Page 1527 - les-miserables

issue.
Once he made a trial. He asked Cosette:—
‘Would you like to come to the Luxembourg?’
A ray illuminated Cosette’s pale face.
‘Yes,’ said she.
They went thither. Three months had elapsed. Marius no
longer went there. Marius was not there.
On the following day, Jean Valjean asked Cosette
again:—
‘Would you like to come to the Luxembourg?’
She replied, sadly and gently:—
‘No.’
Jean Valjean was hurt by this sadness, and heart-broken
at this gentleness.
What was going on in that mind which was so young
and yet already so impenetrable? What was on its way there
within? What was taking place in Cosette’s soul? Sometimes,
instead of going to bed, Jean Valjean remained seated on
his pallet, with his head in his hands, and he passed whole
nights asking himself: ‘What has Cosette in her mind?’ and
in thinking of the things that she might be thinking about.
Oh! at such moments, what mournful glances did he cast
towards that cloister, that chaste peak, that abode of angels,
that inaccessible glacier of virtue! How he contemplated,
with despairing ecstasy, that convent garden, full of ignored
flowers and cloistered virgins, where all perfumes and all
souls mount straight to heaven! How he adored that Eden
forever closed against him, whence he had voluntarily and
madly emerged! How he regretted his abnegation and his

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