by Victor Hugo
CHAPTER VII.
THE EFFECTS OF DREAMING BLENDED WITH HAPPINESS.
The lovers saw each other daily, and Cosette came with M. Fauchelevent."It is turning things topsy-turvy," said Mademoiselle Gillenormand,"that the lady should come to the gentleman's house to have court paidto her in that way." But Marius's convalescence had caused the adoptionof the habit, and the easy-chairs of the Rue des Filles du Calvaire,more convenient for a _tête-à-tête_ than the straw-bottomed chairs ofthe Rue de l'Homme Armé, had decided it. Marius and M. Faucheleventsaw each other, but did not speak, and this seemed to be agreed on.Every girl needs a chaperon, and Cosette could not have come withoutM. Fauchelevent; and for Marius, M. Fauchelevent was the condition ofCosette, and he accepted him. In discussing vaguely, and without anyprecision, political matters as connected with the improvement of all,they managed to say a little more than Yes and No. Once, on the subjectof instruction, which Marius wished to be gratuitous and obligatory,multiplied in every form, lavished upon all like light and air, and,in a word, respirable by the entire people, they were agreed, andalmost talked. Marius remarked on this occasion that M. Faucheleventspoke well, and even with a certain elevation of language, thoughsomething was wanting. M. Fauchelevent had something less than a manof the world, and something more. Marius, in his innermost thoughts,surrounded with all sorts of questions this M. Fauchelevent, who was tohim simple, well-wishing, and cold. At times doubts occurred to him asto his own recollections; he had a hole in his memory, a black spot, anabyss dug by four months of agony. Many things were lost in it, and hewas beginning to ask himself whether it was the fact that he had seenM. Fauchelevent, a man so serious and so calm, at the barricade.
This was, however, not the sole stupor which the appearances anddisappearances of the past had left in his mind. We must not believethat he was delivered from all those promptings of memory which compelus, even when happy and satisfied, to take a melancholy backwardglance. The head which does not turn to effaced horizons containsneither thought nor love. At moments Marius buried his face in hishands, and the tumultuous and vague past traversed the fog which hehad in his brain. He saw Mabœuf fall again, he heard Gavrochesinging under the grape-shot, and he felt on his lips the coldness ofÉponine's forehead; Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire, Combeferre,Bossuet, Grantaire, all his friends rose before him, and thendisappeared. Were they all dreams, these dear, sorrowful, valiant,charming, and tragic beings? Had they really existed? The riot hadrobed everything in its smoke, and these great fevers have greatdreams. He questioned himself, he felt himself, and had a dizzinessfrom all these vanished realities. Where were they all, then? Was itreally true that everything was dead? A fall into the darkness hadcarried away everything except himself; all this had disappeared as itwere behind the curtain of a theatre. There are such curtains whichdrop on life, and God passes on to the next act. In himself was hereally the same man? He, poor, was rich; he, the abandoned man, had afamily; he, the desperate man, was going to marry Cosette. He seemedto have passed through a tomb, and to have gone in black and come outwhite. And in this tomb the others had remained. At certain timesall these beings of the past, returning and present, formed a circleround him, and rendered him gloomy. Then he thought of Cosette, andbecame serene again, but it required no less than this felicity toefface this catastrophe. M. Fauchelevent had almost a place among thesevanished beings. Marius hesitated to believe that the Faucheleventof the barricade was the same as that Fauchelevent in flesh and boneso gravely seated by the side of Cosette. The first was probably oneof those nightmares brought to him and carried away by his hours ofdelirium. However, as their two natures were so far apart, it wasimpossible for Marius to ask any question of M. Fauchelevent. Theidea had not even occurred to him; we have already indicated thischaracteristic detail. Two men who have a common secret, and who, by asort of tacit agreement, do not exchange a syllable on the subject, arenot so rare as may be supposed. Once, however, Marius made an effort;he turned the conversation on the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and turning toM. Fauchelevent, he said to him,--
"Do you know that street well?"
"What street?"
"The Rue de la Chanvrerie."
"I have never heard the name of that street," M. Fauchelevent said, inthe most natural tone in the world.
The answer, which related to the name of the street, and not to thestreet itself, seemed to Marius more conclusive than it really was.
"Decidedly," he thought, "I must have been dreaming. I had anhallucination. It was some one that resembled him, and M. Faucheleventwas not there."
