ed the stairs, without
knowing why. A pretty female neighbor was amazed one morning at
receiving a big bouquet; it was M. Gillenormand who had sent it to
her. The husband made a jealous scene. M. Gillenormand tried to draw
Nicolette upon his knees. He called Marius, "M. le Baron." He shouted:
"Long live the Republic!"

Every moment, he kept asking the doctor: "Is he no longer in danger?"
He gazed upon Marius with the eyes of a grandmother. He brooded over him
while he ate. He no longer knew himself, he no longer rendered himself
an account of himself. Marius was the master of the house, there was
abdication in his joy, he was the grandson of his grandson.

In the state of joy in which he then was, he was the most venerable of
children. In his fear lest he might fatigue or annoy the convalescent,
he stepped behind him to smile. He was content, joyous, delighted,
charming, young. His white locks added a gentle majesty to the gay
radiance of his visage. When grace is mingled with wrinkles, it is
adorable. There is an indescribable aurora in beaming old age.

As for Marius, as he allowed them to dress his wounds and care for him,
he had but one fixed idea: Cosette.

After the fever and delirium had left him, he did not again pronounce
her name, and it might have been supposed that he no longer thought of
her. He held his peace, precisely because his soul was there.

He did not know what had become of Cosette; the whole affair of the
Rue de la Chanvrerie was like a cloud in his memory; shadows that were
almost indistinct, floated through his mind, Eponine, Gavroche, Mabeuf,
the Thenardiers, all his friends gloomily intermingled with the smoke
of the barricade; the strange passage of M. Fauchelevent through that
adventure produced on him the effect of a puzzle in a tempest; he
understood nothing connected with his own life, he did not know how nor
by whom he had been saved, and no one of those around him knew this; all
that they had been able to tell him was, that he had been brought home
at night in a hackney-coach, to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire; past,
present, future were nothing more to him than the mist of a vague idea;
but in that fog there was one immovable point, one clear and precise
outline, something made of granite, a resolution, a will; to find
Cosette once more. For him, the idea of life was not distinct from the
idea of Cosette. He had decreed in his heart that he would not accept
the one without the ot