uries always have this sovereign and wonderful property, that
at the moment when they are passing they fill the heart completely.

Marius displaced the bar, and rushed headlong into the garden. Cosette
was not at the spot where she ordinarily waited for him. He traversed
the thicket, and approached the recess near the flight of steps: "She
is waiting for me there," said he. Cosette was not there. He raised his
eyes, and saw that the shutters of the house were closed. He made the
tour of the garden, the garden was deserted. Then he returned to
the house, and, rendered senseless by love, intoxicated, terrified,
exasperated with grief and uneasiness, like a master who returns home at
an evil hour, he tapped on the shutters. He knocked and knocked again,
at the risk of seeing the window open, and her father's gloomy face
make its appearance, and demand: "What do you want?" This was nothing in
comparison with what he dimly caught a glimpse of. When he had rapped,
he lifted up his voice and called Cosette.--"Cosette!" he cried;
"Cosette!" he repeated imperiously. There was no reply. All was over. No
one in the garden; no one in the house.

Marius fixed his despairing eyes on that dismal house, which was as
black and as silent as a tomb and far more empty. He gazed at the stone
seat on which he had passed so many adorable hours with Cosette. Then he
seated himself on the flight of steps, his heart filled with sweetness
and resolution, he blessed his love in the depths of his thought, and
he said to himself that, since Cosette was gone, all that there was left
for him was to die.

All at once he heard a voice which seemed to proceed from the street,
and which was calling to him through the trees:--

"Mr. Marius!"

He started to his feet.

"Hey?" said he.

"Mr. Marius, are you there?"

"Yes."

"Mr. Marius," went on the voice, "your friends are waiting for you at
the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie."

This voice was not wholly unfamiliar to him. It resembled the hoarse,
rough voice of Eponine. Marius hastened to the gate, thrust aside the
movable bar, passed his head through the aperture, and saw some one who
appeared to him to be a young man, disappearing at a run into the gloom.

CHAPTER III--M. MABEUF

Jean Valjean's purse was of no use to M. Mabeuf. M. Mabeuf, in his
venerable, infantile austerity, had not accepted the gift of the stars;
he had not admitted that a star could coin itself into louis d