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THE BEGINNING OF SHADOW
Jean Valjean suspected nothing.
Cosette, who was rather less dreamy than Marius, was gay,
and that sufficed for Jean Valjean's happiness.
The thoughts which Cosette cherished, her tender preoccupations,
Marius' image which filled her heart, took away nothing from the
incomparable purity of her beautiful, chaste, and smiling brow.
She was at the age when the virgin bears her love as the angel
his lily.
So Jean Valjean was at ease.
And then, when two lovers have come to an understanding, things
always go well; the third party who might disturb their love is
kept in a state of perfect blindness by a restricted number of
precautions which are always the same in the case of all lovers.
Thus, Cosette never objected to any of Jean Valjean's proposals.
Did she want to take a walk?
"Yes, dear little father."
Did she want to stay at home?
Very good.
Did he wish to pass the evening with Cosette?
She was delighted.
As he always went to bed at ten o'clock, Marius did not come
to the garden on such occasions until after that hour, when, from
the street, he heard Cosette open the long glass door on the veranda.
Of course, no one ever met Marius in the daytime.
Jean Valjean never even dreamed any longer that Marius was
in existence.
Only once, one morning, he chanced to say to Cosette:
"Why, you have whitewash on your back!"
On the previous evening, Marius, in a transport, had pushed
Cosette against the wall.
Old Toussaint, who retired early, thought of nothing but her
sleep, and was as ignorant of the whole matter as Jean Valjean.
Marius never set foot in the house.
When he was with Cosette,
they hid themselves in a recess near the steps, in order that
they might neither be seen nor heard from the street, and there
they sat, frequently contenting themselves, by way of conversation,
with pressing each other's hands twenty times a minute as they
gazed at the branches of the trees.
At such times, a thunderbolt might have fallen thirty paces
from them, and they would not have noticed it, so deeply was the
revery of the one absorbed and sunk in the revery of the other.
Limpid purity.
Hours wholly white; almost all alike.
This sort of love is a recollection of lily petals and the
plumage of the dove.
The whole extent of the garden lay between them and the street.
Every time that Marius entered and left, he carefully adjusted
the bar of the gate in such a manner that no displacement was
visible.
He usually went away about midnight, and returned to Courfeyrac's
lodgings.
Courfeyrac said to Bahorel:--
"Would you believe it?
Marius comes home nowadays at one o'clock in the morning."
Bahorel replied:--
"What do you expect?
There's always a petard in a seminary fellow."
At times, Courfeyrac folded his arms, assumed a serious air,
and said to Marius:--
"You are getting irregular in your habits, young man."
Courfeyrac, being a practical man, did not take in good part
this reflection of an invisible paradise upon Marius; he was not
much in the habit of concealed passions; it made him impatient,
and now and then he called upon Marius to come back to reality.
One morning, he threw him this admonition:--
"My dear fellow, you produce upon me the effect of being
located in the moon, the realm of dreams, the province of illusions,
capital, soap-bubble. Come, be a good boy, what's her name?"
But nothing could induce Marius "to talk."
They might have torn out his nails before one of the two sacred
syllables of which that ineffable name, Cosette, was composed.
True love is as luminous as the dawn and as silent as the
tomb.
Only, Courfeyrac saw this change in Marius, that his taciturnity
was of the beaming order.
During this sweet month of May, Marius and Cosette learned
to know these immense delights.
To dispute and to say you for thou, simply that they might
say thou the better afterwards.
To talk at great length with very minute details, of persons
in whom they took not the slightest interest in the world; another
proof that in that ravishing opera called love, the libretto counts
for almost nothing;
For Marius, to listen to Cosette discussing finery;
For Cosette, to listen to Marius talk in politics;
To listen, knee pressed to knee, to the carriages rolling
along the Rue de Babylone;
To gaze upon the same planet in space, or at the same glowworm
gleaming in the grass;
To hold their peace together; a still greater delight than
conversation;
Etc., etc.
In the meantime, divers complications were approaching.
One evening, Marius was on his way to the rendezvous, by way
of the Boulevard des Invalides.
He habitually walked with drooping head. As he was on the
point of turning the corner of the Rue Plumet, he heard some one
quite close to him say:--
"Good evening, Monsieur Marius."
He raised his head and recognized Eponine.
This produced a singular effect upon him.
He had not thought of that girl a single time since the day
when she had conducted him to the Rue Plumet, he had not seen
her again, and she had gone completely out of his mind.
He had no reasons for anything but gratitude towards her,
he owed her his happiness, and yet, it was embarrassing to him
to meet her.
It is an error to think that passion, when it is pure and
happy, leads man to a state of perfection; it simply leads him,
as we have noted, to a state of oblivion.
In this situation, man forgets to be bad, but he also forgets
to be good.
Gratitude, duty, matters essential and important to be remembered,
vanish.
At any other time, Marius would have behaved quite differently
to Eponine. Absorbed in Cosette, he had not even clearly put it
to himself that this Eponine was named Eponine Thenardier, and
that she bore the name inscribed in his father's will, that name,
for which, but a few months before, he would have so ardently
sacrificed himself. We show Marius as he was.
His father himself was fading out of his soul to some extent,
under the splendor of his love.
He replied with some embarrassment:--
"Ah! so it's you, Eponine?"
"Why do you call me you?
Have I done anything to you?"
"No," he answered.
Certainly, he had nothing against her.
Far from it.
Only, he felt that he could not do otherwise, now that he
used thou to Cosette, than say you to Eponine.
As he remained silent, she exclaimed:--
"Say--"
Then she paused.
It seemed as though words failed that creature formerly so
heedless and so bold.
She tried to smile and could not. Then she resumed:--
"Well?"
Then she paused again, and remained with downcast eyes.
"Good evening, Mr. Marius," said she suddenly and
abruptly; and away she went.
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