





The reader has probably understood that Éponine, having recognized
through the gate, the inhabitant of that Rue Plumet whither Magnon had
sent her, had begun by keeping the ruffians away from the Rue Plumet,
and had then conducted Marius thither, and that, after many days spent
in ecstasy before that gate, Marius, drawn on by that force which draws
the iron to the magnet and a lover towards the stones of which is built
the house of her whom he loves, had finally entered Cosette’s garden as
Romeo entered the garden of Juliet. This had even proved easier for him
than for Romeo; Romeo was obliged to scale a wall, Marius had only to
use a little force on one of the bars of the decrepit gate which
vacillated in its rusty recess, after the fashion of old people’s
teeth. Marius was slender and readily passed through.

As there was never any one in the street, and as Marius never entered
the garden except at night, he ran no risk of being seen.

Beginning with that blessed and holy hour when a kiss betrothed these
two souls, Marius was there every evening. If, at that period of her
existence, Cosette had fallen in love with a man in the least
unscrupulous or debauched, she would have been lost; for there are
generous natures which yield themselves, and Cosette was one of them.
One of woman’s magnanimities is to yield. Love, at the height where it
is absolute, is complicated with some indescribably celestial blindness
of modesty. But what dangers you run, O noble souls! Often you give the
heart, and we take the body. Your heart remains with you, you gaze upon
it in the gloom with a shudder. Love has no middle course; it either
ruins or it saves. All human destiny lies in this dilemma. This
dilemma, ruin, or safety, is set forth no more inexorably by any
fatality than by love. Love is life, if it is not death. Cradle; also
coffin. The same sentiment says “yes” and “no” in the human heart. Of
all the things that God has made, the human heart is the one which
sheds the most light, alas! and the most darkness.

God willed that Cosette’s love should encounter one of the loves which
save.

Throughout the whole of the month of May of that year 1832, there were
there, in every night, in that poor, neglected garden, beneath that
thicket which grew thicker and more fragrant day by day, two beings
composed of all chastity, all innocence, overflowing with all the
felicity of heaven, nearer to the archangels than to mankind, pure,
honest, intoxicated, radiant, who shone for each other amid the
shadows. It seemed to Cosette that Marius had a crown, and to Marius
that Cosette had a nimbus. They touched each other, they gazed at each
other, they clasped each other’s hands, they pressed close to each
other; but there was a distance which they did not pass. Not that they
respected it; they did not know of its existence. Marius was conscious
of a barrier, Cosette’s innocence; and Cosette of a support, Marius’
loyalty. The first kiss had also been the last. Marius, since that
time, had not gone further than to touch Cosette’s hand, or her
kerchief, or a lock of her hair, with his lips. For him, Cosette was a
perfume and not a woman. He inhaled her. She refused nothing, and he
asked nothing. Cosette was happy, and Marius was satisfied. They lived
in this ecstatic state which can be described as the dazzling of one
soul by another soul. It was the ineffable first embrace of two maiden
souls in the ideal. Two swans meeting on the Jungfrau.

At that hour of love, an hour when voluptuousness is absolutely mute,
beneath the omnipotence of ecstasy, Marius, the pure and seraphic
Marius, would rather have gone to a woman of the town than have raised
Cosette’s robe to the height of her ankle. Once, in the moonlight,
Cosette stooped to pick up something on the ground, her bodice fell
apart and permitted a glimpse of the beginning of her throat. Marius
turned away his eyes.

What took place between these two beings? Nothing. They adored each
other.

At night, when they were there, that garden seemed a living and a
sacred spot. All flowers unfolded around them and sent them incense;
and they opened their souls and scattered them over the flowers. The
wanton and vigorous vegetation quivered, full of strength and
intoxication, around these two innocents, and they uttered words of
love which set the trees to trembling.

What words were these? Breaths. Nothing more. These breaths sufficed to
trouble and to touch all nature round about. Magic power which we
should find it difficult to understand were we to read in a book these
conversations which are made to be borne away and dispersed like smoke
wreaths by the breeze beneath the leaves. Take from those murmurs of
two lovers that melody which proceeds from the soul and which
accompanies them like a lyre, and what remains is nothing more than a
shade; you say: “What! is that all!” eh! yes, childish prattle,
repetitions, laughter at nothing, nonsense, everything that is deepest
and most sublime in the world! The only things which are worth the
trouble of saying and hearing!

The man who has never heard, the man who has never uttered these
absurdities, these paltry remarks, is an imbecile and a malicious
fellow. Cosette said to Marius:—

“Dost thou know?—”


[In all this and athwart this celestial maidenliness, and without
either of them being able to say how it had come about, they had begun
to call each other _thou_.]

“Dost thou know? My name is Euphrasie.”


“Euphrasie? Why, no, thy name is Cosette.”


“Oh! Cosette is a very ugly name that was given to me when I was a
little thing. But my real name is Euphrasie. Dost thou like that
name—Euphrasie?”


“Yes. But Cosette is not ugly.”


“Do you like it better than Euphrasie?”


“Why, yes.”


“Then I like it better too. Truly, it is pretty, Cosette. Call me
Cosette.”


And the smile that she added made of this dialogue an idyl worthy of a
grove situated in heaven. On another occasion she gazed intently at him
and exclaimed:—

“Monsieur, you are handsome, you are good-looking, you are witty, you
are not at all stupid, you are much more learned than I am, but I bid
you defiance with this word: I love you!”


And Marius, in the very heavens, thought he heard a strain sung by a
star.

Or she bestowed on him a gentle tap because he coughed, and she said to
him:—

“Don’t cough, sir; I will not have people cough on my domain without my
permission. It’s very naughty to cough and to disturb me. I want you to
be well, because, in the first place, if you were not well, I should be
very unhappy. What should I do then?”


And this was simply divine.

Once Marius said to Cosette:—

“Just imagine, I thought at one time that your name was Ursule.”


This made both of them laugh the whole evening.

In the middle of another conversation, he chanced to exclaim:—

“Oh! One day, at the Luxembourg, I had a good mind to finish breaking
up a veteran!” But he stopped short, and went no further. He would have
been obliged to speak to Cosette of her garter, and that was
impossible. This bordered on a strange theme, the flesh, before which
that immense and innocent love recoiled with a sort of sacred fright.

Marius pictured life with Cosette to himself like this, without
anything else; to come every evening to the Rue Plumet, to displace the
old and accommodating bar of the chief-justice’s gate, to sit elbow to
elbow on that bench, to gaze through the trees at the scintillation of
the on-coming night, to fit a fold of the knee of his trousers into the
ample fall of Cosette’s gown, to caress her thumb-nail, to call her
_thou_, to smell of the same flower, one after the other, forever,
indefinitely. During this time, clouds passed above their heads. Every
time that the wind blows it bears with it more of the dreams of men
than of the clouds of heaven.

