“The one who is singing?”
“Yes.”
Marius made a movement.
“Oh! don’t go away,” said she, “it will not be long now.”
She was sitting almost upright, but her voice was very low and broken by hiccoughs.
At intervals, the death rattle interrupted her.
She put her face as near that of Marius as possible. She added with a strange expression:—
“Listen, I do not wish to play you a trick.
I have a letter in my pocket for you.
I was told to put it in the post.
I kept it.
I did not want to have it reach you.
But perhaps you will be angry with me for it when we meet again presently?
Take your letter.”
She grasped Marius’ hand convulsively with her pierced hand, but she no longer seemed to feel her sufferings.
She put Marius’ hand in the pocket of her blouse.
There, in fact, Marius felt a paper.
“Take it,” said she.
Marius took the letter.
She made a sign of satisfaction and contentment.
“Now, for my trouble, promise me—”
And she stopped.
“What?” asked Marius.
“Promise me!”
“I promise.”
“Promise to give me a kiss on my brow when I am dead.—I shall feel it.”
She dropped her head again on Marius’ knees, and her eyelids closed.
He thought the poor soul had departed.
Eponine remained motionless.
All at once, at the very moment when Marius fancied her asleep forever, she slowly opened her eyes in which appeared the sombre profundity of death, and said to him in a tone whose sweetness seemed already to proceed from another world:—
“And by the way, Monsieur Marius, I believe that I was a little bit in love with you.”
She tried to smile once more and expired.
CHAPTER VII—GAVROCHE AS A PROFOUND CALCULATOR OF DISTANCES
Marius kept his promise.
He dropped a kiss on that livid brow, where the icy perspiration stood in beads.
This was no infidelity to Cosette; it was a gentle and pensive farewell to an unhappy soul.
It was not without a tremor that he had taken the letter which Eponine had given him.
He had immediately felt that it was an event of weight.
He was impatient to read it.
The heart of man is so constituted that the unhappy child had hardly closed her eyes when Marius began to think of unfolding this paper.
He laid her gently on the ground, and went away.
Something told him that he could not peruse that letter in the presence of that body.
He drew near to a candle in the tap-room.
It was a small note, folded and sealed with a woman’s elegant care.
The address was in a woman’s hand and ran:—
“To Monsieur, Monsieur Marius Pontmercy, at M. Courfeyrac’s, Rue de la Verrerie, No. 16.”
He broke the seal and read:—
“My dearest, alas! my father insists on our setting out immediately.
We shall be this evening in the Rue de l’Homme Arme, No. 7.
In a week we shall be in England. COSETTE. June 4th.”