CHAPTER I.
BRIGHT LIGHT.
The reader has of course understood that Éponine, on recognizingthrough the railings the inhabitant of the house in the Rue Plumet,to which Magnon sent her, began by keeping the bandits aloof from thehouse, then led Marius to it; and that after several days of ecstasybefore the railings, Marius, impelled by that force which attracts ironto the loadstone, and the lover toward the stones of the house in whichshe whom he loves resides, had eventually entered Cosette's garden, asRomeo did Juliet's. This had even been an easier task for him than forRomeo; for Romeo was obliged to scale a wall, while Marius had merelyto move one of the bars of the decrepit railing loose in its rustysetting, after the fashion of the teeth of old people. As Marius wasthin, he easily passed. As there never was anybody in the street, andas Marius never entered the garden save at night, he ran no risk ofbeing seen. From that blessed and holy hour when a kiss affianced thesetwo souls, Marius went to the garden every night. If, at this momentof her life, Cosette had fallen in love with an unscrupulous libertine,she would have been lost; for there are generous natures that surrenderthemselves, and Cosette was one of them. One of the magnanimities of awoman is to yield; and love, at that elevation where it is absolute,is complicated by a certain celestial blindness of modesty. But whatdangers you incur, ye noble souls! You often give the heart and we takethe body; your heart is left you, and you look at it in the darknesswith a shudder. Love has no middle term: it either saves or destroys,and this dilemma is the whole of human destiny. No fatality offers thisdilemma of ruin or salvation more inexorably than does love, for loveis life, if it be not death; it is a cradle, but also a coffin. Thesame feeling says yes and no in the human heart, and of all the thingswhich God has made, the human heart is the one which evolves the mostlight, and, alas I the most darkness. God willed it that the love whichCosette encountered was one of those loves which save. So long as themonth of May of that year, 1832, lasted, there were every night in thispoor untrimmed garden, and under this thicket, which daily became morefragrant and more thick, two beings composed of all the chastities andall the innocences, overflowing with all the felicities of heaven,nearer to the archangels than to man, pure, honest, intoxicated, andradiant, and who shone for each other in the darkness. It seemed toCosette as if Marius had a crown, and to Marius as if Cosette had aglory. They touched each other, they looked at each other, they tookeach other by the hand, they drew close to each other; but there wasa distance which they never crossed. Not that they respected it, butthey were ignorant of it. Marius felt a barrier in Cosette's purity,and Cosette felt a support in the loyalty of Marius. The first kiss hadalso been the last; since then Marius had never gone beyond touchingCosette's hand or neck-handkerchief, or a curl with his lips. Cosettewas to him a perfume, and not a woman, and he inhaled her. She refusednothing, and he asked for nothing; Cosette was happy and Mariussatisfied. They lived in that ravishing state which might be calledthe dazzling of a soul by a soul; it was the ineffable first embraceof two virginities in the ideal, two swans meeting on the Jungfrau. Atthis hour of love, the hour when voluptuousness is absolutely silencedby the omnipotence of ecstasy, Marius, the pure and seraphic Marius,would have sooner been able to go home with a street-walker than raiseCosette's gown as high as her ankle. Once in the moonlight Cosettestooped to pick up something on the ground, and her dress opened anddisplayed her neck. Marius turned his eyes away.
What passed between these two lovers? Nothing; they adored each other.At night, when they were there, this garden seemed a living and sacredspot. All the flowers opened around them and sent them their incense;and they opened their souls and spread them over the flowers. Thewanton and vigorous vegetation quivered, full of sap and intoxication,around these two innocents, and they uttered words of love at which thetrees shivered. What were these words? Breathings, nothing more; butthey were sufficient to trouble and affect all this nature. It is amagic power which it would be difficult to understand, were we to readin a book this conversation made to be carried away and dissipated likesmoke beneath the leaves by the wind. Take away from these whispers oftwo lovers the melody which issues from the soul, and accompanies themlike a lyre, and what is left is only a shadow, and you say, "What! isit only that?" Well, yes, child's-play, repetitions, laughs at nothing,absurdities, foolishness,--all that is the most sublime and profound inthe world! the only things which are worth the trouble of being saidand being listened to. The man who has never heard, the man who hasnever uttered these absurdities and poor things is an imbecile and awicked man. Said Cosette to Marius,--
"Do you know that my name is Euphrasie?"
"Euphrasie? No, it is Cosette."
"Oh, Cosette is an ugly name, which was given me when I was little; butmy real name is Euphrasie. Don't you like that name?"
"Yes; but Cosette is not ugly."
"Do you like it better than Euphrasie?"
"Well--yes."
"In that case, I like it better too. That is true, Cosette is pretty.Call me Cosette."
Another time she looked at him intently, and exclaimed,--
"You are handsome, sir; you are good-looking; you have wit; you are notat all stupid; you are much more learned than I; but I challenge youwith, 'I love you.'"
