eings
composed of all chastity, all innocence, overflowing with all the
felicity of heaven, nearer to the archangels than to mankind, pure,
honest, intoxicated, 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 pressed close to each other; but there
was a distance which they did not pass. Not that they respected it;
they did not know of its existence. Marius was conscious of a barrier,
Cosette's innocence; and Cosette of a support, Marius' loyalty. The
first kiss had also been the last. Marius, since that time, had not gone
further than to touch Cosette's hand, or her kerchief, or a lock of her
hair, with his lips. For him, Cosette was a perfume and not a woman.
He inhaled her. She refused nothing, and he asked nothing. Cosette was
happy, and Marius was satisfied. They lived in this ecstatic state which
can be described as the dazzling of one soul by another soul. It was
the ineffable first embrace of two maiden souls in the ideal. Two swans
meeting on the Jungfrau.

At that hour of love, an hour when voluptuousness is absolutely mute,
beneath the omnipotence of ecstasy, Marius, the pure and seraphic
Marius, would rather have gone to a woman of the town than have raised
Cosette's robe to the height of her ankle. Once, in the moonlight,
Cosette stooped to pick up something on the ground, her bodice fell
apart and permitted a glimpse of the beginning of her throat. Marius
turned away his eyes.

What took place between these two beings? Nothing. They adored each
other.

At night, when they were there, that garden seemed a living and a sacred
spot. All flowers unfolded around them and sent them incense; and they
opened their souls and scattered them over the flowers. The wanton and
vigorous vegetation quivered, full of strength and intoxication, around
these two innocents, and they uttered words of love which set the trees
to trembling.

What words were these? Breaths. Nothing more. These breaths sufficed to
trouble and to touch all nature round about. Magic power which we
should find it difficult to understand were we to read in a book these
conversations which are made to be borne away and dispersed like smoke
wreaths by the breeze beneath the leaves. Take from those murmurs of two
lovers that melody which proceeds from the soul and which acc