الفصل الفصل 240 · TO ONE SADNESS OPPOSE A SADNESS AND A HALF

All situations have their instincts. Old and eternal Mother Nature

warned Jean Valjean in a dim way of the presence of Marius. Jean

Valjean shuddered to the very bottom of his soul. Jean Valjean saw

nothing, knew nothing, and yet he scanned with obstinate attention, the

darkness in which he walked, as though he felt on one side of him

something in process of construction, and on the other, something which

was crumbling away. Marius, also warned, and, in accordance with the

deep law of God, by that same Mother Nature, did all he could to keep

out of sight of “the father.” Nevertheless, it came to pass that Jean

Valjean sometimes espied him. Marius’ manners were no longer in the

least natural. He exhibited ambiguous prudence and awkward daring. He

no longer came quite close to them as formerly. He seated himself at a

distance and pretended to be reading; why did he pretend that? Formerly

he had come in his old coat, now he wore his new one every day; Jean

Valjean was not sure that he did not have his hair curled, his eyes

were very queer, he wore gloves; in short, Jean Valjean cordially

detested this young man.

Cosette allowed nothing to be divined. Without knowing just what was

the matter with her she was convinced that there was something in it,

and that it must be concealed.

There was a coincidence between the taste for the toilet which had

recently come to Cosette, and the habit of new clothes developed by

that stranger which was very repugnant to Jean Valjean. It might be

accidental, no doubt, certainly, but it was a menacing accident.

He never opened his mouth to Cosette about this stranger. One day,

however, he could not refrain from so doing, and, with that vague

despair which suddenly casts the lead into the depths of its despair,

he said to her: “What a very pedantic air that young man has!”

Cosette, but a year before only an indifferent little girl, would have

replied: “Why, no, he is charming.” Ten years later, with the love of

Marius in her heart, she would have answered: “A pedant, and

insufferable to the sight! You are right!”—At the moment in life and

the heart which she had then attained, she contented herself with

replying, with supreme calmness: “That young man!”

As though she now beheld him for the first time in her life.

“How stupid I am!” thought Jean Valjean. “She had not noticed him. It

is I who have pointed him out to her.”

Oh, simplicity of the old! oh, the depth of children!

It is one of the laws of those fresh years of suffering and trouble, of

those vivacious conflicts between a first love and the first obstacles,

that the young girl does not allow herself to be caught in any trap

whatever, and that the young man falls into every one. Jean Valjean had

instituted an undeclared war against Marius, which Marius, with the

sublime stupidity of his passion and his age, did not divine. Jean

Valjean laid a host of ambushes for him; he changed his hour, he

changed his bench, he forgot his handkerchief, he came alone to the

Luxembourg; Marius dashed headlong into all these snares; and to all

the interrogation marks planted by Jean Valjean in his pathway, he

ingenuously answered “yes.” But Cosette remained immured in her

apparent unconcern and in her imperturbable tranquillity, so that Jean

Valjean arrived at the following conclusion: “That ninny is madly in

love with Cosette, but Cosette does not even know that he exists.”

Nonetheless did he bear in his heart a mournful tremor. The minute when

Cosette would love might strike at any moment. Does not everything

begin with indifference?

Only once did Cosette make a mistake and alarm him. He rose from his

seat to depart, after a stay of three hours, and she said: “What,

already?”

Jean Valjean had not discontinued his trips to the Luxembourg, as he

did not wish to do anything out of the way, and as, above all things,

he feared to arouse Cosette; but during the hours which were so sweet

to the lovers, while Cosette was sending her smile to the intoxicated

Marius, who perceived nothing else now, and who now saw nothing in all

the world but an adored and radiant face, Jean Valjean was fixing on

Marius flashing and terrible eyes. He, who had finally come to believe

himself incapable of a malevolent feeling, experienced moments when

Marius was present, in which he thought he was becoming savage and

ferocious once more, and he felt the old depths of his soul, which had

formerly contained so much wrath, opening once more and rising up

against that young man. It almost seemed to him that unknown craters

were forming in his bosom.

What! he was there, that creature! What was he there for? He came

creeping about, smelling out, examining, trying! He came, saying: “Hey!

Why not?” He came to prowl about his, Jean Valjean’s, life! to prowl

about his happiness, with the purpose of seizing it and bearing it

away!

Jean Valjean added: “Yes, that’s it! What is he in search of? An

adventure! What does he want? A love affair! A love affair! And I?

What! I have been first, the most wretched of men, and then the most

unhappy, and I have traversed sixty years of life on my knees, I have

suffered everything that man can suffer, I have grown old without

having been young, I have lived without a family, without relatives,

without friends, without life, without children, I have left my blood

on every stone, on every bramble, on every mile-post, along every wall,

I have been gentle, though others have been hard to me, and kind,

although others have been malicious, I have become an honest man once

more, in spite of everything, I have repented of the evil that I have

done and have forgiven the evil that has been done to me, and at the

moment when I receive my recompense, at the moment when it is all over,

at the moment when I am just touching the goal, at the moment when I

have what I desire, it is well, it is good, I have paid, I have earned

it, all this is to take flight, all this will vanish, and I shall lose

Cosette, and I shall lose my life, my joy, my soul, because it has

pleased a great booby to come and lounge at the Luxembourg.”