This chaste, almost shy love was not devoid of gallantry, by any means.
To pay compliments to the woman whom a man loves is the first method of
bestowing caresses, and he is half audacious who tries it. A compliment
is something like a kiss through a veil. Voluptuousness mingles there
with its sweet tiny point, while it hides itself. The heart draws back
before voluptuousness only to love the more. Marius’ blandishments, all
saturated with fancy, were, so to speak, of azure hue. The birds when
they fly up yonder, in the direction of the angels, must hear such
words. There were mingled with them, nevertheless, life, humanity, all
the positiveness of which Marius was capable. It was what is said in
the bower, a prelude to what will be said in the chamber; a lyrical
effusion, strophe and sonnet intermingled, pleasing hyperboles of
cooing, all the refinements of adoration arranged in a bouquet and
exhaling a celestial perfume, an ineffable twitter of heart to heart.

“Oh!” murmured Marius, “how beautiful you are! I dare not look at you.
It is all over with me when I contemplate you. You are a grace. I know
not what is the matter with me. The hem of your gown, when the tip of
your shoe peeps from beneath, upsets me. And then, what an enchanted
gleam when you open your thought even but a little! You talk
astonishingly good sense. It seems to me at times that you are a dream.
Speak, I listen, I admire. Oh Cosette! how strange it is and how
charming! I am really beside myself. You are adorable, Mademoiselle. I
study your feet with the microscope and your soul with the telescope.”


And Cosette answered:—

“I have been loving a little more all the time that has passed since
this morning.”


Questions and replies took care of themselves in this dialogue, which
always turned with mutual consent upon love, as the little pith figures
always turn on their peg.

Cosette’s whole person was ingenuousness, ingenuity, transparency,
whiteness, candor, radiance. It might have been said of Cosette that
she was clear. She produced on those who saw her the sensation of April
and dawn. There was dew in her eyes. Cosette was a condensation of the
auroral light in the form of a woman.

It was quite simple that Marius should admire her, since he adored her.
But the truth is, that this little school-girl, fresh from the convent,
talked with exquisite penetration and uttered, at times, all sorts of
true and delicate sayings. Her prattle was conversation. She never made
a mistake about anything, and she saw things justly. The woman feels
and speaks with the tender instinct of the heart, which is infallible.

No one understands so well as a woman, how to say things that are, at
once, both sweet and deep. Sweetness and depth, they are the whole of
woman; in them lies the whole of heaven.

In this full felicity, tears welled up to their eyes every instant. A
crushed lady-bug, a feather fallen from a nest, a branch of hawthorn
broken, aroused their pity, and their ecstasy, sweetly mingled with
melancholy, seemed to ask nothing better than to weep. The most
sovereign symptom of love is a tenderness that is, at times, almost
unbearable.

And, in addition to this,—all these contradictions are the lightning
play of love,—they were fond of laughing, they laughed readily and with
a delicious freedom, and so familiarly that they sometimes presented
the air of two boys.

Still, though unknown to hearts intoxicated with purity, nature is
always present and will not be forgotten. She is there with her brutal
and sublime object; and however great may be the innocence of souls,
one feels in the most modest private interview, the adorable and
mysterious shade which separates a couple of lovers from a pair of
friends.

They idolized each other.

The permanent and the immutable are persistent. People live, they
smile, they laugh, they make little grimaces with the tips of their
lips, they interlace their fingers, they call each other _thou_, and
that does not prevent eternity.

Two lovers hide themselves in the evening, in the twilight, in the
invisible, with the birds, with the roses; they fascinate each other in
the darkness with their hearts which they throw into their eyes, they
murmur, they whisper, and in the meantime, immense librations of the
planets fill the infinite universe.






They existed vaguely, frightened at their happiness. They did not
notice the cholera which decimated Paris precisely during that very
month. They had confided in each other as far as possible, but this had
not extended much further than their names. Marius had told Cosette
that he was an orphan, that his name was Marius Pontmercy, that he was
a lawyer, that he lived by writing things for publishers, that his
father had been a colonel, that the latter had been a hero, and that
he, Marius, was on bad terms with his grandfather who was rich. He had
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.






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.






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
readily recognized the one which Marius had moved.

She murmured in a low voice and in gloomy accents:—

“None of that, Lisette!”


She seated herself on the underpinning of the railing, close beside the
bar, as though she were guarding it. It was precisely at the point
where the railing touched the neighboring wall. There was a dim nook
there, in which Éponine was entirely concealed.

She remained thus for more than an hour, without stirring and without
breathing, a prey to her thoughts.

Towards ten o’clock in the evening, one of the two or three persons who
passed through the Rue Plumet, an old, belated bourgeois who was making
haste to escape from this deserted spot of evil repute, as he skirted
the garden railings and reached the angle which it made with the wall,
heard a dull and threatening voice saying:—

“I’m no longer surprised that he comes here every evening.”


The passer-by cast a glance around him, saw no one, dared not peer into
the black niche, and was greatly alarmed. He redoubled his pace.

This passer-by had reason to make haste, for a very few instants later,
six men, who were marching separately and at some distance from each
other, along the wall, and who might have been taken for a gray patrol,
entered the Rue Plumet.

The first to arrive at the garden railing halted, and waited for the
others; a second later, all six were reunited.

These men began to talk in a low voice.

“This is the place,” said one of them.

“Is there a _cab_ [dog] in the garden?” asked another.

“I don’t know. In any case, I have fetched a ball that we’ll make him
eat.”


“Have you some putty to break the pane with?”


“Yes.”


“The railing is old,” interpolated a fifth, who had the voice of a
ventriloquist.

“So much the better,” said the second who had spoken. “It won’t screech
under the saw, and it won’t be hard to cut.”


The sixth, who had not yet opened his lips, now began to inspect the
gate, as Éponine had done an hour earlier, grasping each bar in
succession, and shaking them cautiously.

Thus he came to the bar which Marius had loosened. As he was on the
point of grasping this bar, a hand emerged abruptly from the darkness,
fell upon his arm; he felt himself vigorously thrust aside by a push in
the middle of his breast, and a hoarse voice said to him, but not
loudly:—

“There’s a dog.”


At the same moment, he perceived a pale girl standing before him.

The man underwent that shock which the unexpected always brings. He
bristled up in hideous wise; nothing is so formidable to behold as
ferocious beasts who are uneasy; their terrified air evokes terror.

He recoiled and stammered:—

“What jade is this?”


“Your daughter.”


It was, in fact, Éponine, who had addressed Thénardier.

At the apparition of Éponine, the other five, that is to say,
Claquesous, Guelemer, Babet, Brujon, and Montparnasse had noiselessly
drawn near, without precipitation, without uttering a word, with the
sinister slowness peculiar to these men of the night.

Some indescribable but hideous tools were visible in their hands.
Guelemer held one of those pairs of curved pincers which prowlers call
_fanchons_.

“Ah, see here, what are you about there? What do you want with us? Are
you crazy?” exclaimed Thénardier, as loudly as one can exclaim and
still speak low; “what have you come here to hinder our work for?”


Éponine burst out laughing, and threw herself on his neck.

“I am here, little father, because I am here. Isn’t a person allowed to
sit on the stones nowadays? It’s you who ought not to be here. What
have you come here for, since it’s a biscuit? I told Magnon so. There’s
nothing to be done here. But embrace me, my good little father! It’s a
long time since I’ve seen you! So you’re out?”


Thénardier tried to disentangle himself from Éponine’s arms, and
grumbled:—

“That’s good. You’ve embraced me. Yes, I’m out. I’m not in. Now, get
away with you.”


