Page 1692 - les-miserables

which set the trees to trembling.
What words were these? Breaths. Nothing more. These
breaths sufficed to trouble and to touch all nature round
about. Magic power which we should find it difficult to
understand were we to read in a book these conversations
which are made to be borne away and dispersed like smoke
wreaths by the breeze beneath the leaves. Take from those
murmurs of two lovers that melody which proceeds from
the soul and which accompanies them like a lyre, and what
remains is nothing more than a shade; you say: ‘What! is
that all!’ eh! yes, childish prattle, repetitions, laughter at
nothing, nonsense, everything that is deepest and most
sublime in the world! The only things which are worth the
trouble of saying and hearing!
The man who has never heard, the man who has never ut-
tered these absurdities, these paltry remarks, is an imbecile
and a malicious fellow. Cosette said to Marius:—
‘Dost thou know?—‘
[In all this and athwart this celestial maidenliness, and
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.’
‘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.
Dost thou like that name—Euphrasie?’
‘Yes. But Cosette is not ugly.’
‘Do you like it better than Euphrasie?’
‘Why, yes.’

1692 Les Miserables