feel her sufferings. She put Marius' hand in the pocket
of her blouse. There, in fact, Marius felt a paper.

"Take it," said she.

Marius took the letter.

She made a sign of satisfaction and contentment.

"Now, for my trouble, promise me--"

And she stopped.

"What?" asked Marius.

"Promise me!"

"I promise."

"Promise to give me a kiss on my brow when I am dead.--I shall feel it."

She dropped her head again on Marius' knees, and her eyelids closed. He
thought the poor soul had departed. Eponine remained motionless. All
at once, at the very moment when Marius fancied her asleep forever, she
slowly opened her eyes in which appeared the sombre profundity of death,
and said to him in a tone whose sweetness seemed already to proceed from
another world:--

"And by the way, Monsieur Marius, I believe that I was a little bit in
love with you."

She tried to smile once more and expired.

CHAPTER VII--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 Eponine
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 Arme, 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. Eponine 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