But Éponine did not release her hold, and redoubled her caresses.

“But how did you manage it, little pa? You must have been very clever
to get out of that. Tell me about it! And my mother? Where is mother?
Tell me about mamma.”


Thénardier replied:—

“She’s well. I don’t know, let me alone, and be off, I tell you.”


“I won’t go, so there now,” pouted Éponine like a spoiled child; “you
send me off, and it’s four months since I saw you, and I’ve hardly had
time to kiss you.”


And she caught her father round the neck again.

“Come, now, this is stupid!” said Babet.

“Make haste!” said Guelemer, “the cops may pass.”


The ventriloquist’s voice repeated his distich:—

    “Nous n’ sommes pas le jour de l’an,
    A bécoter papa, maman.”

    “This isn’t New Year’s day
    To peck at pa and ma.”


Éponine turned to the five ruffians.

“Why, it’s Monsieur Brujon. Good day, Monsieur Babet. Good day,
Monsieur Claquesous. Don’t you know me, Monsieur Guelemer? How goes it,
Montparnasse?”


“Yes, they know you!” ejaculated Thénardier. “But good day, good
evening, sheer off! leave us alone!”


“It’s the hour for foxes, not for chickens,” said Montparnasse.

“You see the job we have on hand here,” added Babet.

Éponine caught Montparnasse’s hand.

“Take care,” said he, “you’ll cut yourself, I’ve a knife open.”


“My little Montparnasse,” responded Éponine very gently, “you must have
confidence in people. I am the daughter of my father, perhaps. Monsieur
Babet, Monsieur Guelemer, I’m the person who was charged to investigate
this matter.”


It is remarkable that Éponine did not talk slang. That frightful tongue
had become impossible to her since she had known Marius.

She pressed in her hand, small, bony, and feeble as that of a skeleton,
Guelemer’s huge, coarse fingers, and continued:—

“You know well that I’m no fool. Ordinarily, I am believed. I have
rendered you service on various occasions. Well, I have made inquiries;
you will expose yourselves to no purpose, you see. I swear to you that
there is nothing in this house.”


“There are lone women,” said Guelemer.

“No, the persons have moved away.”


“The candles haven’t, anyway!” ejaculated Babet.

And he pointed out to Éponine, across the tops of the trees, a light
which was wandering about in the mansard roof of the pavilion. It was
Toussaint, who had stayed up to spread out some linen to dry.

Éponine made a final effort.

“Well,” said she, “they’re very poor folks, and it’s a hovel where
there isn’t a sou.”


“Go to the devil!” cried Thénardier. “When we’ve turned the house
upside down and put the cellar at the top and the attic below, we’ll
tell you what there is inside, and whether it’s francs or sous or
half-farthings.”


And he pushed her aside with the intention of entering.

“My good friend, Mr. Montparnasse,” said Éponine, “I entreat you, you
are a good fellow, don’t enter.”


“Take care, you’ll cut yourself,” replied Montparnasse.

Thénardier resumed in his decided tone:—

“Decamp, my girl, and leave men to their own affairs!”


Éponine released Montparnasse’s hand, which she had grasped again, and
said:—

“So you mean to enter this house?”


“Rather!” grinned the ventriloquist.

Then she set her back against the gate, faced the six ruffians who were
armed to the teeth, and to whom the night lent the visages of demons,
and said in a firm, low voice:—

“Well, I don’t mean that you shall.”


They halted in amazement. The ventriloquist, however, finished his
grin. She went on:—

“Friends! Listen well. This is not what you want. Now I’m talking. In
the first place, if you enter this garden, if you lay a hand on this
gate, I’ll scream, I’ll beat on the door, I’ll rouse everybody, I’ll
have the whole six of you seized, I’ll call the police.”


“She’d do it, too,” said Thénardier in a low tone to Brujon and the
ventriloquist.

She shook her head and added:—

“Beginning with my father!”


Thénardier stepped nearer.

“Not so close, my good man!” said she.

He retreated, growling between his teeth:—

“Why, what’s the matter with her?”


And he added:—

“Bitch!”


She began to laugh in a terrible way:—

“As you like, but you shall not enter here. I’m not the daughter of a
dog, since I’m the daughter of a wolf. There are six of you, what
matters that to me? You are men. Well, I’m a woman. You don’t frighten
me. I tell you that you shan’t enter this house, because it doesn’t
suit me. If you approach, I’ll bark. I told you, I’m the dog, and I
don’t care a straw for you. Go your way, you bore me! Go where you
please, but don’t come here, I forbid it! You can use your knives. I’ll
use kicks; it’s all the same to me, come on!”


She advanced a pace nearer the ruffians, she was terrible, she burst
out laughing:—

“Pardine! I’m not afraid. I shall be hungry this summer, and I shall be
cold this winter. Aren’t they ridiculous, these ninnies of men, to
think they can scare a girl! What! Scare? Oh, yes, much! Because you
have finical poppets of mistresses who hide under the bed when you put
on a big voice, forsooth! I ain’t afraid of anything, that I ain’t!”


She fastened her intent gaze upon Thénardier and said:—

“Not even of you, father!”


Then she continued, as she cast her blood-shot, spectre-like eyes upon
the ruffians in turn:—

“What do I care if I’m picked up to-morrow morning on the pavement of
the Rue Plumet, killed by the blows of my father’s club, or whether I’m
found a year from now in the nets at Saint-Cloud or the Isle of Swans
in the midst of rotten old corks and drowned dogs?”


She was forced to pause; she was seized by a dry cough, her breath came
from her weak and narrow chest like the death-rattle.

She resumed:—

“I have only to cry out, and people will come, and then slap, bang!
There are six of you; I represent the whole world.”


Thénardier made a movement towards her.

“Don’t approach!” she cried.

He halted, and said gently:—

“Well, no; I won’t approach, but don’t speak so loud. So you intend to
hinder us in our work, my daughter? But we must earn our living all the
same. Have you no longer any kind feeling for your father?”


“You bother me,” said Éponine.

“But we must live, we must eat—”


“Burst!”


So saying, she seated herself on the underpinning of the fence and
hummed:—

    “Mon bras si dodu,
    Ma jambe bien faite
    Et le temps perdu.”

    “My arm so plump,
    My leg well formed,
    And time wasted.”


She had set her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand, and she
swung her foot with an air of indifference. Her tattered gown permitted
a view of her thin shoulder-blades. The neighboring street lantern
illuminated her profile and her attitude. Nothing more resolute and
more surprising could be seen.

The six rascals, speechless and gloomy at being held in check by a
girl, retreated beneath the shadow cast by the lantern, and held
counsel with furious and humiliated shrugs.

In the meantime she stared at them with a stern but peaceful air.

“There’s something the matter with her,” said Babet. “A reason. Is she
in love with the dog? It’s a shame to miss this, anyway. Two women, an
old fellow who lodges in the back-yard, and curtains that ain’t so bad
at the windows. The old cove must be a Jew. I think the job’s a good
one.”


“Well, go in, then, the rest of you,” exclaimed Montparnasse. “Do the
job. I’ll stay here with the girl, and if she fails us—”


He flashed the knife, which he held open in his hand, in the light of
the lantern.

