You see, you are my angel!
Let me come sometimes; I think that I am going to die.
If you only knew!
I adore you.
Forgive me, I speak to you, but I do not know what I am saying; I may have displeased you; have I displeased you?”
“Oh! my mother!” said she. And she sank down as though on the point of death.
He grasped her, she fell, he took her in his arms, he pressed her close, without knowing what he was doing.
He supported her, though he was tottering himself.
It was as though his brain were full of smoke; lightnings darted between his lips; his ideas vanished; it seemed to him that he was accomplishing some religious act, and that he was committing a profanation.
Moreover, he had not the least passion for this lovely woman whose force he felt against his breast.
He was beside himself with love.
She took his hand and laid it on her heart.
He felt the paper there, he stammered:—
“You love me, then?”
She replied in a voice so low that it was no longer anything more than a barely audible breath:—
“Hush!
Thou knowest it!”
And she hid her blushing face on the breast of the superb and intoxicated young man.
He fell upon the bench, and she beside him.
They had no words more.
The stars were beginning to gleam.
How did it come to pass that their lips met?
How comes it to pass that the birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that May expands, that the dawn grows white behind the black trees on the shivering crest of the hills?
A kiss, and that was all.
Both started, and gazed into the darkness with sparkling eyes.
They felt neither the cool night, nor the cold stone, nor the damp earth, nor the wet grass; they looked at each other, and their hearts were full of thoughts.
They had clasped hands unconsciously.
She did not ask him, she did not even wonder, how he had entered there, and how he had made his way into the garden.
It seemed so simple to her that he should be there!
From time to time, Marius’ knee touched Cosette’s knee, and both shivered.
At intervals, Cosette stammered a word.
Her soul fluttered on her lips like a drop of dew on a flower.
Little by little they began to talk to each other.
Effusion followed silence, which is fulness.
The night was serene and splendid overhead.
These two beings, pure as spirits, told each other everything, their dreams, their intoxications, their ecstasies, their chim?ras, their weaknesses, how they had adored each other from afar, how they had longed for each other, their despair when they had ceased to see each other.
They confided to each other in an ideal intimacy, which nothing could augment, their most secret and most mysterious thoughts.
They related to each other, with candid faith in their illusions, all that love, youth, and the remains of childhood which still lingered about them, suggested to their minds.
Their two hearts poured themselves out into each other in such wise, that at the expiration of a quarter of an hour, it was the young man who had the young girl’s soul, and the young girl who had the young man’s soul.
Each became permeated with the other, they were enchanted with each other, they dazzled each other.
When they had finished, when they had told each other everything, she laid her head on his shoulder and asked him:—
“What is your name?”
“My name is Marius,” said he.
“And yours?”
“My name is Cosette.”
BOOK SIXTH.—LITTLE GAVROCHE
CHAPTER I—THE MALICIOUS PLAYFULNESS OF THE WIND
Since 1823, when the tavern of Montfermeil was on the way to shipwreck and was being gradually engulfed, not in the abyss of a bankruptcy, but in the cesspool of petty debts, the Thenardier pair had had two other children; both males.
That made five; two girls and three boys.
Madame Thenardier had got rid of the last two, while they were still young and very small, with remarkable luck.