|
TO ONE SADNESS OPPOSE A SADNESS AND A HALF
All situations have their instincts.
Old and eternal Mother Nature warned Jean Valjean in a dim
way of the presence of Marius. Jean Valjean shuddered to the very
bottom of his soul.
Jean Valjean saw nothing, knew nothing, and yet he scanned
with obstinate attention, the darkness in which he walked, as
though he felt on one side of him something in process of construction,
and on the other, something which was crumbling away.
Marius, also warned, and, in accordance with the deep law
of God, by that same Mother Nature, did all he could to keep out
of sight of "the father."
Nevertheless, it came to pass that Jean Valjean sometimes
espied him.
Marius' manners were no longer in the least natural.
He exhibited ambiguous prudence and awkward daring.
He no longer came quite close to them as formerly. He seated
himself at a distance and pretended to be reading; why did he
pretend that?
Formerly he had come in his old coat, now he wore his new
one every day; Jean Valjean was not sure that he did not have
his hair curled, his eyes were very queer, he wore gloves; in
short, Jean Valjean cordially detested this young man.
Cosette allowed nothing to be divined.
Without knowing just what was the matter with her she was
convinced that there was something in it, and that it must be
concealed.
There was a coincidence between the taste for the toilet which
had recently come to Cosette, and the habit of new clothes developed
by that stranger which was very repugnant to Jean Valjean.
It might be accidental, no doubt, certainly, but it was a
menacing accident.
He never opened his mouth to Cosette about this stranger.
One day, however, he could not refrain from so doing, and,
with that vague despair which suddenly casts the lead into the
depths of its despair, he said to her:
"What a very pedantic air that young man has!"
Cosette, but a year before only an indifferent little girl,
would have replied:
"Why, no, he is charming."
Ten years later, with the love of Marius in her heart, she
would have answered: "A pedant, and insufferable to the sight!
You are right!"-- At the moment in life and the heart
which she had then attained, she contented herself with replying,
with supreme calmness: "That young man!"
As though she now beheld him for the first time in her life.
"How stupid I am!" thought Jean Valjean.
"She had not noticed him. It is I who have pointed him
out to her."
Oh, simplicity of the old! oh, the depth of children!
It is one of the laws of those fresh years of suffering and
trouble, of those vivacious conflicts between a first love and
the first obstacles, that the young girl does not allow herself
to be caught in any trap whatever, and that the young man falls
into every one. Jean Valjean had instituted an undeclared war
against Marius, which Marius, with the sublime stupidity of his
passion and his age, did not divine.
Jean Valjean laid a host of ambushes for him; he changed his
hour, he changed his bench, he forgot his handkerchief, he came
alone to the Luxembourg; Marius dashed headlong into all these
snares; and to all the interrogation marks planted by Jean Valjean
in his pathway, he ingenuously answered "yes." But Cosette
remained immured in her apparent unconcern and in her imperturbable
tranquillity, so that Jean Valjean arrived at the following conclusion:
"That ninny is madly in love with Cosette, but Cosette
does not even know that he exists."
None the less did he bear in his heart a mournful tremor.
The minute when Cosette would love might strike at any moment.
Does not everything begin with indifference?
Only once did Cosette make a mistake and alarm him.
He rose from his seat to depart, after a stay of three hours,
and she said: "What, already?"
Jean Valjean had not discontinued his trips to the Luxembourg,
as he did not wish to do anything out of the way, and as, above
all things, he feared to arouse Cosette; but during the hours
which were so sweet to the lovers, while Cosette was sending her
smile to the intoxicated Marius, who perceived nothing else now,
and who now saw nothing in all the world but an adored and radiant
face, Jean Valjean was fixing on Marius flashing and terrible
eyes.
He, who had finally come to believe himself incapable of a
malevolent feeling, experienced moments when Marius was present,
in which he thought he was becoming savage and ferocious once
more, and he felt the old depths of his soul, which had formerly
contained so much wrath, opening once more and rising up against
that young man.
It almost seemed to him that unknown craters were forming
in his bosom.
What! he was there, that creature!
What was he there for? He came creeping about, smelling out,
examining, trying! He came, saying:
"Hey!
Why not?"
He came to prowl about his, Jean Valjean's, life! to prowl
about his happiness, with the purpose of seizing it and bearing
it away!
Jean Valjean added:
"Yes, that's it!
What is he in search of? An adventure!
What does he want?
A love affair!
A love affair! And I?
What!
I have been first, the most wretched of men, and then the
most unhappy, and I have traversed sixty years of life on my knees,
I have suffered everything that man can suffer, I have grown old
without having been young, I have lived without a family, without
relatives, without friends, without life, without children, I
have left my blood on every stone, on every bramble, on every
mile-post, along every wall, I have been gentle, though others
have been hard to me, and kind, although others have been malicious,
I have become an honest man once more, in spite of everything,
I have repented of the evil that I have done and have forgiven
the evil that has been done to me, and at the moment when I receive
my recompense, at the moment when it is all over, at the moment
when I am just touching the goal, at the moment when I have what
I desire, it is well, it is good, I have paid, I have earned it,
all this is to take flight, all this will vanish, and I shall
lose Cosette, and I shall lose my life, my joy, my soul, because
it has pleased a great booby to come and lounge at the Luxembourg."
