Had he entered upon this love affair,

Had he entered upon this love affair, which had ended in his marriage to Cosette, without taking sufficient precautions to throw light upon the surroundings? 　　He admitted,--it is thus, by a series of successive admissions of ourselves in regard to ourselves, that life amends us, little by little,--he admitted the chimerical and visionary side of his nature, a sort of internal cloud peculiar to many organizations, and which, in paroxysms of passion and sorrow, dilates as the temperature of the soul changes, and invades the entire man, to such a degree as to render him nothing more than a conscience bathed in a mist. 　　We have more than once indicated this characteristic element of Marius' individuality. 　　He recalled that, in the intoxication of his love, in the Rue Plumet, during those six or seven ecstatic weeks, he had not even spoke to Cosette of that drama in the Gorbeau hovel, where the victim had taken up such a singular line of silence during the struggle and the ensuing flight. 　　How had it happened that he had not mentioned this to Cosette? 　　Yet it was so near and so terrible! How had it come to pass that he had not even named the Thenardiers, and, particularly, on the day when he had encountered Eponine? He now found it almost difficult to explain his silence of that time. Nevertheless, he could account for it. 　　He recalled his benumbed state, his intoxication with Cosette, love absorbing everything, that catching away of each other into the ideal, and perhaps also, like the imperceptible quantity of reason mingled with this violent and charming state of the soul, a vague, dull instinct impelling him to conceal and abolish in his memory that redoubtable adventure, contact with which he dreaded, in which he did not wish to play any part, his agency in which he had kept secret, and in which he could be neither narrator nor witness without being an accuser. 　　Moreover, these few weeks had been a flash of lightning; there had been no time for anything except love. 　　In short, having weighed everything, turned everything over in his mind, examined everything, whatever might have been the consequences if he had told Cosette about the Gorbeau ambush, even if he had discovered that Jean Valjean was a convict, would that have changed him, Marius? Would that have changed her, Cosette? 　　Would he have drawn back? Would he have adored her any the less? 　　Would he have refrained from marrying her? 　　No. Then there was nothing to regret, nothing with which he need reproach himself. 　　All was well. There is a deity for those drunken men who are called lovers. Marius blind, had followed the path which he would have chosen had he been in full possession of his sight. 　　Love had bandaged his eyes, in order to lead him whither? 　　To paradise. 　　But this paradise was henceforth complicated with an infernal accompaniment. 　　Marius' ancient estrangement towards this man, towards this Fauchelevent who had turned into Jean Valjean, was at present mingled with horror. 　　In this horror, let us state, there was some pity, and even a certain surprise. 　　This thief, this thief guilty of a second offence, had restored that deposit. 　　And what a deposit! 　　Six hundred thousand francs. 　　He alone was in the secret of that deposit. 　　He might have kept it all, he had restored it all. 　　Moreover, he had himself revealed his situation.