Jean Valjean suspected nothing. Cosette, who was rather less dreamy than Marius, was gay, and that sufficed for Jean Valjean's happiness. The thoughts which Cosette cherished, Marius' image which filled her heart, took away nothing from the incomparable purity of her beautiful, chaste, and smiling brow. She was at the age when the virgin bears her love as the angel his lily. So Jean Valjean was at ease. When two lovers have come to an understanding, the third party who might disturb their love is kept in a state of perfect blindness by a restricted number of precautions which are always the same. Thus Cosette never objected to any of Jean Valjean's proposals. Did she want to take a walk? Yes, dear little father. Did she want to stay at home? Very good. Did he wish to pass the evening with Cosette? She was delighted. As he always went to bed at ten o'clock, Marius did not come to the garden on such occasions until after that hour, when, from the street, he heard Cosette open the long glass door on the veranda. No one ever met Marius in the daytime. Jean Valjean never even dreamed any longer that Marius was in existence. Only once, one morning, he chanced to say to Cosette: Why, you have whitewash on your back. On the previous evening, Marius, in a transport, had pushed Cosette against the wall. Old Toussaint, who retired early, thought of nothing but her sleep, and was as ignorant of the whole matter as Jean Valjean.
Marius never set foot in the house. When he was with Cosette, they hid themselves in a recess near the steps, in order that they might neither be seen nor heard from the street, and there they sat, frequently contenting themselves, by way of conversation, with pressing each other's hands twenty times a minute as they gazed at the branches of the trees. At such times, a thunderbolt might have fallen thirty paces from them, and they would not have noticed it. Every time that Marius entered and left, he carefully adjusted the bar of the gate in such a manner that no displacement was visible. He usually went away about midnight, and returned to Courfeyrac's lodgings. Courfeyrac said to Bahorel that Marius comes home nowadays at one o'clock in the morning. At times Courfeyrac folded his arms and said: You are getting irregular in your habits, young man. One morning he threw him this admonition: My dear fellow, you produce upon me the effect of being located in the moon, the realm of dreams, the province of illusions, capital, soap-bubble. Come, be a good boy, what's her name? But nothing could induce Marius to talk. They might have torn out his nails before one of the two sacred syllables of which that ineffable name, Cosette, was composed. True love is as luminous as the dawn and as silent as the tomb. Only, Courfeyrac saw this change in Marius, that his taciturnity was of the beaming order. During this sweet month of May, Marius and Cosette learned to know these immense delights: to dispute and to say you for thou, simply that they might say thou the better afterwards; to listen, knee pressed to knee, to the carriages rolling along the Rue de Babylone; to hold their peace together, a still greater delight than conversation.
In the meantime, divers complications were approaching. One evening, Marius was on his way to the rendezvous, by way of the Boulevard des Invalides. He habitually walked with drooping head. As he was on the point of turning the corner of the Rue Plumet, he heard some one quite close to him say: Good evening, Monsieur Marius. He raised his head and recognized Eponine. This produced a singular effect upon him. He had not thought of that girl a single time since the day when she had conducted him to the Rue Plumet. He had no reasons for anything but gratitude towards her, he owed her his happiness, and yet it was embarrassing to him to meet her. Passion, when it is pure and happy, leads man to a state of oblivion. Man forgets to be bad, but he also forgets to be good. Absorbed in Cosette, he had not even clearly put it to himself that this Eponine was named Eponine Thenardier, and that she bore the name inscribed in his father's will, that name for which, but a few months before, he would have so ardently sacrificed himself. His father himself was fading out of his soul to some extent, under the splendour of his love. He replied with some embarrassment: Ah, so it's you, Eponine? Why do you call me you? Have I done anything to you? No, he answered. Only, he felt that he could not do otherwise, now that he used thou to Cosette, than say you to Eponine. As he remained silent, she exclaimed: Say. Then she paused. It seemed as though words failed that creature formerly so heedless and so bold. She tried to smile and could not. Well? Then she paused again, and remained with downcast eyes. Good evening, Mr. Marius, said she suddenly and abruptly; and away she went.
