1690 Les Miserables
ning. If, at that period of her existence, Cosette had fallen
in love with a man in the least unscrupulous or debauched,
she would have been lost; for there are generous natures
which yield themselves, and Cosette was one of them. One
of woman’s magnanimities is to yield. Love, at the height
where it is absolute, is complicated with some indescribably
celestial blindness of modesty. But what dangers you run,
O noble souls! Often you give the heart, and we take the
body. Your heart remains with you, you gaze upon it in the
gloom with a shudder. Love has no middle course; it either
ruins or it saves. All human destiny lies in this dilemma.
This dilemma, ruin, or safety, is set forth no more inexora-
bly by any fatality than by love. Love is life, if it is not death.
Cradle; also coffin. The same sentiment says ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in
the human heart. Of all the things that God has made, the
human heart is the one which sheds the most light, alas! and
the most darkness.
God willed that Cosette’s love should encounter one of
the loves which save.
Throughout the whole of the month of May of that year
1832, there were there, in every night, in that poor, neglected
garden, beneath that thicket which grew thicker and more
fragrant day by day, two beings composed of all chastity, all
innocence, overflowing with all the felicity of heaven, nearer
to the archangels than to mankind, pure, honest, intoxicat-
ed, radiant, who shone for each other amid the shadows. It
seemed to Cosette that Marius had a crown, and to Marius
that Cosette had a nimbus. They touched each other, they
gazed at each other, they clasped each other’s hands, they