"Why do you treat me so coldly? Have I done you any injury?"
"No," he answered.
Certainly he had nothing against her; far from it. Still he felt that
he could not but say "you" to Éponine, now that he said "thou" to
Cosette. As he remained silent, she exclaimed,--
"Tell me--"
Then she stopped, and it seemed as if words failed this creature, who
was formerly so impudent and bold. She tried to smile and could not, so
continued,--
"Well?"
Then she was silent again, and looked down on the ground.
"Good-night, Monsieur Marius," she suddenly said, and went away.
CHAPTER IV.
CAB RUNS IN ENGLISH AND BARKS IN SLANG.
The next day--it was June 3, 1832, a date to which we draw attention
owing to the grave events which were at that moment hanging over the
horizon of Paris in the state of lightning-charged clouds--Marius at
nightfall was following the same road as on the previous evening, with
the same ravishing thoughts in his heart, when he saw between the
boulevard trees Éponine coming toward him. Two days running,--that was
too much; so he sharply turned back, changed his course, and went to
the Rue Plumet by the Rue Monsieur. This caused Éponine to follow him
as far as the Rue Plumet, a thing she had never done before; hitherto,
she had contented herself with watching him as he passed along the
boulevard, without attempting to meet him: last evening was the first
time that she ventured to address him. Éponine followed him, then,
without his suspecting it: she saw him move the railing-bar aside and
step into the garden.
"Hilloh!" she said, "he enters the house."
She went up to the railing, felt the bars in turn, and easily
distinguished the one which Marius had removed; and she muttered in a
low voice, and with a lugubrious accent,--"None of that, Lisette!"
She sat down on the stone-work of the railing, close to the bar, as if
she were guarding it. It was exactly at the spot where the railings
joined the next wall, and there was there a dark corner, in which
Éponine entirely disappeared. She remained thus for more than an hour
without stirring or breathing, absorbed in thought. About ten o'clock
at night, one of the two or three passers along the Rue Plumet, an old
belated citizen, who was hurrying along the deserted and ill-famed
street, while passing the railing, heard a dull menacing voice saying,--
"I am not surprised now that he comes every evening."
The passer-by looked around him, saw nobody, did not dare to peer into
this dark corner, and felt horribly alarmed. He redoubled his speed,
and was quite right in doing so, for in a few minutes six men, who were
walking separately, and at some distance from each other, under the
walls, and who might have been taken for a drunken patrol, entered the
Rue Plumet: the first who reached the railings stopped and waited for
the rest, and a second after, all six were together, and began talking
in whispered slang.
"It's here," said one of them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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