2392 Les Miserables
CHAPTER I
PITY FOR THE UNHAPPY,
BUT INDULGENCE
FOR THE HAPPY
It is a terrible thing to be happy! How content one is! How
all-sufficient one finds it! How, being in possession of the
false object of life, happiness, one forgets the true object,
duty!
Let us say, however, that the reader would do wrong were
he to blame Marius.
Marius, as we have explained, before his marriage, had
put no questions to M. Fauchelevent, and, since that time,
he had feared to put any to Jean Valjean. He had regretted
the promise into which he had allowed himself to be drawn.
He had often said to himself that he had done wrong in
making that concession to despair. He had confined himself
to gradually estranging Jean Valjean from his house and to
effacing him, as much as possible, from Cosette’s mind. He
had, in a manner, always placed himself between Cosette
and Jean Valjean, sure that, in this way, she would not per-