Page 1563 - les-miserables

had a cigar in his mouth. Cosette thought that this officer
doubtless belonged to the regiment in barracks in the Rue
de Babylone.
On the following day, she saw him pass again. She took
note of the hour.
From that time forth, was it chance? she saw him pass
nearly every day.
The officer’s comrades perceived that there was, in that
‘badly kept’ garden, behind that malicious rococo fence, a
very pretty creature, who was almost always there when the
handsome lieutenant,—who is not unknown to the reader,
and whose name was Theodule Gillenormand,— passed by.
‘See here!’ they said to him, ‘there’s a little creature there
who is making eyes at you, look.’
‘Have I the time,’ replied the lancer, ‘to look at all the
girls who look at me?’
This was at the precise moment when Marius was de-
scending heavily towards agony, and was saying: ‘If I could
but see her before I die!’— Had his wish been realized, had
he beheld Cosette at that moment gazing at the lancer, he
would not have been able to utter a word, and he would have
expired with grief.
Whose fault was it? No one’s.
Marius possessed one of those temperaments which
bury themselves in sorrow and there abide; Cosette was one
of those persons who plunge into sorrow and emerge from
it again.
Cosette was, moreover, passing through that dangerous
period, the fatal phase of feminine revery abandoned to it-

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