Les Misérables, v. 4/5: The Idyll and the Epic

  CHAPTER II.

  MARIUS.

  Marius had left M. Gillenormand's house in a wretched state; he hadgone in with very small hopes, and came out with an immense despair.However,--those who have watched the beginnings of the human heart willcomprehend it,--the lancer, the officer, the fop, cousin Théodule,had left no shadow on his mind, not the slightest. The dramatic poetmight apparently hope for some complications to be produced by thisrevelation, so coarsely made to the grandson by the grandfather; butwhat the drama would gain by it truth would lose. Marius was at thatage when a man believes nothing that is wrong; later comes the agewhen he believes everything. Suspicions are only wrinkles, and earlyyouth has none; what o'erthrows Othello glides over Candide. SuspectCosette? Marius could have committed a multitude of crimes more easily.He began walking about the streets, the resource of those who suffer,and he thought of nothing which he might have remembered. At two inthe morning he went to Courfeyrac's lodging and threw himself on hismattress full dressed; it was bright sunshine when he fell asleep, withthat frightful oppressive sleep which allows ideas to come and go inthe brain. When he awoke he saw Courfeyrac, Enjolras, Feuilly, andCombeferre, all ready to go out, and extremely busy. Courfeyrac said tohim,--

  "Are you coming to General Lamarque's funeral?"

  It seemed to him as if Courfeyrac were talking Chinese. He went outshortly after them, and put in his pockets the pistols which Javert hadintrusted to him at the affair of February 3, and which still remainedin his possession. They were still loaded, and it would be difficultto say what obscure notion he had in his brain when he took them up.The whole day he wandered about, without knowing where; it rained attimes, but he did not perceive it; he bought for his dinner a halfpennyroll, put it in his pocket, and forgot it. It appears that he took abath in the Seine without being conscious of it, for there are momentswhen a man has a furnace under his skull, and Marius had reached oneof those moments. He hoped for nothing, feared nothing now, and hadtaken this step since the previous day. He awaited the evening with afeverish impatience, for he had but one clear idea left, that at nineo'clock he should see Cosette. This last happiness was now his solefuture; after that came the shadow. At times, while walking along themost deserted boulevards, he imagined that he could hear strange noisesin Paris; then he thrust his head out of his reverie, and said,--"Canthey be fighting?" At nightfall, at nine o'clock precisely, he was atthe Rue Plumet, as he had promised Cosette. He had not seen her foreight-and-forty hours; he was about to see her again. Every otherthought was effaced, and he only felt an extraordinary and profoundjoy. Those minutes in which men live ages have this sovereign andadmirable thing about them, that at the moment when they pass theyentirely occupy the heart.

  Marius removed the railing and rushed into the garden. Cosette wasnot at the place where she usually waited for him, and he crossed thegarden and went to the niche near the terrace. "She is waiting for methere," he said; but Cosette was not there. He raised his eyes and sawthat the shutters of the house were closed; he walked round the garden,and the garden was deserted. Then he returned to the garden, and, madwith love, terrified, exasperated with grief and anxiety, he rapped atthe shutters, like a master who returns home at a late hour. He rapped,he rapped again, at the risk of seeing the window open and the fathersfrowning face appear and ask him,--"What do you want?" This was nothingto what he caught a glimpse of. When he had rapped, he raised hisvoice, and called Cosette. "Cosette!" he cried: "Cosette!" he repeatedimperiously. There was no answer. It was all over; there was no one inthe garden, no one in the house. Marius fixed his desperate eyes onthis mournful house, which was as black, as silent, and more empty,than a tomb. He gazed at the stone bench on which he had spent so manyadorable hours by Cosette's side; then he sat down on the garden steps,with his heart full of gentleness and resolution; he blessed his lovein his heart, and said to himself that since Cosette was gone all lefthim was to die. All at once he heard a voice which seemed to come fromthe street, crying through the trees,--

  "Monsieur Marius!"

  He drew himself up.

  "Hilloh!" he said.

  "Monsieur Marius, are you there?"

  "Yes."

  "Monsieur Marius," the voice resumed, "your friends are waiting for youat the barricade in the Rue de la Chanvrerie."

  This voice was not entirely strange to him, and resembled Éponine'srough, hoarse accents. Marius ran to the railings, pulled aside theshifting bar, passed his head through, and saw some one, who seemed tobe a young man, running away in the gloaming.