Page 1691 - les-miserables

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’ loy-
alty. 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, Co-
sette was a perfume and not a woman. He inhaled her. She
refused nothing, and he asked nothing. Cosette was happy,
and Marius was satisfied. They lived in this ecstatic state
which can be described as the dazzling of one soul by an-
other soul. It was the ineffable first embrace of two maiden
souls in the ideal. Two swans meeting on the Jungfrau.
At that hour of love, an hour when voluptuousness is
absolutely mute, beneath the omnipotence of ecstasy, Mar-
ius, the pure and seraphic Marius, would rather have gone
to a woman of the town than have raised Cosette’s robe to
the height of her ankle. 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, when they were there, that garden seemed a liv-
ing and a sacred spot. All flowers unfolded around them
and sent them incense; and they opened their souls and
scattered them over the flowers. The wanton and vigor-
ous vegetation quivered, full of strength and intoxication,
around these two innocents, and they uttered words of love

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