Thénardier said not a word, and seemed ready for whatever the rest
pleased.

Brujon, who was somewhat of an oracle, and who had, as the reader
knows, “put up the job,” had not as yet spoken. He seemed thoughtful.
He had the reputation of not sticking at anything, and it was known
that he had plundered a police post simply out of bravado. Besides this
he made verses and songs, which gave him great authority.

Babet interrogated him:—

“You say nothing, Brujon?”


Brujon remained silent an instant longer, then he shook his head in
various ways, and finally concluded to speak:—

“See here; this morning I came across two sparrows fighting, this
evening I jostled a woman who was quarrelling. All that’s bad. Let’s
quit.”


They went away.

As they went, Montparnasse muttered:—

“Never mind! if they had wanted, I’d have cut her throat.”


Babet responded

“I wouldn’t. I don’t hit a lady.”


At the corner of the street they halted and exchanged the following
enigmatical dialogue in a low tone:—

“Where shall we go to sleep to-night?”


“Under Pantin [Paris].”


“Have you the key to the gate, Thénardier?”


“Pardi.”


Éponine, who never took her eyes off of them, saw them retreat by the
road by which they had come. She rose and began to creep after them
along the walls and the houses. She followed them thus as far as the
boulevard.

There they parted, and she saw these six men plunge into the gloom,
where they appeared to melt away.






After the departure of the ruffians, the Rue Plumet resumed its
tranquil, nocturnal aspect. That which had just taken place in this
street would not have astonished a forest. The lofty trees, the copses,
the heaths, the branches rudely interlaced, the tall grass, exist in a
sombre manner; the savage swarming there catches glimpses of sudden
apparitions of the invisible; that which is below man distinguishes,
through the mists, that which is beyond man; and the things of which we
living beings are ignorant there meet face to face in the night.
Nature, bristling and wild, takes alarm at certain approaches in which
she fancies that she feels the supernatural. The forces of the gloom
know each other, and are strangely balanced by each other. Teeth and
claws fear what they cannot grasp. Blood-drinking bestiality, voracious
appetites, hunger in search of prey, the armed instincts of nails and
jaws which have for source and aim the belly, glare and smell out
uneasily the impassive spectral forms straying beneath a shroud, erect
in its vague and shuddering robe, and which seem to them to live with a
dead and terrible life. These brutalities, which are only matter,
entertain a confused fear of having to deal with the immense obscurity
condensed into an unknown being. A black figure barring the way stops
the wild beast short. That which emerges from the cemetery intimidates
and disconcerts that which emerges from the cave; the ferocious fear
the sinister; wolves recoil when they encounter a ghoul.




COSETTE HIS ADDRESS


While this sort of a dog with a human face was mounting guard over the
gate, and while the six ruffians were yielding to a girl, Marius was by
Cosette’s side.

Never had the sky been more studded with stars and more charming, the
trees more trembling, the odor of the grass more penetrating; never had
the birds fallen asleep among the leaves with a sweeter noise; never
had all the harmonies of universal serenity responded more thoroughly
to the inward music of love; never had Marius been more captivated,
more happy, more ecstatic.

But he had found Cosette sad; Cosette had been weeping. Her eyes were
red.

This was the first cloud in that wonderful dream.

Marius’ first word had been: “What is the matter?”


And she had replied: “This.”


Then she had seated herself on the bench near the steps, and while he
tremblingly took his place beside her, she had continued:—

“My father told me this morning to hold myself in readiness, because he
has business, and we may go away from here.”


Marius shivered from head to foot.

When one is at the end of one’s life, to die means to go away; when one
is at the beginning of it, to go away means to die.

For the last six weeks, Marius had little by little, slowly, by
degrees, taken possession of Cosette each day. As we have already
explained, in the case of first love, the soul is taken long before the
body; later on, one takes the body long before the soul; sometimes one
does not take the soul at all; the Faublas and the Prudhommes add:
“Because there is none”; but the sarcasm is, fortunately, a blasphemy.
So Marius possessed Cosette, as spirits possess, but he enveloped her
with all his soul, and seized her jealously with incredible conviction.
He possessed her smile, her breath, her perfume, the profound radiance
of her blue eyes, the sweetness of her skin when he touched her hand,
the charming mark which she had on her neck, all her thoughts.
Therefore, he possessed all Cosette’s dreams.

He incessantly gazed at, and he sometimes touched lightly with his
breath, the short locks on the nape of her neck, and he declared to
himself that there was not one of those short hairs which did not
belong to him, Marius. He gazed upon and adored the things that she
wore, her knot of ribbon, her gloves, her sleeves, her shoes, her
cuffs, as sacred objects of which he was the master. He dreamed that he
was the lord of those pretty shell combs which she wore in her hair,
and he even said to himself, in confused and suppressed stammerings of
voluptuousness which did not make their way to the light, that there
was not a ribbon of her gown, not a mesh in her stockings, not a fold
in her bodice, which was not his. Beside Cosette he felt himself beside
his own property, his own thing, his own despot and his slave. It
seemed as though they had so intermingled their souls, that it would
have been impossible to tell them apart had they wished to take them
back again.—“This is mine.” “No, it is mine.” “I assure you that you
are mistaken. This is my property.” “What you are taking as your own is
myself.”—Marius was something that made a part of Cosette, and Cosette
was something which made a part of Marius. Marius felt Cosette within
him. To have Cosette, to possess Cosette, this, to him, was not to be
distinguished from breathing. It was in the midst of this faith, of
this intoxication, of this virgin possession, unprecedented and
absolute, of this sovereignty, that these words: “We are going away,”
fell suddenly, at a blow, and that the harsh voice of reality cried to
him: “Cosette is not yours!”


Marius awoke. For six weeks Marius had been living, as we have said,
outside of life; those words, _going away!_ caused him to re-enter it
harshly.

He found not a word to say. Cosette merely felt that his hand was very
cold. She said to him in her turn: “What is the matter?”


He replied in so low a tone that Cosette hardly heard him:—

“I did not understand what you said.”


She began again:—

“This morning my father told me to settle all my little affairs and to
hold myself in readiness, that he would give me his linen to put in a
trunk, that he was obliged to go on a journey, that we were to go away,
that it is necessary to have a large trunk for me and a small one for
him, and that all is to be ready in a week from now, and that we might
go to England.”


“But this is outrageous!” exclaimed Marius.

It is certain, that, at that moment, no abuse of power, no violence,
not one of the abominations of the worst tyrants, no action of Busiris,
of Tiberius, or of Henry VIII., could have equalled this in atrocity,
in the opinion of Marius; M. Fauchelevent taking his daughter off to
England because he had business there.

He demanded in a weak voice:—

“And when do you start?”


“He did not say when.”


“And when shall you return?”


“He did not say when.”


Marius rose and said coldly:—

“Cosette, shall you go?”


Cosette turned toward him her beautiful eyes, all filled with anguish,
and replied in a sort of bewilderment:—

“Where?”


“To England. Shall you go?”


“Why do you say _you_ to me?”


“I ask you whether you will go?”


