Page 2333 - les-miserables

ners, three or four arm-chairs, drawn close together in a
circle, had the appearance of continuing a conversation. The
whole effect was cheerful. A certain grace still lingers round
a dead feast. It has been a happy thing. On the chairs in
disarray, among those fading flowers, beneath those extinct
lights, people have thought of joy. The sun had succeeded
to the chandelier, and made its way gayly into the drawing-
room.
Several minutes elapsed. Jean Valjean stood motionless
on the spot where Basque had left him. He was very pale. His
eyes were hollow, and so sunken in his head by sleeplessness
that they nearly disappeared in their orbits. His black coat
bore the weary folds of a garment that has been up all night.
The elbows were whitened with the down which the friction
of cloth against linen leaves behind it.
Jean Valjean stared at the window outlined on the pol-
ished floor at his feet by the sun.
There came a sound at the door, and he raised his eyes.
Marius entered, his head well up, his mouth smiling, an
indescribable light on his countenance, his brow expanded,
his eyes triumphant. He had not slept either.
‘It is you, father!’ he exclaimed, on catching sight of Jean
Valjean; ‘that idiot of a Basque had such a mysterious air!
But you have come too early. It is only half past twelve. Co-
sette is asleep.’
That word: ‘Father,’ said to M. Fauchelevent by Marius,
signified: supreme felicity. There had always existed, as the
reader knows, a lofty wall, a coldness and a constraint be-
tween them; ice which must be broken or melted. Marius

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