And Marius fancied that he heard a strophe sung by a star. Or else shegave him a little tap when he coughed, and said,--
"Do not cough, sir; I do not allow anybody to cough in my house withoutpermission. It is very wrong to cough and frighten me. I wish you to bein good health, because if you were not I should be very unhappy, andwhat would you have me do?"
And this was simply divine.
Once Marius said to Cosette,--
"Just fancy; I supposed for a while that your name was Ursule."
This made them laugh the whole evening. In the middle of anotherconversation he happened to exclaim,--
"Oh! one day at the Luxembourg I felt disposed to finish breaking aninvalid!"
But he stopped short, and did not complete the sentence, for hewould have been obliged to allude to Cosette's garter, and that wasimpossible. There was a strange feeling connected with the flesh,before which this immense innocent love recoiled with a sort of holyterror. Marius imagined life with Cosette like this, without anythingelse,--to come every evening to the Rue Plumet, remove the oldcomplacent bar of the president's railings, sit down elbow to elbowon this bench, look through the trees at the scintillation of thecommencing night, bring the fold in his trouser-knee into cohabitationwith Cosette's ample skirts, to caress her thumb-nail, and to inhalethe same flower in turn forever and indefinitely. During this tune theclouds passed over their heads; and each time the wind blows it carriesoff more of a man's thoughts than of clouds from the sky. We cannotaffirm that this chaste, almost stern love was absolutely withoutgallantly. "Paying compliments" to her whom we love is the first wayof giving caresses and an attempted semi-boldness. A compliment issomething like a kiss through a veil, and pleasure puts its sweet pointupon it, while concealing itself. In the presence of the delight theheart recoils to love more. The cajoleries of Marius, all saturatedwith chimera, were, so to speak, of an azure blue. The birds when theyfly in the direction of the angels must hear words of the same nature,still, life, humanity, and the whole amount of positivism of whichMarius was capable were mingled with it It was what is said in thegrotto, as a prelude to what will be said in the alcove,--a lyricaleffusion, the strophe and the sonnet commingled, the gentle hyperbolesof cooing, all the refinements of adoration arranged in a posy, andexhaling a subtle and celestial perfume, an ineffable prattling ofheart to heart.
"Oh!" Marius muttered, "how lovely you are! I dare not look at you, andthat is the reason why I contemplate you. You are a grace, and I knownot what is the matter with me. The hem of your dress, where the end ofyour slipper passes through, upsets me. And then, what an enchantinglight when your thoughts become visible, for your reason astonishes me,and you appear to me for instants to be a dream. Speak, I am listeningto you
, and admiring you. Oh, Cosette, how strange and charming itis; I am really mad. You are adorable, and I study your feet in themicroscope and your soul with the telescope."
And Cosette made answer,--
"And I love you a little more through all the time which has passedsince this morning."
Questions and answers went on as they could in this dialogue, whichalways agreed in the subject of love, like the elder-pith balls on thenail. Cosette's entire person was simplicity, ingenuousness, whiteness,candor, and radiance; and it might have been said of her that she wastransparent. She produced on every one who saw her a sensation of Apriland daybreak, and she had dew in her eyes. Cosette was a condensationof the light of dawn in a woman's form. It was quite simple thatMarius, as he adored, should admire. But the truth is, that this littleboarding-school Miss, just freshly turned out of a convent, talked withexquisite penetration, and made at times all sorts of true and delicateremarks. Her chattering was conversation; and she was never mistakenabout anything, and conversed correctly. Woman feels and speaks withthe infallibility which is the tender instinct of the heart. No oneknows like a woman how to say things which are at once gentle and deep.Gentleness and depth, in those things the whole of woman is contained,and it is heaven. And in this perfect felicity tears welled in theireyes at every moment. A lady-bird crushed, a feather that fell from anest, a branch of hawthorn broken, moved their pity, and then ecstasy,gently drowned by melancholy, seemed to ask for nothing better thanto weep. The most sovereign symptom of love is a tenderness whichbecomes at times almost insupportable. And by the side of all this--forcontradictions are the lightning sport of love--they were fond oflaughing with a ravishing liberty, and so familiarly that, at times,they almost seemed like two lads. Still, even without these two heartsintoxicated with chastity being conscious of it, unforgettable natureis ever there, ever there with its brutal and sublime object; andwhatever the innocence of souls may be, they feel in the most chaste_tête-à-tête_ the mysterious and adorable distinction which separates acouple of lovers from a pair of friends.
They idolized each other. The permanent and the immutable exist,--acouple love, they laugh, they make little pouts with their lips,they intertwine their fingers, and that does not prevent eternity.Two lovers conceal themselves in a garden in the twilight, in theinvisible, with the birds and the roses; they fascinate each other inthe darkness with their souls which they place in their eyes; theymutter, they whisper, and during this period immense constellations ofplanets fill infinity.