“What do you expect me to do?” she said, clasping her hands.

“So, you will go?”


“If my father goes.”


“So, you will go?”


Cosette took Marius’ hand, and pressed it without replying.

“Very well,” said Marius, “then I will go elsewhere.”


Cosette felt rather than understood the meaning of these words. She
turned so pale that her face shone white through the gloom. She
stammered:—

“What do you mean?”


Marius looked at her, then raised his eyes to heaven, and answered:
“Nothing.”


When his eyes fell again, he saw Cosette smiling at him. The smile of a
woman whom one loves possesses a visible radiance, even at night.

“How silly we are! Marius, I have an idea.”


“What is it?”


“If we go away, do you go too! I will tell you where! Come and join me
wherever I am.”


Marius was now a thoroughly roused man. He had fallen back into
reality. He cried to Cosette:—

“Go away with you! Are you mad? Why, I should have to have money, and I
have none! Go to England? But I am in debt now, I owe, I don’t know how
much, more than ten louis to Courfeyrac, one of my friends with whom
you are not acquainted! I have an old hat which is not worth three
francs, I have a coat which lacks buttons in front, my shirt is all
ragged, my elbows are torn, my boots let in the water; for the last six
weeks I have not thought about it, and I have not told you about it.
You only see me at night, and you give me your love; if you were to see
me in the daytime, you would give me a sou! Go to England! Eh! I
haven’t enough to pay for a passport!”


He threw himself against a tree which was close at hand, erect, his
brow pressed close to the bark, feeling neither the wood which flayed
his skin, nor the fever which was throbbing in his temples, and there
he stood motionless, on the point of falling, like the statue of
despair.

He remained a long time thus. One could remain for eternity in such
abysses. At last he turned round. He heard behind him a faint stifled
noise, which was sweet yet sad.

It was Cosette sobbing.

She had been weeping for more than two hours beside Marius as he
meditated.

He came to her, fell at her knees, and slowly prostrating himself, he
took the tip of her foot which peeped out from beneath her robe, and
kissed it.

She let him have his way in silence. There are moments when a woman
accepts, like a sombre and resigned goddess, the religion of love.

“Do not weep,” he said.

She murmured:—

“Not when I may be going away, and you cannot come!”


He went on:—

“Do you love me?”


She replied, sobbing, by that word from paradise which is never more
charming than amid tears:—

“I adore you!”


He continued in a tone which was an indescribable caress:—

“Do not weep. Tell me, will you do this for me, and cease to weep?”


“Do you love me?” said she.

He took her hand.

“Cosette, I have never given my word of honor to any one, because my
word of honor terrifies me. I feel that my father is by my side. Well,
I give you my most sacred word of honor, that if you go away I shall
die.”


In the tone with which he uttered these words there lay a melancholy so
solemn and so tranquil, that Cosette trembled. She felt that chill
which is produced by a true and gloomy thing as it passes by. The shock
made her cease weeping.

“Now, listen,” said he, “do not expect me to-morrow.”


“Why?”


“Do not expect me until the day after to-morrow.”


“Oh! Why?”


“You will see.”


“A day without seeing you! But that is impossible!”


“Let us sacrifice one day in order to gain our whole lives, perhaps.”


And Marius added in a low tone and in an aside:—

“He is a man who never changes his habits, and he has never received
any one except in the evening.”


“Of what man are you speaking?” asked Cosette.

“I? I said nothing.”


“What do you hope, then?”


“Wait until the day after to-morrow.”


“You wish it?”


“Yes, Cosette.”


She took his head in both her hands, raising herself on tiptoe in order
to be on a level with him, and tried to read his hope in his eyes.

Marius resumed:—

“Now that I think of it, you ought to know my address: something might
happen, one never knows; I live with that friend named Courfeyrac, Rue
de la Verrerie, No. 16.”


He searched in his pocket, pulled out his penknife, and with the blade
he wrote on the plaster of the wall:—

_“16 Rue de la Verrerie.”_

In the meantime, Cosette had begun to gaze into his eyes once more.

“Tell me your thought, Marius; you have some idea. Tell it to me. Oh!
tell me, so that I may pass a pleasant night.”


“This is my idea: that it is impossible that God should mean to part
us. Wait; expect me the day after to-morrow.”


“What shall I do until then?” said Cosette. “You are outside, you go,
and come! How happy men are! I shall remain entirely alone! Oh! How sad
I shall be! What is it that you are going to do to-morrow evening? tell
me.”


“I am going to try something.”


“Then I will pray to God and I will think of you here, so that you may
be successful. I will question you no further, since you do not wish
it. You are my master. I shall pass the evening to-morrow in singing
that music from _Euryanthe_ that you love, and that you came one
evening to listen to, outside my shutters. But day after to-morrow you
will come early. I shall expect you at dusk, at nine o’clock precisely,
I warn you. Mon Dieu! how sad it is that the days are so long! On the
stroke of nine, do you understand, I shall be in the garden.”


“And I also.”


And without having uttered it, moved by the same thought, impelled by
those electric currents which place lovers in continual communication,
both being intoxicated with delight even in their sorrow, they fell
into each other’s arms, without perceiving that their lips met while
their uplifted eyes, overflowing with rapture and full of tears, gazed
upon the stars.

When Marius went forth, the street was deserted. This was the moment
when Éponine was following the ruffians to the boulevard.

While Marius had been dreaming with his head pressed to the tree, an
idea had crossed his mind; an idea, alas! that he himself judged to be
senseless and impossible. He had come to a desperate decision.




OTHER


At that epoch, Father Gillenormand was well past his ninety-first
birthday. He still lived with Mademoiselle Gillenormand in the Rue des
Filles-du-Calvaire, No. 6, in the old house which he owned. He was, as
the reader will remember, one of those antique old men who await death
perfectly erect, whom age bears down without bending, and whom even
sorrow cannot curve.

Still, his daughter had been saying for some time: “My father is
sinking.” He no longer boxed the maids’ ears; he no longer thumped the
landing-place so vigorously with his cane when Basque was slow in
opening the door. The Revolution of July had exasperated him for the
space of barely six months. He had viewed, almost tranquilly, that
coupling of words, in the _Moniteur:_ M. Humblot-Conté, peer of France.
The fact is, that the old man was deeply dejected. He did not bend, he
did not yield; this was no more a characteristic of his physical than
of his moral nature, but he felt himself giving way internally. For
four years he had been waiting for Marius, with his foot firmly
planted, that is the exact word, in the conviction that that
good-for-nothing young scamp would ring at his door some day or other;
now he had reached the point, where, at certain gloomy hours, he said
to himself, that if Marius made him wait much longer—It was not death
that was insupportable to him; it was the idea that perhaps he should
never see Marius again. The idea of never seeing Marius again had never
entered his brain until that day; now the thought began to recur to
him, and it chilled him. Absence, as is always the case in genuine and
natural sentiments, had only served to augment the grandfather’s love
for the ungrateful child, who had gone off like a flash. It is during
December nights, when the cold stands at ten degrees, that one thinks
oftenest of the son.

