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THE BEWILDERMENT OF PERFECT HAPPINESS
They existed vaguely, frightened at their happiness.
They did not notice the cholera which decimated Paris precisely
during that very month. They had confided in each other as far
as possible, but this had not extended much further than their
names.
Marius had told Cosette that he was an orphan, that his name
was Marius Pontmercy, that he was a lawyer, that he lived by writing
things for publishers, that his father had been a colonel, that
the latter had been a hero, and that he, Marius, was on bad terms
with his grandfather who was rich.
He had also hinted at being a baron, but this had produced
no effect on Cosette.
She did not know the meaning of the word. Marius was Marius.
On her side, she had confided to him that she had been brought
up at the Petit-Picpus convent, that her mother, like his own,
was dead, that her father's name was M. Fauchelevent, that he
was very good, that he gave a great deal to the poor, but that
he was poor himself, and that he denied himself everything though
he denied her nothing.
Strange to say, in the sort of symphony which Marius had lived
since he had been in the habit of seeing Cosette, the past, even
the most recent past, had become so confused and distant to him,
that what Cosette told him satisfied him completely. It did not
even occur to him to tell her about the nocturnal adventure in
the hovel, about Thenardier, about the burn, and about the strange
attitude and singular flight of her father. Marius had momentarily
forgotten all this; in the evening he did not even know that there
had been a morning, what he had done, where he had breakfasted,
nor who had spoken to him; he had songs in his ears which rendered
him deaf to every other thought; he only existed at the hours
when he saw Cosette.
Then, as he was in heaven, it was quite natural that he should
forget earth. Both bore languidly the indefinable burden of immaterial
pleasures. Thus lived these somnambulists who are called lovers.
Alas!
Who is there who has not felt all these things?
Why does there come an hour when one emerges from this azure,
and why does life go on afterwards?
Loving almost takes the place of thinking.
Love is an ardent forgetfulness of all the rest.
Then ask logic of passion if you will. There is no more absolute
logical sequence in the human heart than there is a perfect geometrical
figure in the celestial mechanism. For Cosette and Marius nothing
existed except Marius and Cosette. The universe around them had
fallen into a hole.
They lived in a golden minute.
There was nothing before them, nothing behind. It hardly occurred
to Marius that Cosette had a father.
His brain was dazzled and obliterated.
Of what did these lovers talk then? We have seen, of the flowers,
and the swallows, the setting sun and the rising moon, and all
sorts of important things.
They had told each other everything except everything.
The everything of lovers is nothing.
But the father, the realities, that lair, the ruffians, that
adventure, to what purpose?
And was he very sure that this nightmare had actually existed?
They were two, and they adored each other, and beyond that
there was nothing.
Nothing else existed. It is probable that this vanishing of
hell in our rear is inherent to the arrival of paradise.
Have we beheld demons?
Are there any? Have we trembled?
Have we suffered?
We no longer know.
A rosy cloud hangs over it.
So these two beings lived in this manner, high aloft, with
all that improbability which is in nature; neither at the nadir
nor at the zenith, between man and seraphim, above the mire, below
the ether, in the clouds; hardly flesh and blood, soul and ecstasy
from head to foot; already too sublime to walk the earth, still
too heavily charged with humanity to disappear in the blue, suspended
like atoms which are waiting to be precipitated; apparently beyond
the bounds of destiny; ignorant of that rut; yesterday, to-day,
to-morrow; amazed, rapturous, floating, soaring; at times so light
that they could take their flight out into the infinite; almost
prepared to soar away to all eternity.
They slept wide-awake, thus sweetly lulled. Oh! splendid lethargy
of the real overwhelmed by the ideal.
Sometimes, beautiful as Cosette was, Marius shut his eyes
in her presence.
The best way to look at the soul is through closed eyes.
Marius and Cosette never asked themselves whither this was
to lead them. They considered that they had already arrived.
It is a strange claim on man's part to wish that love should
lead to something.
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