Marius removed the railing and rushed into the garden. Cosette was
not at the place where she usually waited for him, and he crossed the
garden and went to the niche near the terrace. "She is waiting for me
there," he said; but Cosette was not there. He raised his eyes and saw
that the shutters of the house were closed; he walked round the garden,
and the garden was deserted. Then he returned to the garden, and, mad
with love, terrified, exasperated with grief and anxiety, he rapped at
the shutters, like a master who returns home at a late hour. He rapped,
he rapped again, at the risk of seeing the window open and the fathers
frowning face appear and ask him,--"What do you want?" This was nothing
to what he caught a glimpse of. When he had rapped, he raised his
voice, and called Cosette. "Cosette!" he cried: "Cosette!" he repeated
imperiously. There was no answer. It was all over; there was no one in
the garden, no one in the house. Marius fixed his desperate eyes on
this mournful house, which was as black, as silent, and more empty,
than a tomb. He gazed at the stone bench on which he had spent so many
adorable hours by Cosette's side; then he sat down on the garden steps,
with his heart full of gentleness and resolution; he blessed his love
in his heart, and said to himself that since Cosette was gone all left
him was to die. All at once he heard a voice which seemed to come from
the street, crying through the trees,--
"Monsieur Marius!"
He drew himself up.
"Hilloh!" he said.
"Monsieur Marius, are you there?"
"Yes."
"Monsieur Marius," the voice resumed, "your friends are waiting for you
at the barricade in the Rue de la Chanvrerie."
This voice was not entirely strange to him, and resembled Éponine's
rough, hoarse accents. Marius ran to the railings, pulled aside the
shifting bar, passed his head through, and saw some one, who seemed to
be a young man, running away in the gloaming.
CHAPTER III.
M. MABŒUF.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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