The Obscurities Which a Revelation Can Contain — Les Misérables

Marius was quite upset. The sort of estrangement which he had always felt towards the man beside whom he had seen Cosette was now explained to him. There was something enigmatic about that person, of which his instinct had warned him. This enigma was the most hideous of disgraces, the galleys. This Fauchelevent was the convict Jean Valjean. To abruptly find such a secret in the midst of one's happiness resembles the discovery of a scorpion in a nest of turtledoves. Was the happiness of Marius and Cosette thenceforth condemned to such a neighborhood. He turned the weeks of love over. There had been no time for anything except love. Having weighed everything, he asked whether the knowledge would have changed him, would have changed her, would have made him draw back, would have made him adore her any the less, would have made him refrain from marrying. The deposit honestly restored and the probity of the confession produced a lightening of the cloud. Then the cloud became black once more.

Troubled as were his memories, a shadow of them returned. What was that adventure in the Jondrette attic. Why had that man taken to flight on the arrival of the police instead of remaining. Here questions opened into other questions. Abysses yawned at the bottoms of abysses. Marius could no longer bend over Jean Valjean without becoming dizzy. What was this man-precipice. The old symbols of Genesis are eternal. Until a broader day, there will always be two men, the one superior, the other subterranean, Abel and Cain. In whatever circle of ideas Marius revolved, he always returned to a certain horror for Jean Valjean. A sacred horror, perhaps, for he felt a divine something in that man. But do what he would, and seek what extenuation he would, he already knew too much. He sought to dull his senses rather than to see further. Who knows whether a sort of infernal glow would not have lingered on the brow of that angel. The purest figures may forever preserve the reflection of a horrible association. Rightly or wrongly, Marius had been afraid.

Henceforth there remained Marius to fulfil the part of Providence to Cosette. Cosette had sought the azure in a person like herself. As she took her flight, winged and transfigured, she left behind her on the earth her hideous and empty chrysalis, Jean Valjean. Marius questioned Cosette, who was as candid as a dove is white and who suspected nothing. He talked of her childhood and her youth, and he became more and more convinced that that convict had been everything good, paternal and respectable that a man can be towards Cosette. All that Marius had caught a glimpse of and had surmised was real. That sinister nettle had loved and protected that lily.