M. Gillenormand was, or thought himself, above all things, incapable of
taking a single step, he—the grandfather, towards his grandson; “I
would die rather,” he said to himself. He did not consider himself as
the least to blame; but he thought of Marius only with profound
tenderness, and the mute despair of an elderly, kindly old man who is
about to vanish in the dark.

He began to lose his teeth, which added to his sadness.

M. Gillenormand, without however acknowledging it to himself, for it
would have rendered him furious and ashamed, had never loved a mistress
as he loved Marius.

He had had placed in his chamber, opposite the head of his bed, so that
it should be the first thing on which his eyes fell on waking, an old
portrait of his other daughter, who was dead, Madame Pontmercy, a
portrait which had been taken when she was eighteen. He gazed
incessantly at that portrait. One day, he happened to say, as he gazed
upon it:—

“I think the likeness is strong.”


“To my sister?” inquired Mademoiselle Gillenormand. “Yes, certainly.”


The old man added:—

“And to him also.”


Once as he sat with his knees pressed together, and his eyes almost
closed, in a despondent attitude, his daughter ventured to say to him:—

“Father, are you as angry with him as ever?”


She paused, not daring to proceed further.

“With whom?” he demanded.

“With that poor Marius.”


He raised his aged head, laid his withered and emaciated fist on the
table, and exclaimed in his most irritated and vibrating tone:—

“Poor Marius, do you say! That gentleman is a knave, a wretched
scoundrel, a vain little ingrate, a heartless, soulless, haughty, and
wicked man!”


And he turned away so that his daughter might not see the tear that
stood in his eye.

Three days later he broke a silence which had lasted four hours, to say
to his daughter point-blank:—

“I had the honor to ask Mademoiselle Gillenormand never to mention him
to me.”


Aunt Gillenormand renounced every effort, and pronounced this acute
diagnosis: “My father never cared very much for my sister after her
folly. It is clear that he detests Marius.”


“After her folly” meant: “after she had married the colonel.”


However, as the reader has been able to conjecture, Mademoiselle
Gillenormand had failed in her attempt to substitute her favorite, the
officer of lancers, for Marius. The substitute, Théodule, had not been
a success. M. Gillenormand had not accepted the _quid pro quo_. A
vacancy in the heart does not accommodate itself to a stop-gap.
Théodule, on his side, though he scented the inheritance, was disgusted
at the task of pleasing. The goodman bored the lancer; and the lancer
shocked the goodman. Lieutenant Théodule was gay, no doubt, but a
chatter-box, frivolous, but vulgar; a high liver, but a frequenter of
bad company; he had mistresses, it is true, and he had a great deal to
say about them, it is true also; but he talked badly. All his good
qualities had a defect. M. Gillenormand was worn out with hearing him
tell about the love affairs that he had in the vicinity of the barracks
in the Rue de Babylone. And then, Lieutenant Gillenormand sometimes
came in his uniform, with the tricolored cockade. This rendered him
downright intolerable. Finally, Father Gillenormand had said to his
daughter: “I’ve had enough of that Théodule. I haven’t much taste for
warriors in time of peace. Receive him if you choose. I don’t know but
I prefer slashers to fellows that drag their swords. The clash of
blades in battle is less dismal, after all, than the clank of the
scabbard on the pavement. And then, throwing out your chest like a
bully and lacing yourself like a girl, with stays under your cuirass,
is doubly ridiculous. When one is a veritable man, one holds equally
aloof from swagger and from affected airs. He is neither a blusterer
nor a finnicky-hearted man. Keep your Théodule for yourself.”


It was in vain that his daughter said to him: “But he is your
grandnephew, nevertheless,”—it turned out that M. Gillenormand, who was
a grandfather to the very finger-tips, was not in the least a
grand-uncle.

In fact, as he had good sense, and as he had compared the two, Théodule
had only served to make him regret Marius all the more.

One evening,—it was the 24th of June, which did not prevent Father
Gillenormand having a rousing fire on the hearth,—he had dismissed his
daughter, who was sewing in a neighboring apartment. He was alone in
his chamber, amid its pastoral scenes, with his feet propped on the
andirons, half enveloped in his huge screen of coromandel lacquer, with
its nine leaves, with his elbow resting on a table where burned two
candles under a green shade, engulfed in his tapestry armchair, and in
his hand a book which he was not reading. He was dressed, according to
his wont, like an _incroyable_, and resembled an antique portrait by
Garat. This would have made people run after him in the street, had not
his daughter covered him up, whenever he went out, in a vast bishop’s
wadded cloak, which concealed his attire. At home, he never wore a
dressing gown, except when he rose and retired. “It gives one a look of
age,” said he.

Father Gillenormand was thinking of Marius lovingly and bitterly; and,
as usual, bitterness predominated. His tenderness once soured always
ended by boiling and turning to indignation. He had reached the point
where a man tries to make up his mind and to accept that which rends
his heart. He was explaining to himself that there was no longer any
reason why Marius should return, that if he intended to return, he
should have done it long ago, that he must renounce the idea. He was
trying to accustom himself to the thought that all was over, and that
he should die without having beheld “that gentleman” again. But his
whole nature revolted; his aged paternity would not consent to this.
“Well!” said he,—this was his doleful refrain,—“he will not return!”
His bald head had fallen upon his breast, and he fixed a melancholy and
irritated gaze upon the ashes on his hearth.

In the very midst of his reverie, his old servant Basque entered, and
inquired:—

“Can Monsieur receive M. Marius?”


The old man sat up erect, pallid, and like a corpse which rises under
the influence of a galvanic shock. All his blood had retreated to his
heart. He stammered:—

“M. Marius what?”


“I don’t know,” replied Basque, intimidated and put out of countenance
by his master’s air; “I have not seen him. Nicolette came in and said
to me: ‘There’s a young man here; say that it is M. Marius.’”


Father Gillenormand stammered in a low voice:—

“Show him in.”


And he remained in the same attitude, with shaking head, and his eyes
fixed on the door. It opened once more. A young man entered. It was
Marius.

Marius halted at the door, as though waiting to be bidden to enter.

His almost squalid attire was not perceptible in the obscurity caused
by the shade. Nothing could be seen but his calm, grave, but strangely
sad face.

It was several minutes before Father Gillenormand, dulled with
amazement and joy, could see anything except a brightness as when one
is in the presence of an apparition. He was on the point of swooning;
he saw Marius through a dazzling light. It certainly was he, it
certainly was Marius.

At last! After the lapse of four years! He grasped him entire, so to
speak, in a single glance. He found him noble, handsome, distinguished,
well-grown, a complete man, with a suitable mien and a charming air. He
felt a desire to open his arms, to call him, to fling himself forward;
his heart melted with rapture, affectionate words swelled and
overflowed his breast; at length all his tenderness came to the light
and reached his lips, and, by a contrast which constituted the very
foundation of his nature, what came forth was harshness. He said
abruptly:—

“What have you come here for?”


Marius replied with embarrassment:—

“Monsieur—”


M. Gillenormand would have liked to have Marius throw himself into his
arms. He was displeased with Marius and with himself. He was conscious
that he was brusque, and that Marius was cold. It caused the goodman
unendurable and irritating anxiety to feel so tender and forlorn
within, and only to be able to be hard outside. Bitterness returned. He
interrupted Marius in a peevish tone:—

“Then why did you come?”


