening of the 3d of June she had
cherished a double idea, to defeat the projects of her father and the
ruffians on the house of the Rue Plumet, and to separate Marius and
Cosette. She had exchanged rags with the first young scamp she came
across who had thought it amusing to dress like a woman, while Éponine
disguised herself like a man. It was she who had conveyed to Jean
Valjean in the Champ de Mars the expressive warning: “Leave your
house.” Jean Valjean had, in fact, returned home, and had said to
Cosette: “We set out this evening and we go to the Rue de l’Homme Armé
with Toussaint. Next week, we shall be in London.” Cosette, utterly
overwhelmed by this unexpected blow, had hastily penned a couple of
lines to Marius. But how was she to get the letter to the post? She
never went out alone, and Toussaint, surprised at such a commission,
would certainly show the letter to M. Fauchelevent. In this dilemma,
Cosette had caught sight through the fence of Éponine in man’s clothes,
who now prowled incessantly around the garden. Cosette had called to
“this young workman” and had handed him five francs and the letter,
saying: “Carry this letter immediately to its address.” Éponine had put
the letter in her pocket. The next day, on the 5th of June, she went to
Courfeyrac’s quarters to inquire for Marius, not for the purpose of
delivering the letter, but,—a thing which every jealous and loving soul
will comprehend,—“to see.” There she had waited for Marius, or at least
for Courfeyrac, still for the purpose of _seeing_. When Courfeyrac had
told her: “We are going to the barricades,” an idea flashed through her
mind, to fling herself into that death, as she would have done into any
other, and to thrust Marius into it also. She had followed Courfeyrac,
had made sure of the locality where the barricade was in process of
construction; and, quite certain, since Marius had received no warning,
and since she had intercepted the letter, that he would go at dusk to
his trysting place for every evening, she had betaken herself to the
Rue Plumet, had there awaited Marius, and had sent him, in the name of
his friends, the appeal which would, she thought, lead him to the
barricade. She reckoned on Marius’ despair when he should fail to find
Cosette; she was not mistaken. She had returned to the Rue de la
Chanvrerie herself. What she did there the reader has just seen. She
died with the tragic joy of jealous hearts who drag the beloved being
into their own death, and who say: “No one shall have him!”
Marius covered Cosette’s letter with kisses. So she loved him! For one
moment the idea occurred to him that he ought not to die now. Then he
said to himself: “She is going away. Her father is taking her to
England, and my grandfather refuses his consent to the marriage.
Nothing is changed in our fates.” Dreamers like Marius are subject to
supreme attacks of dejection, and desperate resolves are the result.
The fatigue of living is insupportable; death is sooner over with. Then
he reflected that he had still two duties to fulfil: to inform Cosette
of his death and send her a final farewell, and to save from the
impending catastrophe which was in preparation, that poor child,
Éponine’s brother and Thénardier’s son.
He had a pocket-book about him; the same one which had contained the
note-book in which he had inscribed so many thoughts of love for
Cosette. He tore out a leaf and wrote on it a few lines in pencil:—
“Our marriage was impossible. I asked my grandfather, he refused; I
have no fortune, neither hast thou. I hastened to thee, thou wert no
longer there. Thou knowest the promise that I gave thee, I shall keep
it. I die. I love thee. When thou readest this, my soul will be near
thee, and thou wilt smile.”
Having nothing wherewith to seal this letter, he contented himself with
folding the paper in four, and added the address:—
“To Mademoiselle Cosette Fauchelevent, at M. Fauchelevent’s, Rue de
l’Homme Armé, No. 7.”
Having folded the letter, he stood in thought for a moment, drew out
his pocket-book again, opened it, and wrote, with the same pencil,
these four lines on the first page:—
“My name is Marius Pontmercy. Carry my body to my grandfather, M.
Gillenormand, Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, No. 6, in the Marais.”
He put his pocketbook back in his pocket, then he called Gavroche.
The gamin, at the sound of Marius’ voice, ran up to him with his merry
and devoted air.
“Will you do something for me?”
“Anything,” said Gavroche. “Good God! if it had not been for you, I
should have been done for.”
“Do you see this letter?”
“Yes.”
“Take it. Leave the barricade instantly” (Gavroche began to scratch his
ear uneasily) “and to-morrow morning, you will deliver it at its
address to Mademoiselle Cosette, at M. Fauchelevent’s, Rue de l’Homme
Armé, No. 7.”
The heroic child replied
“Well, but! in the meanwhile the barricade will be taken, and I shall
not be there.”
“The barricade will not be attacked until daybreak, according to all
appearances, and will not be taken before to-morrow noon.”
The fresh respite which the assailants were granting to the barricade
had, in fact, been prolonged. It was one of those intermissions which
frequently occur in nocturnal combats, which are always followed by an
increase of rage.
“Well,” said Gavroche, “what if I were to go and carry your letter
to-morrow?”
“It will be too late. The barricade will probably be blockaded, all the
streets will be guarded, and you will not be able to get out. Go at
once.”
Gavroche could think of no reply to this, and stood there in
indecision, scratching his ear sadly.
All at once, he took the letter with one of those birdlike movements
which were common with him.
“All right,” said he.
And he started off at a run through Mondétour lane.