“Just imagine, I thought at one time that your name was Ursule.”
This made both of them laugh the whole evening.
In the middle of another conversation, he chanced to exclaim:—
“Oh! One day, at the Luxembourg, I had a good mind to finish breaking up a veteran!”
But he stopped short, and went no further.
He would have been obliged to speak to Cosette of her garter, and that was impossible.
This bordered on a strange theme, the flesh, before which that immense and innocent love recoiled with a sort of sacred fright.
Marius pictured life with Cosette to himself like this, without anything else; to come every evening to the Rue Plumet, to displace the old and accommodating bar of the chief-justice’s gate, to sit elbow to elbow on that bench, to gaze through the trees at the scintillation of the on-coming night, to fit a fold of the knee of his trousers into the ample fall of Cosette’s gown, to caress her thumb-nail, to call her thou, to smell of the same flower, one after the other, forever, indefinitely.
During this time, clouds passed above their heads.
Every time that the wind blows it bears with it more of the dreams of men than of the clouds of heaven.
This chaste, almost shy love was not devoid of gallantry, by any means.
To pay compliments to the woman whom a man loves is the first method of bestowing caresses, and he is half audacious who tries it.
A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.
Voluptuousness mingles there with its sweet tiny point, while it hides itself.
The heart draws back before voluptuousness only to love the more.
Marius’ blandishments, all saturated with fancy, were, so to speak, of azure hue.
The birds when they fly up yonder, in the direction of the angels, must hear such words.
There were mingled with them, nevertheless, life, humanity, all the positiveness of which Marius was capable.
It was what is said in the bower, a prelude to what will be said in the chamber; a lyrical effusion, strophe and sonnet intermingled, pleasing hyperboles of cooing, all the refinements of adoration arranged in a bouquet and exhaling a celestial perfume, an ineffable twitter of heart to heart.
“Oh!” murmured Marius, “how beautiful you are!
I dare not look at you.
It is all over with me when I contemplate you.
You are a grace.
I know not what is the matter with me.
The hem of your gown, when the tip of your shoe peeps from beneath, upsets me.
And then, what an enchanted gleam when you open your thought even but a little!
You talk astonishingly good sense.
It seems to me at times that you are a dream.
Speak, I listen, I admire.
Oh Cosette! how strange it is and how charming!
I am really beside myself.
You are adorable, Mademoiselle.
I study your feet with the microscope and your soul with the telescope.”
And Cosette answered:— “I have been loving a little more all the time that has passed since this morning.”
Questions and replies took care of themselves in this dialogue, which always turned with mutual consent upon love, as the little pith figures always turn on their peg.
Cosette’s whole person was ingenuousness, ingenuity, transparency, whiteness, candor, radiance.
It might have been said of Cosette that she was clear.
She produced on those who saw her the sensation of April and dawn.
There was dew in her eyes.
Cosette was a condensation of the auroral light in the form of a woman.
It was quite simple that Marius should admire her, since he adored her.
But the truth is, that this little school-girl, fresh from the convent, talked with exquisite penetration and uttered, at times, all sorts of true and delicate sayings.
Her prattle was conversation.
She never made a mistake about anything, and she saw things justly.
The woman feels and speaks with the tender instinct of the heart, which is infallible.
No one understands so well as a woman, how to say things that are, at once, both sweet and deep.
Sweetness and depth, they are the whole of woman; in them lies the whole of heaven.
In this full felicity, tears welled up to their eyes every instant.
A crushed lady-bug, a feather fallen from a nest, a branch of hawthorn broken, aroused their pity, and their ecstasy, sweetly mingled with melancholy, seemed to ask nothing better than to weep.
The most sovereign symptom of love is a tenderness that is, at times, almost unbearable.