“You have knocked at every door?" she asked."Yes.""Have you knocked at that one there?""No.""Knock there.”

“Do you know what friendship is?' he asked.'Yes,' replied the gypsy; 'it is to be brother and sister; two souls which touch without mingling, two fingers on one hand.''And love?' pursued Gringoire.'Oh! love!' said she, and her voice trembled, and her eye beamed. 'That is to be two and to be but one. A man and a woman mingled into one angel. It is heaven.”

“I have been loving you a little more every minute since this morning.”

“Marius made a movement.'Oh, don't go!' she said. 'It won't be long.'She was sitting almost upright, but her voice was very low and broken by hiccoughs. At moments she struggled for breath. Raising her face as near as she could to Marius', she said, with a strange expression:'Look, I can't cheat you. I have a letter for you in my pocket. I've had it since yesterday. I was asked to post it, but I didn't. I didn't want you to get it. But you might be angry with me when we meet again. Because we shall all meet again, shan't we? Take your letter.'With a convulsive movement she seized Marius' hand with her own injured one, but without seeming to feel the pain, and guided it to her pocket.'Take it,' she said.Marius took out the letter, and she made a little gesture of satisfaction and acceptance.'Now you must promise me something for my trouble...' She paused.'What?' asked Marius.'Do you promise?''Yes, I promise.''You must kiss me on the forehead after I'm dead...I shall know.'She let her head fall back on his knees; her lids fluttered, and then she was motionless. He thought that the sad soul had left her. But then, when he thought it was all over, she slowly opened her eyes that were now deep with the shadow of death, and said in a voice so sweet that it seemed already to come from another world:'You know, Monsieur Marius, I think I was a little bit in love with you.'She tried to smile, and died.”

“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!”

“If you ask the great city, ‘Who is this person?,’ she will answer, ‘He is my child.”

“You would have imagined her at one moment a maniac, at another a queen.”