That “then” signified: _If you do not come to embrace me_. Marius
looked at his grandfather, whose pallor gave him a face of marble.

“Monsieur—”


“Have you come to beg my pardon? Do you acknowledge your faults?”


He thought he was putting Marius on the right road, and that “the
child” would yield. Marius shivered; it was the denial of his father
that was required of him; he dropped his eyes and replied:—

“No, sir.”


“Then,” exclaimed the old man impetuously, with a grief that was
poignant and full of wrath, “what do you want of me?”


Marius clasped his hands, advanced a step, and said in a feeble and
trembling voice:—

“Sir, have pity on me.”


These words touched M. Gillenormand; uttered a little sooner, they
would have rendered him tender, but they came too late. The grandfather
rose; he supported himself with both hands on his cane; his lips were
white, his brow wavered, but his lofty form towered above Marius as he
bowed.

“Pity on you, sir! It is youth demanding pity of the old man of
ninety-one! You are entering into life, I am leaving it; you go to the
play, to balls, to the café, to the billiard-hall; you have wit, you
please the women, you are a handsome fellow; as for me, I spit on my
brands in the heart of summer; you are rich with the only riches that
are really such, I possess all the poverty of age; infirmity,
isolation! You have your thirty-two teeth, a good digestion, bright
eyes, strength, appetite, health, gayety, a forest of black hair; I
have no longer even white hair, I have lost my teeth, I am losing my
legs, I am losing my memory; there are three names of streets that I
confound incessantly, the Rue Charlot, the Rue du Chaume, and the Rue
Saint-Claude, that is what I have come to; you have before you the
whole future, full of sunshine, and I am beginning to lose my sight, so
far am I advancing into the night; you are in love, that is a matter of
course, I am beloved by no one in all the world; and you ask pity of
me! Parbleu! Molière forgot that. If that is the way you jest at the
courthouse, Messieurs the lawyers, I sincerely compliment you. You are
droll.”


And the octogenarian went on in a grave and angry voice:—

“Come, now, what do you want of me?”


“Sir,” said Marius, “I know that my presence is displeasing to you, but
I have come merely to ask one thing of you, and then I shall go away
immediately.”


“You are a fool!” said the old man. “Who said that you were to go
away?”


This was the translation of the tender words which lay at the bottom of
his heart:—

“Ask my pardon! Throw yourself on my neck!”


M. Gillenormand felt that Marius would leave him in a few moments, that
his harsh reception had repelled the lad, that his hardness was driving
him away; he said all this to himself, and it augmented his grief; and
as his grief was straightway converted into wrath, it increased his
harshness. He would have liked to have Marius understand, and Marius
did not understand, which made the goodman furious.

He began again:—

“What! you deserted me, your grandfather, you left my house to go no
one knows whither, you drove your aunt to despair, you went off, it is
easily guessed, to lead a bachelor life; it’s more convenient, to play
the dandy, to come in at all hours, to amuse yourself; you have given
me no signs of life, you have contracted debts without even telling me
to pay them, you have become a smasher of windows and a blusterer, and,
at the end of four years, you come to me, and that is all you have to
say to me!”


This violent fashion of driving a grandson to tenderness was productive
only of silence on the part of Marius. M. Gillenormand folded his arms;
a gesture which with him was peculiarly imperious, and apostrophized
Marius bitterly:—

“Let us make an end of this. You have come to ask something of me, you
say? Well, what? What is it? Speak!”


“Sir,” said Marius, with the look of a man who feels that he is falling
over a precipice, “I have come to ask your permission to marry.”


M. Gillenormand rang the bell. Basque opened the door half-way.

“Call my daughter.”


A second later, the door was opened once more, Mademoiselle
Gillenormand did not enter, but showed herself; Marius was standing,
mute, with pendant arms and the face of a criminal; M. Gillenormand was
pacing back and forth in the room. He turned to his daughter and said
to her:—

“Nothing. It is Monsieur Marius. Say good day to him. Monsieur wishes
to marry. That’s all. Go away.”


The curt, hoarse sound of the old man’s voice announced a strange
degree of excitement. The aunt gazed at Marius with a frightened air,
hardly appeared to recognize him, did not allow a gesture or a syllable
to escape her, and disappeared at her father’s breath more swiftly than
a straw before the hurricane.

In the meantime, Father Gillenormand had returned and placed his back
against the chimney-piece once more.

“You marry! At one and twenty! You have arranged that! You have only a
permission to ask! a formality. Sit down, sir. Well, you have had a
revolution since I had the honor to see you last. The Jacobins got the
upper hand. You must have been delighted. Are you not a Republican
since you are a Baron? You can make that agree. The Republic makes a
good sauce for the barony. Are you one of those decorated by July? Have
you taken the Louvre at all, sir? Quite near here, in the Rue
Saint-Antoine, opposite the Rue des Nonamdières, there is a cannon-ball
incrusted in the wall of the third story of a house with this
inscription: ‘July 28th, 1830.’ Go take a look at that. It produces a
good effect. Ah! those friends of yours do pretty things. By the way,
aren’t they erecting a fountain in the place of the monument of M. le
Duc de Berry? So you want to marry? Whom? Can one inquire without
indiscretion?”


He paused, and, before Marius had time to answer, he added violently:—

“Come now, you have a profession? A fortune made? How much do you earn
at your trade of lawyer?”


“Nothing,” said Marius, with a sort of firmness and resolution that was
almost fierce.

“Nothing? Then all that you have to live upon is the twelve hundred
livres that I allow you?”


Marius did not reply. M. Gillenormand continued:—

“Then I understand the girl is rich?”


“As rich as I am.”


“What! No dowry?”


“No.”


“Expectations?”


“I think not.”


“Utterly naked! What’s the father?”


“I don’t know.”


“And what’s her name?”


“Mademoiselle Fauchelevent.”


“Fauchewhat?”


“Fauchelevent.”


“Pttt!” ejaculated the old gentleman.

“Sir!” exclaimed Marius.

M. Gillenormand interrupted him with the tone of a man who is speaking
to himself:—

“That’s right, one and twenty years of age, no profession, twelve
hundred livres a year, Madame la Baronne de Pontmercy will go and
purchase a couple of sous’ worth of parsley from the fruiterer.”


“Sir,” repeated Marius, in the despair at the last hope, which was
vanishing, “I entreat you! I conjure you in the name of Heaven, with
clasped hands, sir, I throw myself at your feet, permit me to marry
her!”


The old man burst into a shout of strident and mournful laughter,
coughing and laughing at the same time.

“Ah! ah! ah! You said to yourself: ‘Pardine! I’ll go hunt up that old
blockhead, that absurd numskull! What a shame that I’m not twenty-five!
How I’d treat him to a nice respectful summons! How nicely I’d get
along without him! It’s nothing to me, I’d say to him: “You’re only too
happy to see me, you old idiot, I want to marry, I desire to wed
Mamselle No-matter-whom, daughter of Monsieur No-matter-what, I have no
shoes, she has no chemise, that just suits; I want to throw my career,
my future, my youth, my life to the dogs; I wish to take a plunge into
wretchedness with a woman around my neck, that’s an idea, and you must
consent to it!” and the old fossil will consent.’ Go, my lad, do as you
like, attach your paving-stone, marry your Pousselevent, your
Coupelevent—Never, sir, never!”


