Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [365]
He went to a candle in the basement-room. It was a little note, folded and sealed with the elegant care of a woman. 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 beloved, alas! my father wishes to start immediately. We shall be to-night in the Rue de l‘Homme Armé, No.7. In a week we shall be in England. COSETTE June 4th.”
Such was the innocence of this love that Marius did not even know Cosette’s handwriting.
What happened may be told in a few words. Eponine had done it all. After the evening of the 3rd of June, she had had a double thought, to thwart the projects of her father and the bandits upon the house in the Rue Plumet, and to separate Marius from Cosette. She had changed rags with the first young rogue who thought it amusing to dress as a woman while Eponine disguised herself as a man. It was she who, in the Champ de Mars, had given Jean Valjean the expressive warning: Move out. Jean Valjean returned home, and said to Cosette: we start to-night, and we are going to the Rue de l‘Homme Armé with Toussaint. Next week we shall be in
London. Cosette, prostrated by this unexpected blow, had hastily written two lines to Marius. But how should she get the letter to the post? She did not go out alone, and Toussaint, surprised at such an errand, would surely show the letter to M. Fauchelevent. In this anxiety, Cosette saw, through the grating, Eponine in men’s clothes, who was now prowling continually about the garden. Cosette called “this young working-man” and handed him five francs and the letter, saying to him: “carry this letter to its address right away.” Eponine put the letter in her pocket. The next day, June 5th, she went to Courfeyrac’s to ask for Marius, not to give him the letter, but, a thing which every jealous and loving soul will understand, “to see.” There she waited for Marius, or, at least, for Courfeyrac—still to see. When Courfeyrac said to her: we are going to the barricades, an idea flashed across her mind. To throw herself into that death as she would have thrown herself into any other, and to push Marius into it. She followed Courfeyrac, made sure of the post where they were building the barricade; and very sure, since Marius had received no notice, and she had intercepted the letter, that he would at nightfall be at his usual evening rendezvous, she went to the Rue Plumet, waited there for Marius, and sent him, in the name of his friends, that appeal which must, she thought, lead him to the barricade. She counted upon Marius’ despair when he should not find Cosette; she was not mistaken. She returned herself to the Rue de la Chanvrerie. We have seen what she did there. She died with that tragic joy of jealous hearts which drag the being they love into death with them, saying: nobody shall have him!
Marius covered Cosette’s letter with kisses. She loved him then? He had for a moment the idea that now he need not die. Then he said to himself: “She is going away. Her father takes her to England and my grandfather refuses to consent to the marriage. Nothing is changed in our fate.” Dreamers, like Marius, have these supreme depressions, and paths hence are chosen in despair. The fatigue of life is unbearable; death is sooner over. Then he thought that there were two duties remaining for him to fulfil: to inform Cosette of his death and to send her a last farewell, and to save from the imminent catastrophe which was approaching, this poor child, Eponine’s brother and Thénardier’s son.
He had a pocket-book with him; the same that had contained the pages upon which he had written so many thoughts of love