Page 2381 - les-miserables

CHAPTER III

THEY RECALL THE

GARDEN OF THE

RUE PLUMET

This was the last time. After that last flash of light, com-
plete extinction ensued. No more familiarity, no more
good-morning with a kiss, never more that word so pro-
foundly sweet: ‘My father!’ He was at his own request and
through his own complicity driven out of all his happinesses
one after the other; and he had this sorrow, that after having
lost Cosette wholly in one day, he was afterwards obliged to
lose her again in detail.
The eye eventually becomes accustomed to the light of a
cellar. In short, it sufficed for him to have an apparition of
Cosette every day. His whole life was concentrated in that
one hour.
He seated himself close to her, he gazed at her in silence,
or he talked to her of years gone by, of her childhood, of the
convent, of her little friends of those bygone days.
One afternoon,—it was on one of those early days in

2381