CHAPTER I.
SOLITUDE AND THE BARRACKS COMBINED.
Cosette's sorrow, so poignant and so sharp four or five monthspreviously, had without her knowledge attained the convalescent stage.Nature, spring, youth, love for her father, the gayety of the flowersand birds filtered gradually, day by day and drop by drop, somethingthat almost resembled oblivion into her virginal and young soul. Wasthe fire entirely extinguished; or were layers of ashes merely formed?The fact is, that she hardly felt now the painful and burning point.One day she suddenly thought of Marius; "Why," she said, "I had almostforgotten him." This same week she noticed, while passing the gardengate, a very handsome officer in the Lancers, with a wasp-like waist,a delightful uniform, the cheeks of a girl, a sabre under his arm,waxed mustaches, and lacquered schapska. In other respects, he hadlight hair, blue eyes flush with his head, a round, vain, insolent, andpretty face; he was exactly the contrary of Marius. He had a cigarin his mouth, and Cosette supposed that he belonged to the regimentquartered in the barracks of the Rue de Babylone. The next day she sawhim pass again, and remarked the hour. From this moment--was it anaccident?--she saw him pass nearly every day. The officer's comradesperceived that there was in this badly kept garden, and behind thispoor, old-fashioned railing, a very pretty creature who was nearlyalways there when the handsome lieutenant passed, who is no stranger tothe reader, as his name was Théodule Gillenormand.
"Hilloh!" they said to him, "there's a little girl making eyes at you,just look at her."
"Have I the time," the Lancer replied, "to look at all the girls wholook at me?"
It was at this identical time that Marius was slowly descending to theabyss, and said, "If I could only see her again before I die!" If hiswish had been realized, if he had at that moment seen Cosette lookingat a Lancer, he would have been unable to utter a word, but expired ofgrief. Whose fault would it have been? Nobody's. Marius possessed oneof those temperaments which bury themselves in chagrin and abide in it:Cosette was one of those who plunge into it and again emerge. Cosette,however, was passing through that dangerous moment,--the fatal phaseof feminine reverie left to itself, in which the heart of an isolatedmaiden resembles those vine tendrils which cling, according to chance,to the capital of a marble column or to the sign-post of an inn. Itis a rapid and decisive moment, critical for every orphan, whethershe be poor or rich; for wealth does not prevent a bad choice, andmisalliances take place in very high society. But the true misallianceis that of souls; and in the same way as many an unknown young man,without name, birth, or fortune, is a marble capital supporting atemple of grand sentiments and grand ideas, so a man of the world,satisfied and opulent, who has polished boots and varnished words, ifwe look not at the exterior but at the interior,--that is to say, whatis reserved for the wife,--is nought but a stupid log obscurely hauntedby violent, unclean, and drunken passions,--the inn sign-post.
What was there in Cosette's soul? Passion calmed or lulled to sleep,love in a floating state; something which was limpid and brilliant,perturbed at a certain depth, and sombre lower still. The image ofthe handsome officer was reflected on the surface, but was there anyreminiscence at the bottom, quite at the bottom? Perhaps so, butCosette did not know.
A singular incident occurred.