“Father—”


“Never!”


At the tone in which that “never” was uttered, Marius lost all hope. He
traversed the chamber with slow steps, with bowed head, tottering and
more like a dying man than like one merely taking his departure. M.
Gillenormand followed him with his eyes, and at the moment when the
door opened, and Marius was on the point of going out, he advanced four
paces, with the senile vivacity of impetuous and spoiled old gentlemen,
seized Marius by the collar, brought him back energetically into the
room, flung him into an armchair and said to him:—

“Tell me all about it!”


“It was that single word “father” which had effected this revolution.

Marius stared at him in bewilderment. M. Gillenormand’s mobile face was
no longer expressive of anything but rough and ineffable good-nature.
The grandsire had given way before the grandfather.

“Come, see here, speak, tell me about your love affairs, jabber, tell
me everything! Sapristi! how stupid young folks are!”


“Father—” repeated Marius.

The old man’s entire countenance lighted up with indescribable
radiance.

“Yes, that’s right, call me father, and you’ll see!”


There was now something so kind, so gentle, so openhearted, and so
paternal in this brusqueness, that Marius, in the sudden transition
from discouragement to hope, was stunned and intoxicated by it, as it
were. He was seated near the table, the light from the candles brought
out the dilapidation of his costume, which Father Gillenormand regarded
with amazement.

“Well, father—” said Marius.

“Ah, by the way,” interrupted M. Gillenormand, “you really have not a
penny then? You are dressed like a pickpocket.”


He rummaged in a drawer, drew forth a purse, which he laid on the
table: “Here are a hundred louis, buy yourself a hat.”


“Father,” pursued Marius, “my good father, if you only knew! I love
her. You cannot imagine it; the first time I saw her was at the
Luxembourg, she came there; in the beginning, I did not pay much heed
to her, and then, I don’t know how it came about, I fell in love with
her. Oh! how unhappy that made me! Now, at last, I see her every day,
at her own home, her father does not know it, just fancy, they are
going away, it is in the garden that we meet, in the evening, her
father means to take her to England, then I said to myself: ‘I’ll go
and see my grandfather and tell him all about the affair. I should go
mad first, I should die, I should fall ill, I should throw myself into
the water. I absolutely must marry her, since I should go mad
otherwise.’ This is the whole truth, and I do not think that I have
omitted anything. She lives in a garden with an iron fence, in the Rue
Plumet. It is in the neighborhood of the Invalides.”


Father Gillenormand had seated himself, with a beaming countenance,
beside Marius. As he listened to him and drank in the sound of his
voice, he enjoyed at the same time a protracted pinch of snuff. At the
words “Rue Plumet” he interrupted his inhalation and allowed the
remainder of his snuff to fall upon his knees.

“The Rue Plumet, the Rue Plumet, did you say?—Let us see!—Are there not
barracks in that vicinity?—Why, yes, that’s it. Your cousin Théodule
has spoken to me about it. The lancer, the officer. A gay girl, my good
friend, a gay girl!—Pardieu, yes, the Rue Plumet. It is what used to be
called the Rue Blomet.—It all comes back to me now. I have heard of
that little girl of the iron railing in the Rue Plumet. In a garden, a
Pamela. Your taste is not bad. She is said to be a very tidy creature.
Between ourselves, I think that simpleton of a lancer has been courting
her a bit. I don’t know where he did it. However, that’s not to the
purpose. Besides, he is not to be believed. He brags, Marius! I think
it quite proper that a young man like you should be in love. It’s the
right thing at your age. I like you better as a lover than as a
Jacobin. I like you better in love with a petticoat, sapristi! with
twenty petticoats, than with M. de Robespierre. For my part, I will do
myself the justice to say, that in the line of _sans-culottes_, I have
never loved any one but women. Pretty girls are pretty girls, the
deuce! There’s no objection to that. As for the little one, she
receives you without her father’s knowledge. That’s in the established
order of things. I have had adventures of that same sort myself. More
than one. Do you know what is done then? One does not take the matter
ferociously; one does not precipitate himself into the tragic; one does
not make one’s mind to marriage and M. le Maire with his scarf. One
simply behaves like a fellow of spirit. One shows good sense. Slip
along, mortals; don’t marry. You come and look up your grandfather, who
is a good-natured fellow at bottom, and who always has a few rolls of
louis in an old drawer; you say to him: ‘See here, grandfather.’ And
the grandfather says: ‘That’s a simple matter. Youth must amuse itself,
and old age must wear out. I have been young, you will be old. Come, my
boy, you shall pass it on to your grandson. Here are two hundred
pistoles. Amuse yourself, deuce take it!’ Nothing better! That’s the
way the affair should be treated. You don’t marry, but that does no
harm. You understand me?”


Marius, petrified and incapable of uttering a syllable, made a sign
with his head that he did not.

The old man burst out laughing, winked his aged eye, gave him a slap on
the knee, stared him full in the face with a mysterious and beaming
air, and said to him, with the tenderest of shrugs of the shoulder:—

“Booby! make her your mistress.”


Marius turned pale. He had understood nothing of what his grandfather
had just said. This twaddle about the Rue Blomet, Pamela, the barracks,
the lancer, had passed before Marius like a dissolving view. Nothing of
all that could bear any reference to Cosette, who was a lily. The good
man was wandering in his mind. But this wandering terminated in words
which Marius did understand, and which were a mortal insult to Cosette.
Those words, “make her your mistress,” entered the heart of the strict
young man like a sword.

He rose, picked up his hat which lay on the floor, and walked to the
door with a firm, assured step. There he turned round, bowed deeply to
his grandfather, raised his head erect again, and said:—

“Five years ago you insulted my father; to-day you have insulted my
wife. I ask nothing more of you, sir. Farewell.”


Father Gillenormand, utterly confounded, opened his mouth, extended his
arms, tried to rise, and before he could utter a word, the door closed
once more, and Marius had disappeared.

The old man remained for several minutes motionless and as though
struck by lightning, without the power to speak or breathe, as though a
clenched fist grasped his throat. At last he tore himself from his
armchair, ran, so far as a man can run at ninety-one, to the door,
opened it, and cried:—

“Help! Help!”


His daughter made her appearance, then the domestics. He began again,
with a pitiful rattle: “Run after him! Bring him back! What have I done
to him? He is mad! He is going away! Ah! my God! Ah! my God! This time
he will not come back!”


He went to the window which looked out on the street, threw it open
with his aged and palsied hands, leaned out more than half-way, while
Basque and Nicolette held him behind, and shouted:—

“Marius! Marius! Marius! Marius!”


But Marius could no longer hear him, for at that moment he was turning
the corner of the Rue Saint-Louis.

The octogenarian raised his hands to his temples two or three times
with an expression of anguish, recoiled tottering, and fell back into
an armchair, pulseless, voiceless, tearless, with quivering head and
lips which moved with a stupid air, with nothing in his eyes and
nothing any longer in his heart except a gloomy and profound something
which resembled night.




