Chương Chương 257 · FULL LIGHT

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.