Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [340]
He could not find a word. She said to him in her turn:
“What is the matter?”
He answered so low that Cosette hardly heard him:
“I don’t understand what you have said.”
She resumed:
“This morning my father told me to arrange all my little affairs and to be ready, that he would give me his clothes to pack, that he was obliged to take a journey, that we were going away, that we must have a large trunk for me and a small one for him, to get all that ready within a week from now, and that we should go perhaps to England.”
“But it is monstrous!” exclaimed Marius.
It is certain that at that moment, in Marius’ mind, no abuse of power, no violence, no abomination of the most cruel tyrants, no action of Busiris, Tiberius, or Henry VIII, was equal in ferocity to this: M. Fauchelevent taking his daughter to England because he has business.
He asked in a feeble voice:
“And when would you start?”
“He didn’t say when.”
“And when should you return?”
“He didn’t say when.”
Marius arose, and said coldly:
“Cosette, shall you go?”
Cosette turned upon him her beautiful eyes full of anguish and answered with a sort of bewilderment:
“Where?”
“To England? shall you go?”
“Why do you speak so to me?”
“I ask you if you shall go?”
“What would you have me do?” said she, clasping her hands.
“So, you will go?”
“If my father goes.”
“So, you will go?”
Cosette took Marius’ hand and pressed it without answering.
“Very well,” said Marius. “Then I shall go elsewhere.”
Cosette felt the meaning of this word still more than she understood it. She turned so pale that her face became white in the darkness. She stammered:
“What do you mean?”
Marius looked at her, then slowly raised his eyes towards heaven and answered:
“Nothing.”
When his eyes were lowered, he saw Cosette smiling upon him. The smile of the woman whom we love has a brilliancy which we can see by night.
“How stupid we are! Marius, I have an idea.”
“What?”
“Go if we go! I will tell you where! Come and join me where I am!”
Marius was now a man entirely awakened. He had fallen back into reality. He cried to Cosette:
“Go with you? are you mad? But it takes money, and I have none! Go to England? Why I owe now, I don’t know, more than ten louis to Courfeyrac, one of my friends whom you do not know! Why I have an old hat which is not worth three francs, I have a coat from which some of the buttons are gone in front, my shirt is all torn, my elbows are out, my boots let in the water; for six weeks I have not thought of it, and I have not told you about it. Cosette! I am a miserable wretch. You only see me at night, and you give me your love; if you should see me by day, you would give me a sou! Go to England? Ah! I have not the means to pay for a passport!”
He threw himself against a tree which was near by, standing with his arms above his head, his forehead against the bark, feeling neither the tree which was chafing his skin, nor the fever which was hammering his temples, motionless, and ready to fall, like a statue of Despair.
He was a long time thus. One might remain through eternity in such abysses. At last he turned. He heard behind him a little stifled sound, soft and sad.
It was Cosette sobbing.
She had been weeping more than two hours while Marius had been thinking.
He came to her, fell on his knees, and, prostrating himself slowly, he took the tip of her foot which peeped from under her dress and kissed it.
She allowed it in silence. There are moments when woman accepts, like a goddess sombre and resigned, the religion of love.
“Do not weep,” said he.
She murmured:
“Because I am perhaps going away, and you cannot come!”
He continued:
“Do you love me?”
She answered him by sobbing out that word of Paradise which is never more enrapturing than when it comes through tears:
“I adore you.”
He continued with a tone of voice which was an inexpressible caress:
“Do not weep. Tell me, will you do this for me, not to weep?”
“Do you love me, too?” said she.
He caught her hand.
“Cosette, I have never given my word of honour to