Page 1704 - les-miserables

‘Would you believe it? Marius comes home nowadays at
one o’clock in the morning.’
Bahorel replied:—
‘What do you expect? There’s always a petard in a semi-
nary fellow.’
At times, Courfeyrac folded his arms, assumed a serious
air, and said to Marius:—
‘You are getting irregular in your habits, young man.’
Courfeyrac, being a practical man, did not take in good
part this reflection of an invisible paradise upon Marius; he
was not much in the habit of concealed passions; it made
him impatient, and now and then he called upon Marius to
come back to reality.
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 taci-
turnity 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 talk at great length with very minute details,
of persons in whom they took not the slightest interest in the

1704 Les Miserables