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,