Kabanata Kabanata 239 · THE BATTLE BEGUN

Cosette in her shadow, like Marius in his, was all ready to take fire.

Destiny, with its mysterious and fatal patience, slowly drew together

these two beings, all charged and all languishing with the stormy

electricity of passion, these two souls which were laden with love as

two clouds are laden with lightning, and which were bound to overflow

and mingle in a look like the clouds in a flash of fire.

The glance has been so much abused in love romances that it has finally

fallen into disrepute. One hardly dares to say, nowadays, that two

beings fell in love because they looked at each other. That is the way

people do fall in love, nevertheless, and the only way. The rest is

nothing, but the rest comes afterwards. Nothing is more real than these

great shocks which two souls convey to each other by the exchange of

that spark.

At that particular hour when Cosette unconsciously darted that glance

which troubled Marius, Marius had no suspicion that he had also

launched a look which disturbed Cosette.

He caused her the same good and the same evil.

She had been in the habit of seeing him for a long time, and she had

scrutinized him as girls scrutinize and see, while looking elsewhere.

Marius still considered Cosette ugly, when she had already begun to

think Marius handsome. But as he paid no attention to her, the young

man was nothing to her.

Still, she could not refrain from saying to herself that he had

beautiful hair, beautiful eyes, handsome teeth, a charming tone of

voice when she heard him conversing with his comrades, that he held

himself badly when he walked, if you like, but with a grace that was

all his own, that he did not appear to be at all stupid, that his whole

person was noble, gentle, simple, proud, and that, in short, though he

seemed to be poor, yet his air was fine.

On the day when their eyes met at last, and said to each other those

first, obscure, and ineffable things which the glance lisps, Cosette

did not immediately understand. She returned thoughtfully to the house

in the Rue de l’Ouest, where Jean Valjean, according to his custom, had

come to spend six weeks. The next morning, on waking, she thought of

that strange young man, so long indifferent and icy, who now seemed to

pay attention to her, and it did not appear to her that this attention

was the least in the world agreeable to her. She was, on the contrary,

somewhat incensed at this handsome and disdainful individual. A

substratum of war stirred within her. It struck her, and the idea

caused her a wholly childish joy, that she was going to take her

revenge at last.

Knowing that she was beautiful, she was thoroughly conscious, though in

an indistinct fashion, that she possessed a weapon. Women play with

their beauty as children do with a knife. They wound themselves.

The reader will recall Marius’ hesitations, his palpitations, his

terrors. He remained on his bench and did not approach. This vexed

Cosette. One day, she said to Jean Valjean: “Father, let us stroll

about a little in that direction.” Seeing that Marius did not come to

her, she went to him. In such cases, all women resemble Mahomet. And

then, strange to say, the first symptom of true love in a young man is

timidity; in a young girl it is boldness. This is surprising, and yet

nothing is more simple. It is the two sexes tending to approach each

other and assuming, each the other’s qualities.

That day, Cosette’s glance drove Marius beside himself, and Marius’

glance set Cosette to trembling. Marius went away confident, and

Cosette uneasy. From that day forth, they adored each other.

The first thing that Cosette felt was a confused and profound

melancholy. It seemed to her that her soul had become black since the

day before. She no longer recognized it. The whiteness of soul in young

girls, which is composed of coldness and gayety, resembles snow. It

melts in love, which is its sun.

Cosette did not know what love was. She had never heard the word

uttered in its terrestrial sense. On the books of profane music which

entered the convent, _amour_ (love) was replaced by _tambour_ (drum) or

_pandour_. This created enigmas which exercised the imaginations of the

_big girls_, such as: _Ah, how delightful is the drum! _ or, _Pity is

not a pandour_. But Cosette had left the convent too early to have

occupied herself much with the “drum.” Therefore, she did not know what

name to give to what she now felt. Is any one the less ill because one

does not know the name of one’s malady?

She loved with all the more passion because she loved ignorantly. She

did not know whether it was a good thing or a bad thing, useful or

dangerous, eternal or temporary, allowable or prohibited; she loved.

She would have been greatly astonished, had any one said to her: “You

do not sleep? But that is forbidden! You do not eat? Why, that is very

bad! You have oppressions and palpitations of the heart? That must not

be! You blush and turn pale, when a certain being clad in black appears

at the end of a certain green walk? But that is abominable!” She would

not have understood, and she would have replied: “What fault is there

of mine in a matter in which I have no power and of which I know

nothing?”

It turned out that the love which presented itself was exactly suited

to the state of her soul. It was a sort of admiration at a distance, a

mute contemplation, the deification of a stranger. It was the

apparition of youth to youth, the dream of nights become a reality yet

remaining a dream, the longed-for phantom realized and made flesh at

last, but having as yet, neither name, nor fault, nor spot, nor

exigence, nor defect; in a word, the distant lover who lingered in the

ideal, a chimæra with a form. Any nearer and more palpable meeting

would have alarmed Cosette at this first stage, when she was still half

immersed in the exaggerated mists of the cloister. She had all the

fears of children and all the fears of nuns combined. The spirit of the

convent, with which she had been permeated for the space of five years,

was still in the process of slow evaporation from her person, and made

everything tremble around her. In this situation he was not a lover, he

was not even an admirer, he was a vision. She set herself to adoring

Marius as something charming, luminous, and impossible.

As extreme innocence borders on extreme coquetry, she smiled at him

with all frankness.

Every day, she looked forward to the hour for their walk with

impatience, she found Marius there, she felt herself unspeakably happy,

and thought in all sincerity that she was expressing her whole thought

when she said to Jean Valjean:—

“What a delicious garden that Luxembourg is!”

Marius and Cosette were in the dark as to one another. They did not

address each other, they did not salute each other, they did not know

each other; they saw each other; and like stars of heaven which are

separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing at each other.

It was thus that Cosette gradually became a woman and developed,

beautiful and loving, with a consciousness of her beauty, and in

ignorance of her love. She was a coquette to boot through her

ignorance.