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FULL LIGHT
The reader has probably understood that Eponine, having recognized
through the gate, the inhabitant of that Rue Plumet whither Magnon
had sent her, had begun by keeping the ruffians away from the
Rue Plumet, and had then conducted Marius thither, and that, after
many days spent in ecstasy before that gate, Marius, drawn on
by that force which draws the iron to the magnet and a lover towards
the stones of which is built the house of her whom he loves, had
finally entered Cosette's garden as Romeo entered the garden of
Juliet.
This had even proved easier for him than for Romeo; Romeo
was obliged to scale a wall, Marius had only to use a little force
on one of the bars of the decrepit gate which vacillated in its
rusty recess, after the fashion of old people's teeth. Marius
was slender and readily passed through.
As there was never any one in the street, and as Marius never
entered the garden except at night, he ran no risk of being seen.
Beginning with that blessed and holy hour when a kiss betrothed
these two souls, Marius was there every evening.
If, at that period of her existence, Cosette had fallen in
love with a man in the least unscrupulous or debauched, she would
have been lost; for there are generous natures which yield themselves,
and Cosette was one of them. One of woman's magnanimities is to
yield.
Love, at the height where it is absolute, is complicated with
some indescribably celestial blindness of modesty.
But what dangers you run, O noble souls! Often you give the
heart, and we take the body.
Your heart remains with you, you gaze upon it in the gloom
with a shudder.
Love has no middle course; it either ruins or it saves.
All human destiny lies in this dilemma.
This dilemma, ruin, or safety, is set forth no more inexorably
by any fatality than by love.
Love is life, if it is not death.
Cradle; also coffin.
The same sentiment says "yes" and "no"
in the human heart.
Of all the things that God has made, the human heart is the
one which sheds the most light, alas! and the most darkness.
God willed that Cosette's love should encounter one of the
loves which save.
Throughout the whole of the month of May of that year 1832,
there were there, in every night, in that poor, neglected garden,
beneath that thicket which grew thicker and more fragrant day
by day, two beings composed of all chastity, all innocence, overflowing
with all the felicity of heaven, nearer to the archangels than
to mankind, pure, honest, intoxicated, radiant, who shone for
each other amid the shadows.
It seemed to Cosette that Marius had a crown, and to Marius
that Cosette had a nimbus.
They touched each other, they gazed at each other, they clasped
each other's hands, they pressed close to each other; but there
was a distance which they did not pass. Not that they respected
it; they did not know of its existence. Marius was conscious of
a barrier, Cosette's innocence; and Cosette of a support, Marius'
loyalty.
The first kiss had also been the last.
Marius, since that time, had not gone further than to touch
Cosette's hand, or her kerchief, or a lock of her hair, with his
lips. For him, Cosette was a perfume and not a woman.
He inhaled her. She refused nothing, and he asked nothing.
Cosette was happy, and Marius was satisfied.
They lived in this ecstatic state which can be described as
the dazzling of one soul by another soul. It was the ineffable
first embrace of two maiden souls in the ideal. Two swans meeting
on the Jungfrau.
At that hour of love, an hour when voluptuousness is absolutely
mute, beneath the omnipotence of ecstasy, Marius, the pure and
seraphic Marius, would rather have gone to a woman of the town
than have raised Cosette's robe to the height of her ankle.
Once, in the moonlight, Cosette stooped to pick up something
on the ground, her bodice fell apart and permitted a glimpse of
the beginning of her throat. Marius turned away his eyes.
What took place between these two beings?
Nothing.
They adored each other.
At night, when they were there, that garden seemed a living
and a sacred spot.
All flowers unfolded around them and sent them incense; and
they opened their souls and scattered them over the flowers. The
wanton and vigorous vegetation quivered, full of strength and
intoxication, around these two innocents, and they uttered words
of love which set the trees to trembling.
What words were these?
Breaths.
Nothing more.
These breaths sufficed to trouble and to touch all nature
round about. Magic power which we should find it difficult to
understand were we to read in a book these conversations which
are made to be borne away and dispersed like smoke wreaths by
the breeze beneath the leaves. Take from those murmurs of two
lovers that melody which proceeds from the soul and which accompanies
them like a lyre, and what remains is nothing more than a shade;
you say:
"What! is that all!" eh! yes, childish prattle,
repetitions, laughter at nothing, nonsense, everything that is
deepest and most sublime in the world! The only things which are
worth the trouble of saying and hearing!
The man who has never heard, the man who has never uttered
these absurdities, these paltry remarks, is an imbecile and a
malicious fellow.
Cosette said to Marius:--
"Dost thou know?--"
[In all this and athwart this celestial maidenliness, and
without either of them being able to say how it had come about,
they had begun to call each other thou.]
"Dost thou know?
My name is Euphrasie."
"Euphrasie?
Why, no, thy name is Cosette."
"Oh!
Cosette is a very ugly name that was given to me when I was
a little thing.
But my real name is Euphrasie.
Dost thou like that name--Euphrasie?"
"Yes.
But Cosette is not ugly."
"Do you like it better than Euphrasie?"
"Why, yes."
"Then I like it better too.
Truly, it is pretty, Cosette. Call me Cosette."
And the smile that she added made of this dialogue an idyl
worthy of a grove situated in heaven.
