Page 2357 - les-miserables

In vain may one be crowned with light and joy, in vain
may one taste the grand purple hour of life, happy love, such
shocks would force even the archangel in his ecstasy, even
the demigod in his glory, to shudder.
As is always the case in changes of view of this nature,
Marius asked himself whether he had nothing with which
to reproach himself. Had he been wanting in divination?
Had he been wanting in prudence? Had he involuntari-
ly dulled his wits? A little, perhaps. Had he entered upon
this love affair, which had ended in his marriage to Cosette,
without taking sufficient precautions to throw light upon
the surroundings? He admitted,—it is thus, by a series of
successive admissions of ourselves in regard to ourselves,
that life amends us, little by little,—he admitted the chime-
rical and visionary side of his nature, a sort of internal cloud
peculiar to many organizations, and which, in paroxysms
of passion and sorrow, dilates as the temperature of the soul
changes, and invades the entire man, to such a degree as
to render him nothing more than a conscience bathed in a
mist. We have more than once indicated this characteristic
element of Marius’ individuality.
He recalled that, in the intoxication of his love, in the
Rue Plumet, during those six or seven ecstatic weeks, he
had not even spoke to Cosette of that drama in the Gorbeau
hovel, where the victim had taken up such a singular line of
silence during the struggle and the ensuing flight. How had
it happened that he had not mentioned this to Cosette? Yet
it was so near and so terrible! How had it come to pass that
he had not even named the Thenardiers, and, particular-

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