The reader has probably understood that Eponine, having recognized through the gate the inhabitant of that Rue Plumet whither Magnon had sent her, had begun by keeping the ruffians away from the Rue Plumet, and had then conducted Marius thither. After many days spent in ecstasy before that gate, Marius, drawn on by that force which draws the iron to the magnet, had finally entered Cosette's garden as Romeo entered the garden of Juliet. This had even proved easier for him than for Romeo. Romeo was obliged to scale a wall. Marius had only to use a little force on one of the bars of the decrepit gate which vacillated in its rusty recess, after the fashion of old people's teeth. Marius was slender and readily passed through. As there was never any one in the street, and as Marius never entered the garden except at night, he ran no risk of being seen. Beginning with that blessed and holy hour when a kiss betrothed these two souls, Marius was there every evening. If Cosette had fallen in love with a man in the least unscrupulous, she would have been lost, for there are generous natures which yield themselves, and Cosette was one of them. God willed that Cosette's love should encounter one of the loves which save.
Throughout the whole of the month of May of that year 1832, there were there, in every night, in that poor, neglected garden, beneath that thicket which grew thicker and more fragrant day by day, two beings composed of all chastity, all innocence, overflowing with all the felicity of heaven, who shone for each other amid the shadows. It seemed to Cosette that Marius had a crown, and to Marius that Cosette had a nimbus. They touched each other, they gazed at each other, they clasped each other's hands, they pressed close to each other, but there was a distance which they did not pass. Not that they respected it; they did not know of its existence. Marius was conscious of a barrier, Cosette's innocence, and Cosette of a support, Marius' loyalty. The first kiss had also been the last. Marius, since that time, had not gone further than to touch Cosette's hand, or her kerchief, or a lock of her hair, with his lips. For him, Cosette was a perfume and not a woman. He inhaled her. She refused nothing, and he asked nothing. Once, in the moonlight, Cosette stooped to pick up something on the ground, her bodice fell apart and permitted a glimpse of the beginning of her throat. Marius turned away his eyes. What took place between these two beings? Nothing. They adored each other. At night that garden seemed a living and a sacred spot. What words were these? Breaths. Nothing more. Without either of them being able to say how it had come about, they had begun to call each other thou. Dost thou know? My name is Euphrasie. Why, no, thy name is Cosette. Oh, Cosette is a very ugly name that was given to me when I was a little thing. But my real name is Euphrasie. Then I like it better too. Truly, it is pretty, Cosette. Call me Cosette. On another occasion she gazed intently at him and exclaimed that he was handsome and learned, but I bid you defiance with this word: I love you. And Marius, in the very heavens, thought he heard a strain sung by a star. Once Marius said he had thought her name was Ursule. This made both of them laugh the whole evening. In the middle of another conversation he chanced to exclaim that one day at the Luxembourg he had a good mind to finish breaking up a veteran. He stopped short. He would have been obliged to speak to Cosette of her garter, and that was impossible.
Marius pictured life with Cosette to himself like this, without anything else: to come every evening to the Rue Plumet, to displace the old and accommodating bar of the chief-justice's gate, to sit elbow to elbow on that bench, to gaze through the trees at the scintillation of the on-coming night, to caress her thumb-nail, to call her thou, to smell of the same flower, one after the other, forever. A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil. Oh, how beautiful you are. I study your feet with the microscope and your soul with the telescope. And Cosette answered: I have been loving a little more all the time that has passed since this morning. Cosette's whole person was ingenuousness, transparency, candor, radiance. There was dew in her eyes. In this full felicity, tears welled up to their eyes every instant. A crushed lady-bug, a feather fallen from a nest, a branch of hawthorn broken, aroused their pity. They were fond of laughing, and so familiarly that they sometimes presented the air of two boys. Still, though unknown to hearts intoxicated with purity, nature is always present and will not be forgotten. They idolised each other. People live, they smile, they laugh, they interlace their fingers, they call each other thou, and that does not prevent eternity. Two lovers hide themselves in the evening, in the twilight, with the birds, with the roses; they murmur, they whisper, and in the meantime, immense librations of the planets fill the infinite universe.