Then his eyes were filled with a sad and extraordinary gleam.
It was no longer a man gazing at a man; it was no longer an
enemy surveying an enemy.
It was a dog scanning a thief.
The reader knows the rest.
Marius pursued his senseless course. One day he followed Cosette
to the Rue de l'Ouest. Another day he spoke to the porter.
The porter, on his side, spoke, and said to Jean Valjean:
"Monsieur, who is that curious young man who is asking
for you?"
On the morrow Jean Valjean bestowed on Marius that glance
which Marius at last perceived.
A week later, Jean Valjean had taken his departure.
He swore to himself that he would never again set foot either
in the Luxembourg or in the Rue de l'Ouest. He returned to the
Rue Plumet.
Cosette did not complain, she said nothing, she asked no questions,
she did not seek to learn his reasons; she had already reached
the point where she was afraid of being divined, and of betraying
herself. Jean Valjean had no experience of these miseries, the
only miseries which are charming and the only ones with which
he was not acquainted; the consequence was that he did not understand
the grave significance of Cosette's silence.
He merely noticed that she had grown sad, and he grew gloomy.
On his side and on hers, inexperience had joined issue.
Once he made a trial.
He asked Cosette:--
"Would you like to come to the Luxembourg?"
A ray illuminated Cosette's pale face.
"Yes," said she.
They went thither.
Three months had elapsed.
Marius no longer went there.
Marius was not there.
On the following day, Jean Valjean asked Cosette again:--
"Would you like to come to the Luxembourg?"
She replied, sadly and gently:--
"No."
Jean Valjean was hurt by this sadness, and heart-broken at
this gentleness.
What was going on in that mind which was so young and yet
already so impenetrable?
What was on its way there within?
What was taking place in Cosette's soul?
Sometimes, instead of going to bed, Jean Valjean remained
seated on his pallet, with his head in his hands, and he passed
whole nights asking himself:
"What has Cosette in her mind?" and in thinking
of the things that she might be thinking about.
Oh! at such moments, what mournful glances did he cast towards
that cloister, that chaste peak, that abode of angels, that inaccessible
glacier of virtue!
How he contemplated, with despairing ecstasy, that convent
garden, full of ignored flowers and cloistered virgins, where
all perfumes and all souls mount straight to heaven! How he adored
that Eden forever closed against him, whence he had voluntarily
and madly emerged!
How he regretted his abnegation and his folly in having brought
Cosette back into the world, poor hero of sacrifice, seized and
hurled to the earth by his very self-devotion! How he said to
himself, "What have I done?"
However, nothing of all this was perceptible to Cosette. No
ill-temper, no harshness.
His face was always serene and kind. Jean Valjean's manners
were more tender and more paternal than ever. If anything could
have betrayed his lack of joy, it was his increased suavity.
On her side, Cosette languished.
She suffered from the absence of Marius as she had rejoiced
in his presence, peculiarly, without exactly being conscious of
it.
When Jean Valjean ceased to take her on their customary strolls,
a feminine instinct murmured confusedly, at the bottom of her
heart, that she must not seem to set store on the Luxembourg garden,
and that if this proved to be a matter of indifference to her,
her father would take her thither once more. But days, weeks,
months, elapsed.
Jean Valjean had tacitly accepted Cosette's tacit consent.
She regretted it.
It was too late. So Marius had disappeared; all was over.
The day on which she returned to the Luxembourg, Marius was
no longer there.
What was to be done? Should she ever find him again?
She felt an anguish at her heart, which nothing relieved,
and which augmented every day; she no longer knew whether it was
winter or summer, whether it was raining or shining, whether the
birds were singing, whether it was the season for dahlias or daisies,
whether the Luxembourg was more charming than the Tuileries, whether
the linen which the laundress brought home was starched too much
or not enough, whether Toussaint had
done "her marketing" well or ill; and she remained
dejected, absorbed, attentive to but a single thought, her eyes
vague and staring as when one gazes by night at a black and fathomless
spot where an apparition has vanished.
However, she did not allow Jean Valjean to perceive anything
of this, except her pallor.
She still wore her sweet face for him.
This pallor sufficed but too thoroughly to trouble Jean Valjean.
Sometimes he asked her:--
"What is the matter with you?"
She replied:
"There is nothing the matter with me."
And after a silence, when she divined that he was sad also,
she would add:--
"And you, father--is there anything wrong with you?"
"With me?
Nothing," said he.
These two beings who had loved each other so exclusively,
and with so touching an affection, and who had lived so long for
each other now suffered side by side, each on the other's account;
without acknowledging it to each other, without anger towards
each other, and with a smile.
|
