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_ 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. _
Read next: VOLUME IV: BOOK THIRD - THE HOUSE IN THE RUE PLUMET: CHAPTER VIII. The Chain-Gang
Read previous: VOLUME IV: BOOK THIRD - THE HOUSE IN THE RUE PLUMET: CHAPTER VI. The Battle Begun
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