Then his eyes were filled with a sad and extraordinary gleam.

It was no longer a man gazing at a man; it was no longer an enemy

surveying an enemy. It was a dog scanning a thief.

The reader knows the rest. Marius pursued his senseless course. One day

he followed Cosette to the Rue de l’Ouest. Another day he spoke to the

porter. The porter, on his side, spoke, and said to Jean Valjean:

“Monsieur, who is that curious young man who is asking for you?” On the

morrow Jean Valjean bestowed on Marius that glance which Marius at last

perceived. A week later, Jean Valjean had taken his departure. He swore

to himself that he would never again set foot either in the Luxembourg

or in the Rue de l’Ouest. He returned to the Rue Plumet.

Cosette did not complain, she said nothing, she asked no questions, she

did not seek to learn his reasons; she had already reached the point

where she was afraid of being divined, and of betraying herself. Jean

Valjean had no experience of these miseries, the only miseries which

are charming and the only ones with which he was not acquainted; the

consequence was that he did not understand the grave significance of

Cosette’s silence.

He merely noticed that she had grown sad, and he grew gloomy. On his

side and on hers, inexperience had joined issue.

Once he made a trial. He asked Cosette:—

“Would you like to come to the Luxembourg?”

A ray illuminated Cosette’s pale face.

“Yes,” said she.

They went thither. Three months had elapsed. Marius no longer went

there. Marius was not there.

On the following day, Jean Valjean asked Cosette again:—

“Would you like to come to the Luxembourg?”

She replied, sadly and gently:—

“No.”

Jean Valjean was hurt by this sadness, and heart-broken at this

gentleness.

What was going on in that mind which was so young and yet already so

impenetrable? What was on its way there within? What was taking place

in Cosette’s soul? Sometimes, instead of going to bed, Jean Valjean

remained seated on his pallet, with his head in his hands, and he

passed whole nights asking himself: “What has Cosette in her mind?” and

in thinking of the things that she might be thinking about.

Oh! at such moments, what mournful glances did he cast towards that

cloister, that chaste peak, that abode of angels, that inaccessible

glacier of virtue! How he contemplated, with despairing ecstasy, that

convent garden, full of ignored flowers and cloistered virgins, where

all perfumes and all souls mount straight to heaven! How he adored that

Eden forever closed against him, whence he had voluntarily and madly

emerged! How he regretted his abnegation and his folly in having

brought Cosette back into the world, poor hero of sacrifice, seized and

hurled to the earth by his very self-devotion! How he said to himself,

“What have I done?”

However, nothing of all this was perceptible to Cosette. No ill-temper,

no harshness. His face was always serene and kind. Jean Valjean’s

manners were more tender and more paternal than ever. If anything could

have betrayed his lack of joy, it was his increased suavity.

On her side, Cosette languished. She suffered from the absence of

Marius as she had rejoiced in his presence, peculiarly, without exactly

being conscious of it. When Jean Valjean ceased to take her on their

customary strolls, a feminine instinct murmured confusedly, at the

bottom of her heart, that she must not seem to set store on the

Luxembourg garden, and that if this proved to be a matter of

indifference to her, her father would take her thither once more. But

days, weeks, months, elapsed. Jean Valjean had tacitly accepted

Cosette’s tacit consent. She regretted it. It was too late. So Marius

had disappeared; all was over. The day on which she returned to the

Luxembourg, Marius was no longer there. What was to be done? Should she

ever find him again? She felt an anguish at her heart, which nothing

relieved, and which augmented every day; she no longer knew whether it

was winter or summer, whether it was raining or shining, whether the

birds were singing, whether it was the season for dahlias or daisies,

whether the Luxembourg was more charming than the Tuileries, whether

the linen which the laundress brought home was starched too much or not

enough, whether Toussaint had done “her marketing” well or ill; and she

remained dejected, absorbed, attentive to but a single thought, her

eyes vague and staring as when one gazes by night at a black and

fathomless spot where an apparition has vanished.

However, she did not allow Jean Valjean to perceive anything of this,

except her pallor.

She still wore her sweet face for him.

This pallor sufficed but too thoroughly to trouble Jean Valjean.

Sometimes he asked her:—

“What is the matter with you?”

She replied: “There is nothing the matter with me.”

And after a silence, when she divined that he was sad also, she would

add:—

“And you, father—is there anything wrong with you?”

“With me? Nothing,” said he.

These two beings who had loved each other so exclusively, and with so

touching an affection, and who had lived so long for each other now

suffered side by side, each on the other’s account; without

acknowledging it to each other, without anger towards each other, and

with a smile.