第 二百五十九 章 · THE BEGINNING OF SHADOW

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.