Chapter 7: GAVROCHE AS A PROFOUND CALCULATOR OF DISTANCES

Marius kept his promise. He dropped a kiss on that livid brow, where the icy perspiration stood in beads.

This was no infidelity to Cosette; it was a gentle and pensive farewell to an unhappy soul.

It was not without a tremor that he had taken the letter which Éponine had given him. He had immediately felt that it was an event of weight. He was impatient to read it. The heart of man is so constituted that the unhappy child had hardly closed her eyes when Marius began to think of unfolding this paper.

He laid her gently on the ground, and went away. Something told him that he could not peruse that letter in the presence of that body.

He drew near to a candle in the tap-room. It was a small note, folded and sealed with a woman’s elegant care. The address was in a woman’s hand and ran:—

“To Monsieur, Monsieur Marius Pontmercy, at M. Courfeyrac’s, Rue de la Verrerie, No. 16.”

He broke the seal and read:—

“My dearest, alas! my father insists on our setting out immediately. We shall be this evening in the Rue de l’Homme Armé, No. 7. In a week we shall be in England. COSETTE. June 4th.”

Such was the innocence of their love that Marius was not even acquainted with Cosette’s handwriting.

What had taken place may be related in a few words. Éponine had been the cause of everything. After the evening of the 3d of June she had cherished a double idea, to defeat the projects of her father and the ruffians on the house of the Rue Plumet, and to separate Marius and Cosette. She had exchanged rags with the first young scamp she came across who had thought it amusing to dress like a woman, while Éponine disguised herself like a man. It was she who had conveyed to Jean Valjean in the Champ de Mars the expressive warning: “Leave your house.” Jean Valjean had, in fact, returned home, and had said to Cosette: “We set out this evening and we go to the Rue de l’Homme Armé with Toussaint. Next week, we shall be in London.” Cosette, utterly overwhelmed by this unexpected blow, had hastily penned a couple of lines to Marius. But how was she to get the letter to the post? She never went out alone, and Toussaint, surprised at such a commission, would certainly show the letter to M. Fauchelevent. In this dilemma, Cosette had caught sight through the fence of Éponine in man’s clothes, who now prowled incessantly around the garden. Cosette had called to “this young workman” and had handed him five francs and the letter, saying: “Carry this letter immediately to its address.” Éponine had put the letter in her pocket. The next day, on the 5th of June, she went to Courfeyrac’s quarters to inquire for Marius, not for the purpose of delivering the letter, but, —a thing which every jealous and loving soul will comprehend, —”to see.” There she had waited for Marius, or at least for Courfeyrac, still for the purpose of seeing. When Courfeyrac had told her: “We are going to the barricades,” an idea flashed through her mind, to fling herself into that death, as she would have done into any other, and to thrust Marius into it also. She had followed Courfeyrac, had made sure of the locality where the barricade was in process of construction; and, quite certain, since Marius had received no warning, and since she had intercepted the letter, that he would go at dusk to his trysting place for every evening, she had betaken herself to the Rue Plumet, had there awaited Marius, and had sent him, in the name of his friends, the appeal which would, she thought, lead him to the barricade. She reckoned on Marius’ despair when he should fail to find Cosette; she was not mistaken. She had returned to the Rue de la Chanvrerie herself. What she did there the reader has just seen. She died with the tragic joy of jealous hearts who drag the beloved being into their own death, and who say: “No one shall have him!”