ady knew too much. He sought to dull his senses
rather than to gain further light.

In dismay he bore off Cosette in his arms and shut his eyes to Jean
Valjean.

That man was the night, the living and horrible night. How should he
dare to seek the bottom of it? It is a terrible thing to interrogate
the shadow. Who knows what its reply will be? The dawn may be blackened
forever by it.

In this state of mind the thought that that man would, henceforth, come
into any contact whatever with Cosette was a heartrending perplexity to
Marius.

He now almost reproached himself for not having put those formidable
questions, before which he had recoiled, and from which an implacable
and definitive decision might have sprung. He felt that he was too good,
too gentle, too weak, if we must say the word. This weakness had led him
to an imprudent concession. He had allowed himself to be touched. He
had been in the wrong. He ought to have simply and purely rejected
Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean played the part of fire, and that is what he
should have done, and have freed his house from that man.

He was vexed with himself, he was angry with that whirlwind of emotions
which had deafened, blinded, and carried him away. He was displeased
with himself.

What was he to do now? Jean Valjean's visits were profoundly repugnant
to him. What was the use in having that man in his house? What did the
man want? Here, he became dismayed, he did not wish to dig down, he did
not wish to penetrate deeply; he did not wish to sound himself. He
had promised, he had allowed himself to be drawn into a promise; Jean
Valjean held his promise; one must keep one's word even to a convict,
above all to a convict. Still, his first duty was to Cosette. In short,
he was carried away by the repugnance which dominated him.

Marius turned over all this confusion of ideas in his mind, passing
from one to the other, and moved by all of them. Hence arose a profound
trouble.

It was not easy for him to hide this trouble from Cosette, but love is a
talent, and Marius succeeded in doing it.

However, without any apparent object, he questioned Cosette, who was as
candid as a dove is white and who suspected nothing; he talked of her
childhood and her youth, and he became more and more convinced that that
convict had been everything good, paternal and respectable that a man
can be towards Cosette. All that Marius had caught a glimpse of and had
surmised was real. That si