CHAPTER III

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.