On another occasion she gazed intently at him and exclaimed:--
"Monsieur, you are handsome, you are good-looking, you
are witty, you are not at all stupid, you are much more learned
than I am, but I bid you defiance with this word:
I love you!"
And Marius, in the very heavens, thought he heard a strain
sung by a star.
Or she bestowed on him a gentle tap because he coughed, and
she said to him:--
"Don't cough, sir; I will not have people cough on my
domain without my permission.
It's very naughty to cough and to disturb me. I want you to
be well, because, in the first place, if you were not well, I
should be very unhappy.
What should I do then?"
And this was simply divine.
Once Marius said to Cosette:--
"Just imagine, I thought at one time that your name was
Ursule."
This made both of them laugh the whole evening.
In the middle of another conversation, he chanced to exclaim:--
"Oh!
One day, at the Luxembourg, I had a good mind to finish breaking
up a veteran!"
But he stopped short, and went no further. He would have been
obliged to speak to Cosette of her garter, and that was impossible.
This bordered on a strange theme, the flesh, before which
that immense and innocent love recoiled with a sort of sacred
fright.
Marius pictured life with Cosette to himself like this, without
anything else; to come every evening to the Rue Plumet, to displace
the old and accommodating bar of the chief-justice's gate, to
sit elbow to elbow on that bench, to gaze through the trees at
the scintillation of the on-coming night, to fit a fold of the
knee of his trousers into the ample fall of Cosette's gown, to
caress her thumb-nail, to call her thou, to smell of the same
flower, one after the other, forever, indefinitely.
During this time, clouds passed above their heads.
Every time that the wind blows it bears with it more of the
dreams of men than of the clouds of heaven.
This chaste, almost shy love was not devoid of gallantry,
by any means.
To pay compliments to the woman whom a man loves is the first
method of bestowing caresses, and he is half audacious who tries
it.
A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil. Voluptuousness
mingles there with its sweet tiny point, while it hides itself.
The heart draws back before voluptuousness only to love the
more.
Marius' blandishments, all saturated with fancy, were, so
to speak, of azure hue.
The birds when they fly up yonder, in the direction of the
angels, must hear such words.
There were mingled with them, nevertheless, life, humanity,
all the positiveness of which Marius was capable.
It was what is said in the bower, a prelude to what will be
said in the chamber; a lyrical effusion, strophe and sonnet intermingled,
pleasing hyperboles of cooing, all the refinements of adoration
arranged in a bouquet and exhaling a celestial perfume, an ineffable
twitter of heart to heart.
"Oh!" murmured Marius, "how beautiful you are!
I dare not look at you. It is all over with me when I contemplate
you.
You are a grace. I know not what is the matter with me.
The hem of your gown, when the tip of your shoe peeps from
beneath, upsets me.
And then, what an enchanted gleam when you open your thought
even but a little! You talk astonishingly good sense.
It seems to me at times that you are a dream.
Speak, I listen, I admire.
Oh Cosette! how strange it is and how charming!
I am really beside myself. You are adorable, Mademoiselle.
I study your feet with the microscope and your soul with the
telescope."
And Cosette answered:--
"I have been loving a little more all the time that has
passed since this morning."
Questions and replies took care of themselves in this dialogue,
which always turned with mutual consent upon love, as the little
pith figures always turn on their peg.
Cosette's whole person was ingenuousness, ingenuity, transparency,
whiteness, candor, radiance.
It might have been said of Cosette that she was clear.
She produced on those who saw her the sensation of April and
dawn.
There was dew in her eyes. Cosette was a condensation of the
auroral light in the form of a woman.
It was quite simple that Marius should admire her, since he
adored her. But the truth is, that this little school-girl, fresh
from the convent, talked with exquisite penetration and uttered,
at times, all sorts of true and delicate sayings.
Her prattle was conversation. She never made a mistake about
anything, and she saw things justly. The woman feels and speaks
with the tender instinct of the heart, which is infallible.
No one understands so well as a woman, how to say things that
are, at once, both sweet and deep.
Sweetness and depth, they are the whole of woman; in them
lies the whole of heaven.
In this full felicity, tears welled up to their eyes every
instant. A crushed lady-bug, a feather fallen from a nest, a branch
of hawthorn broken, aroused their pity, and their ecstasy, sweetly
mingled with melancholy, seemed to ask nothing better than to
weep. The most sovereign symptom of love is a tenderness that
is, at times, almost unbearable.
And, in addition to this,--all these contradictions are the
lightning play of love,--they were fond of laughing, they laughed
readily and with a delicious freedom, and so familiarly that they
sometimes presented the air of two boys.
Still, though unknown to hearts intoxicated with purity, nature
is always present and will not be forgotten.
She is there with her brutal and sublime object; and however
great may be the innocence of souls, one feels in the most modest
private interview, the adorable and mysterious shade which separates
a couple of lovers from a pair of friends.
They idolized each other.
The permanent and the immutable are persistent.
People live, they smile, they laugh, they make little grimaces
with the tips of their lips, they interlace their fingers, they
call each other thou, and that does not prevent eternity.
Two lovers hide themselves in the evening, in the twilight,
in the invisible, with the birds, with the roses; they fascinate
each other in the darkness with their hearts which they throw
into their eyes, they murmur, they whisper, and in the meantime,
immense librations of the planets fill the infinite universe.
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