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.∞本∞作∞品∞由∞思∞兔∞網∞提∞供∞線∞上∞閱∞讀∞
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 other, and he was immovably resolved to exact of any person whatever, who should desire to force him to live,--from his grandfather, from fate, from hell,--the restitution of his vanished Eden.