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_ On the following morning, at daybreak, Jean Valjean was still by
Cosette's bedside; he watched there motionless, waiting for her to wake.
Some new thing had come into his soul.
Jean Valjean had never loved anything; for twenty-five years he had been
alone in the world. He had never been father, lover, husband, friend.
In the prison he had been vicious, gloomy, chaste, ignorant,
and shy. The heart of that ex-convict was full of virginity.
His sister and his sister's children had left him only a vague
and far-off memory which had finally almost completely vanished;
he had made every effort to find them, and not having been able
to find them, he had forgotten them. Human nature is made thus;
the other tender emotions of his youth, if he had ever had any,
had fallen into an abyss.
When he saw Cosette, when he had taken possession of her,
carried her off, and delivered her, he felt his heart moved within him.
All the passion and affection within him awoke, and rushed towards
that child. He approached the bed, where she lay sleeping,
and trembled with joy. He suffered all the pangs of a mother,
and he knew not what it meant; for that great and singular movement
of a heart which begins to love is a very obscure and a very sweet thing.
Poor old man, with a perfectly new heart!
Only, as he was five and fifty, and Cosette eight years of age,
all that might have been love in the whole course of his life flowed
together into a sort of ineffable light.
It was the second white apparition which he had encountered.
The Bishop had caused the dawn of virtue to rise on his horizon;
Cosette caused the dawn of love to rise.
The early days passed in this dazzled state.
Cosette, on her side, had also, unknown to herself, become another
being, poor little thing! She was so little when her mother
left her, that she no longer remembered her. Like all children,
who resemble young shoots of the vine, which cling to everything,
she had tried to love; she had not succeeded. All had repulsed her,--
the Thenardiers, their children, other children. She had loved the dog,
and he had died, after which nothing and nobody would have anything
to do with her. It is a sad thing to say, and we have already
intimated it, that, at eight years of age, her heart was cold.
It was not her fault; it was not the faculty of loving that she lacked;
alas! it was the possibility. Thus, from the very first day,
all her sentient and thinking powers loved this kind man. She felt
that which she had never felt before--a sensation of expansion.
The man no longer produced on her the effect of being old or poor;
she thought Jean Valjean handsome, just as she thought the hovel pretty.
These are the effects of the dawn, of childhood, of joy. The novelty
of the earth and of life counts for something here. Nothing is
so charming as the coloring reflection of happiness on a garret.
We all have in our past a delightful garret.
Nature, a difference of fifty years, had set a profound gulf
between Jean Valjean and Cosette; destiny filled in this gulf.
Destiny suddenly united and wedded with its irresistible power
these two uprooted existences, differing in age, alike in sorrow.
One, in fact, completed the other. Cosette's instinct sought a father,
as Jean Valjean's instinct sought a child. To meet was to find
each other. At the mysterious moment when their hands touched,
they were welded together. When these two souls perceived each other,
they recognized each other as necessary to each other, and embraced
each other closely.
Taking the words in their most comprehensive and absolute sense,
we may say that, separated from every one by the walls of the tomb,
Jean Valjean was the widower, and Cosette was the orphan:
this situation caused Jean Valjean to become Cosette's father after
a celestial fashion.
And in truth, the mysterious impression produced on Cosette in
the depths of the forest of Chelles by the hand of Jean Valjean
grasping hers in the dark was not an illusion, but a reality.
The entrance of that man into the destiny of that child had been
the advent of God.
Moreover, Jean Valjean had chosen his refuge well. There he seemed
perfectly secure.
The chamber with a dressing-room, which he occupied with Cosette,
was the one whose window opened on the boulevard. This being the
only window in the house, no neighbors' glances were to be feared
from across the way or at the side.
The ground-floor of Number 50-52, a sort of dilapidated penthouse,
served as a wagon-house for market-gardeners, and no communication
existed between it and the first story. It was separated by
the flooring, which had neither traps nor stairs, and which formed
the diaphragm of the building, as it were. The first story contained,
as we have said, numerous chambers and several attics, only one
of which was occupied by the old woman who took charge of Jean
Valjean's housekeeping; all the rest was uninhabited.
It was this old woman, ornamented with the name of the principal
lodger, and in reality intrusted with the functions of portress,
who had let him the lodging on Christmas eve. He had represented
himself to her as a gentleman of means who had been ruined by
Spanish bonds, who was coming there to live with his little daughter.
He had paid her six months in advance, and had commissioned the old
woman to furnish the chamber and dressing-room, as we have seen.
It was this good woman who had lighted the fire in the stove,
and prepared everything on the evening of their arrival.
Week followed week; these two beings led a happy life in that hovel.
Cosette laughed, chattered, and sang from daybreak. Children have
their morning song as well as birds.
It sometimes happened that Jean Valjean clasped her tiny red hand,
all cracked with chilblains, and kissed it. The poor child,
who was used to being beaten, did not know the meaning of this,
and ran away in confusion.
At times she became serious and stared at her little black gown.
Cosette was no longer in rags; she was in mourning. She had emerged
from misery, and she was entering into life.
Jean Valjean had undertaken to teach her to read. Sometimes, as he
made the child spell, he remembered that it was with the idea
of doing evil that he had learned to read in prison. This idea
had ended in teaching a child to read. Then the ex-convict smiled
with the pensive smile of the angels.
He felt in it a premeditation from on high, the will of some one
who was not man, and he became absorbed in revery. Good thoughts
have their abysses as well as evil ones.
To teach Cosette to read, and to let her play, this constituted
nearly the whole of Jean Valjean's existence. And then he talked
of her mother, and he made her pray.
She called him father, and knew no other name for him.
He passed hours in watching her dressing and undressing her doll,
and in listening to her prattle. Life, henceforth, appeared to
him to be full of interest; men seemed to him good and just;
he no longer reproached any one in thought; he saw no reason why he
should not live to be a very old man, now that this child loved him.
He saw a whole future stretching out before him, illuminated by
Cosette as by a charming light. The best of us are not exempt from
egotistical thoughts. At times, he reflected with a sort of joy
that she would be ugly.
This is only a personal opinion; but, to utter our whole thought,
at the point where Jean Valjean had arrived when he began to love Cosette,
it is by no means clear to us that he did not need this encouragement
in order that he might persevere in well-doing. He had just viewed
the malice of men and the misery of society under a new aspect--
incomplete aspects, which unfortunately only exhibited one side
of the truth, the fate of woman as summed up in Fantine, and public
authority as personified in Javert. He had returned to prison,
this time for having done right; he had quaffed fresh bitterness;
disgust and lassitude were overpowering him; even the memory of the
Bishop probably suffered a temporary eclipse, though sure to reappear
later on luminous and triumphant; but, after all, that sacred
memory was growing dim. Who knows whether Jean Valjean had not
been on the eve of growing discouraged and of falling once more?
He loved and grew strong again. Alas! he walked with no less
indecision than Cosette. He protected her, and she strengthened him.
Thanks to him, she could walk through life; thanks to her,
he could continue in virtue. He was that child's stay, and she
was his prop. Oh, unfathomable and divine mystery of the balances
of destiny! _
Read next: VOLUME II - COSETTE: BOOK FOURTH - THE GORBEAU HOVEL: CHAPTER IV. The Remarks of the Principal Tenant
Read previous: VOLUME II - COSETTE: BOOK FOURTH - THE GORBEAU HOVEL: CHAPTER II. A Nest for Owl and a Warbler
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