Page 1703 - les-miserables

the street, he heard Cosette open the long glass door on the
veranda. Of course, 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 Co-
sette 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 thir-
ty paces from them, and they would not have noticed it, so
deeply was the revery of the one absorbed and sunk in the
revery of the other.
Limpid purity. Hours wholly white; almost all alike. This
sort of love is a recollection of lily petals and the plumage of
the dove.
The whole extent of the garden lay between them and the
street. Every time that Marius entered and left, he carefully
adjusted the bar of the gate in such a manner that no dis-
placement was visible.
He usually went away about midnight, and returned to
Courfeyrac’s lodgings. Courfeyrac said to Bahorel:—

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