CHAPTER I.

SOLITUDE AND THE BARRACKS COMBINED.

Cosette's sorrow, so poignant and so sharp four or five months previously, had without her knowledge attained the convalescent stage. Nature, spring, youth, love for her father, the gayety of the flowers and birds filtered gradually, day by day and drop by drop, something that almost resembled oblivion into her virginal and young soul. Was the fire entirely extinguished; or were layers of ashes merely formed? The fact is, that she hardly felt now the painful and burning point. One day she suddenly thought of Marius; "Why," she said, "I had almost forgotten him." This same week she noticed, while passing the garden gate, a very handsome officer in the Lancers, with a wasp-like waist, a delightful uniform, the cheeks of a girl, a sabre under his arm, waxed mustaches, and lacquered schapska. In other respects, he had light hair, blue eyes flush with his head, a round, vain, insolent, and pretty face; he was exactly the contrary of Marius. He had a cigar in his mouth, and Cosette supposed that he belonged to the regiment quartered in the barracks of the Rue de Babylone. The next day she saw him pass again, and remarked the hour. From this moment--was it an accident?--she saw him pass nearly every day. The officer's comrades perceived that there was in this badly kept garden, and behind this poor, old-fashioned railing, a very pretty creature who was nearly always there when the handsome lieutenant passed, who is no stranger to the reader, as his name was Théodule Gillenormand.

"Hilloh!" they said to him, "there's a little girl making eyes at you, just look at her."

"Have I the time," the Lancer replied, "to look at all the girls who look at me?"

It was at this identical time that Marius was slowly descending to the abyss, and said, "If I could only see her again before I die!" If his wish had been realized, if he had at that moment seen Cosette looking at a Lancer, he would have been unable to utter a word, but expired of grief. Whose fault would it have been? Nobody's. Marius possessed one of those temperaments which bury themselves in chagrin and abide in it: Cosette was one of those who plunge into it and again emerge. Cosette, however, was passing through that dangerous moment,--the fatal phase of feminine reverie left to itself, in which the heart of an isolated maiden resembles those vine tendrils which cling, according to chance, to the capital of a marble column or to the sign-post of an inn. It is a rapid and decisive moment, critical for every orphan, whether she be poor or rich; for wealth does not prevent a bad choice, and misalliances take place in very high society. But the true misalliance is that of souls; and in the same way as many an unknown young man, without name, birth, or fortune, is a marble capital supporting a temple of grand sentiments and grand ideas, so a man of the world, satisfied and opulent, who has polished boots and varnished words, if we look not at the exterior but at the interior,--that is to say, what is reserved for the wife,--is nought but a stupid log obscurely haunted by violent, unclean, and drunken passions,--the inn sign-post.

What was there in Cosette's soul? Passion calmed or lulled to sleep, love in a floating state; something which was limpid and brilliant, perturbed at a certain depth, and sombre lower still. The image of the handsome officer was reflected on the surface, but was there any reminiscence at the bottom, quite at the bottom? Perhaps so, but Cosette did not know.

A singular incident occurred.