“It is immoral that a mattress should have so much power.
Triumph of that which yields over that which strikes with lightning.
But never mind, glory to the mattress which annuls a cannon!”
CHAPTER X—DAWN
At that moment, Cosette awoke.
Her chamber was narrow, neat, unobtrusive, with a long sash-window, facing the East on the back court-yard of the house.
Cosette knew nothing of what was going on in Paris.
She had not been there on the preceding evening, and she had already retired to her chamber when Toussaint had said:
“It appears that there is a row.”
Cosette had slept only a few hours, but soundly.
She had had sweet dreams, which possibly arose from the fact that her little bed was very white.
Some one, who was Marius, had appeared to her in the light.
She awoke with the sun in her eyes, which, at first, produced on her the effect of being a continuation of her dream.
Her first thought on emerging from this dream was a smiling one.
Cosette felt herself thoroughly reassured.
Like Jean Valjean, she had, a few hours previously, passed through that reaction of the soul which absolutely will not hear of unhappiness.
She began to cherish hope, with all her might, without knowing why.
Then she felt a pang at her heart.
It was three days since she had seen Marius.
But she said to herself that he must have received her letter, that he knew where she was, and that he was so clever that he would find means of reaching her.—And that certainly to-day, and perhaps that very morning.—It was broad daylight, but the rays of light were very horizontal; she thought that it was very early, but that she must rise, nevertheless, in order to receive Marius.
She felt that she could not live without Marius, and that, consequently, that was sufficient and that Marius would come.
No objection was valid.
All this was certain.
It was monstrous enough already to have suffered for three days.
Marius absent three days, this was horrible on the part of the good God.
Now, this cruel teasing from on high had been gone through with.
Marius was about to arrive, and he would bring good news.
Youth is made thus; it quickly dries its eyes; it finds sorrow useless and does not accept it.
Youth is the smile of the future in the presence of an unknown quantity, which is itself.
It is natural to it to be happy. It seems as though its respiration were made of hope.
Moreover, Cosette could not remember what Marius had said to her on the subject of this absence which was to last only one day, and what explanation of it he had given her.
Every one has noticed with what nimbleness a coin which one has dropped on the ground rolls away and hides, and with what art it renders itself undiscoverable.
There are thoughts which play us the same trick; they nestle away in a corner of our brain; that is the end of them; they are lost; it is impossible to lay the memory on them.
Cosette was somewhat vexed at the useless little effort made by her memory.
She told herself, that it was very naughty and very wicked of her, to have forgotten the words uttered by Marius.
She sprang out of bed and accomplished the two ablutions of soul and body, her prayers and her toilet.
One may, in a case of exigency, introduce the reader into a nuptial chamber, not into a virginal chamber.
Verse would hardly venture it, prose must not.
It is the interior of a flower that is not yet unfolded, it is whiteness in the dark, it is the private cell of a closed lily, which must not be gazed upon by man so long as the sun has not gazed upon it.
Woman in the bud is sacred.
That innocent bud which opens, that adorable half-nudity which is afraid of itself, that white foot which takes refuge in a slipper, that throat which veils itself before a mirror as though a mirror were an eye, that chemise which makes haste to rise up and conceal the shoulder for a creaking bit of furniture or a passing vehicle, those cords tied, those clasps fastened, those laces drawn, those tremors, those shivers of cold and modesty, that exquisite affright in every movement, that almost winged uneasiness where there is no cause for alarm, the successive phases of dressing, as charming as the clouds of dawn,—it is not fitting that all this should be narrated, and it is too much to have even called attention to it.
The eye of man must be more religious in the presence of the rising of a young girl than in the presence of the rising of a star.
The possibility of hurting should inspire an augmentation of respect.
The down on the peach, the bloom on the plum, the radiated crystal of the snow, the wing of the butterfly powdered with feathers, are coarse compared to that chastity which does not even know that it is chaste.
The young girl is only the flash of a dream, and is not yet a statue.
Her bed-chamber is hidden in the sombre part of the ideal.
The indiscreet touch of a glance brutalizes this vague penumbra.
Here, contemplation is profanation.
We shall, therefore, show nothing of that sweet little flutter of Cosette’s rising.
An oriental tale relates how the rose was made white by God, but that Adam looked upon her when she was unfolding, and she was ashamed and turned crimson.