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all the fears of nuns combined. The spirit of the convent,
with which she had been permeated for the space of five
years, was still in the process of slow evaporation from her
person, and made everything tremble around her. In this
situation he was not a lover, he was not even an admirer, he
was a vision. She set herself to adoring Marius as something
charming, luminous, and impossible.
As extreme innocence borders on extreme coquetry, she
smiled at him with all frankness.
Every day, she looked forward to the hour for their walk
with impatience, she found Marius there, she felt herself
unspeakably happy, and thought in all sincerity that she
was expressing her whole thought when she said to Jean
Va lj e a n :—
‘What a delicious garden that Luxembourg is!’
Marius and Cosette were in the dark as to one another.
They did not address each other, they did not salute each
other, they did not know each other; they saw each other;
and like stars of heaven which are separated by millions of
leagues, they lived by gazing at each other.
It was thus that Cosette gradually became a woman and
developed, beautiful and loving, with a consciousness of her
beauty, and in ignorance of her love. She was a coquette to
boot through her ignorance.