For a moment he could not speak, then he went on:
“I really needed to see Cosette a little bit now and then. A heart needs a bone to gnaw. But I was perfectly conscious that I was in the way. I gave myself reasons: ‘They do not want you, keep in your own course, one has not the right to cling eternally.’ Ah! God be praised, I see her once more! Dost thou know, Cosette, thy husband is very handsome? Ah! what a pretty embroidered collar thou hast on, luckily. I am fond of that pattern. It was thy husband who chose it, was it not? And then, thou shouldst have some cashmere shawls. Let me call her thou, Monsieur Pontmercy. It will not be for long.”
And Cosette began again:
“How wicked of you to have left us like that! Where did you go? Why have you stayed away so long? Formerly your journeys only lasted three or four days. I sent Nicolette, the answer always was: ‘He is absent.’ How long have you been back? Why did you not let us know? Do you know that you are very much changed? Ah! what a naughty father! he has been ill, and we have not known it! Stay, Marius, feel how cold his hand is!”
“So you are here! Monsieur Pontmercy, you pardon me!” repeated Jean Valjean.
At that word which Jean Valjean had just uttered once more, all that was swelling Marius’ heart found vent.
He burst forth:
“Cosette, do you hear? he has come to that! he asks my forgiveness! And do you know what he has done for me, Cosette? He has saved my life. He has done more—he has given you to me. And after having saved me, and after having given you to me, Cosette, what has he done with himself? He has sacrificed himself. Behold the man. And he says to me the ingrate, to me the forgetful, to me the pitiless, to me the guilty one: Thanks! Cosette, my whole life passed at the feet of this man would be too little. That barricade, that sewer, that furnace, that cesspool,—all that he traversed for me, for thee, Cosette! He carried me away through all the deaths which he put aside before me, and accepted for himself. Every courage, every virtue, every heroism, every sanctity he possesses! Cosette, that man is an angel!”
“Hush! hush!” said Jean Valjean in a low voice. “Why tell all that?”
“But you!” cried Marius with a wrath in which there was veneration, “why did you not tell it to me? It is your own fault, too. You save people’s lives, and you conceal it from them! You do more, under the pretext of unmasking yourself, you calumniate yourself. It is frightful.”