Page 1517 - les-miserables

CHAPTER VI

THE BATTLE BEGUN

Cosette in her shadow, like Marius in his, was all ready
to take fire. Destiny, with its mysterious and fatal patience,
slowly drew together these two beings, all charged and all
languishing with the stormy electricity of passion, these
two souls which were laden with love as two clouds are lad-
en with lightning, and which were bound to overflow and
mingle in a look like the clouds in a flash of fire.
The glance has been so much abused in love romances
that it has finally fallen into disrepute. One hardly dares
to say, nowadays, that two beings fell in love because they
looked at each other. That is the way people do fall in love,
nevertheless, and the only way. The rest is nothing, but the
rest comes afterwards. Nothing is more real than these
great shocks which two souls convey to each other by the
exchange of that spark.
At that particular hour when Cosette unconsciously
darted that glance which troubled Marius, Marius had no
suspicion that he had also launched a look which disturbed
Cosette.
He caused her the same good and the same evil.

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