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_ It seemed that this garden, created in olden days to conceal
wanton mysteries, had been transformed and become fitted to shelter
chaste mysteries. There were no longer either arbors, or bowling greens,
or tunnels, or grottos; there was a magnificent, dishevelled obscurity
falling like a veil over all. Paphos had been made over into Eden.
It is impossible to say what element of repentance had rendered
this retreat wholesome. This flower-girl now offered her blossom
to the soul. This coquettish garden, formerly decidedly compromised,
had returned to virginity and modesty. A justice assisted by a gardener,
a goodman who thought that he was a continuation of Lamoignon,
and another goodman who thought that he was a continuation of Lenotre,
had turned it about, cut, ruffled, decked, moulded it to gallantry;
nature had taken possession of it once more, had filled it with shade,
and had arranged it for love.
There was, also, in this solitude, a heart which was quite ready.
Love had only to show himself; he had here a temple composed
of verdure, grass, moss, the sight of birds, tender shadows,
agitated branches, and a soul made of sweetness, of faith, of candor,
of hope, of aspiration, and of illusion.
Cosette had left the convent when she was still almost a child;
she was a little more than fourteen, and she was at the "ungrateful age";
we have already said, that with the exception of her eyes, she was
homely rather than pretty; she had no ungraceful feature, but she
was awkward, thin, timid and bold at once, a grown-up little girl,
in short.
Her education was finished, that is to say, she has been taught religion,
and even and above all, devotion; then "history," that is to say
the thing that bears that name in convents, geography, grammar,
the participles, the kings of France, a little music, a little
drawing, etc.; but in all other respects she was utterly ignorant,
which is a great charm and a great peril. The soul of a young
girl should not be left in the dark; later on, mirages that are
too abrupt and too lively are formed there, as in a dark chamber.
She should be gently and discreetly enlightened, rather with the
reflection of realities than with their harsh and direct light.
A useful and graciously austere half-light which dissipates puerile
fears and obviates falls. There is nothing but the maternal instinct,
that admirable intuition composed of the memories of the virgin
and the experience of the woman, which knows how this half-light
is to be created and of what it should consist.
Nothing supplies the place of this instinct. All the nuns in
the world are not worth as much as one mother in the formation
of a young girl's soul.
Cosette had had no mother. She had only had many mothers,
in the plural.
As for Jean Valjean, he was, indeed, all tenderness, all solicitude;
but he was only an old man and he knew nothing at all.
Now, in this work of education, in this grave matter of preparing
a woman for life, what science is required to combat that vast
ignorance which is called innocence!
Nothing prepares a young girl for passions like the convent.
The convent turns the thoughts in the direction of the unknown.
The heart, thus thrown back upon itself, works downward within itself,
since it cannot overflow, and grows deep, since it cannot expand.
Hence visions, suppositions, conjectures, outlines of romances,
a desire for adventures, fantastic constructions, edifices built
wholly in the inner obscurity of the mind, sombre and secret abodes
where the passions immediately find a lodgement as soon as the open
gate permits them to enter. The convent is a compression which,
in order to triumph over the human heart, should last during the
whole life.
On quitting the convent, Cosette could have found nothing more
sweet and more dangerous than the house in the Rue Plumet.
It was the continuation of solitude with the beginning of liberty;
a garden that was closed, but a nature that was acrid, rich, voluptuous,
and fragrant; the same dreams as in the convent, but with glimpses
of young men; a grating, but one that opened on the street.
Still, when she arrived there, we repeat, she was only a child.
Jean Valjean gave this neglected garden over to her. "Do what you
like with it," he said to her. This amused Cosette; she turned
over all the clumps and all the stones, she hunted for "beasts"; she
played in it, while awaiting the time when she would dream in it;
she loved this garden for the insects that she found beneath
her feet amid the grass, while awaiting the day when she would
love it for the stars that she would see through the boughs above
her head.
And then, she loved her father, that is to say, Jean Valjean,
with all her soul, with an innocent filial passion which made
the goodman a beloved and charming companion to her. It will be
remembered that M. Madeleine had been in the habit of reading a
great deal. Jean Valjean had continued this practice; he had come
to converse well; he possessed the secret riches and the eloquence
of a true and humble mind which has spontaneously cultivated itself.
He retained just enough sharpness to season his kindness; his mind
was rough and his heart was soft. During their conversations
in the Luxembourg, he gave her explanations of everything,
drawing on what he had read, and also on what he had suffered.
As she listened to him, Cosette's eyes wandered vaguely about.
This simple man sufficed for Cosette's thought, the same as the wild
garden sufficed for her eyes. When she had had a good chase after
the butterflies, she came panting up to him and said: "Ah! How I
have run!" He kissed her brow.
Cosette adored the goodman. She was always at his heels.
Where Jean Valjean was, there happiness was. Jean Valjean lived
neither in the pavilion nor the garden; she took greater pleasure
in the paved back courtyard, than in the enclosure filled with flowers,
and in his little lodge furnished with straw-seated chairs than
in the great drawing-room hung with tapestry, against which stood
tufted easy-chairs. Jean Valjean sometimes said to her, smiling at
his happiness in being importuned: "Do go to your own quarters!
Leave me alone a little!"
She gave him those charming and tender scoldings which are
so graceful when they come from a daughter to her father.
"Father, I am very cold in your rooms; why don't you have a carpet
here and a stove?"
"Dear child, there are so many people who are better than I
and who have not even a roof over their heads."
"Then why is there a fire in my rooms, and everything that is needed?"
"Because you are a woman and a child."
"Bah! must men be cold and feel uncomfortable?"
"Certain men."
"That is good, I shall come here so often that you will be obliged
to have a fire."
And again she said to him:--
"Father, why do you eat horrible bread like that?"
"Because, my daughter."
"Well, if you eat it, I will eat it too."
Then, in order to prevent Cosette eating black bread, Jean Valjean
ate white bread.
Cosette had but a confused recollection of her childhood. She prayed
morning and evening for her mother whom she had never known.
The Thenardiers had remained with her as two hideous figures
in a dream. She remembered that she had gone "one day, at night,"
to fetch water in a forest. She thought that it had been very far
from Paris. It seemed to her that she had begun to live in an abyss,
and that it was Jean Valjean who had rescued her from it.
Her childhood produced upon her the effect of a time when there
had been nothing around her but millepeds, spiders, and serpents.
When she meditated in the evening, before falling asleep, as she
had not a very clear idea that she was Jean Valjean's daughter,
and that he was her father, she fancied that the soul of her mother had
passed into that good man and had come to dwell near her.
When he was seated, she leaned her cheek against his white hair,
and dropped a silent tear, saying to herself: "Perhaps this man is
my mother."
Cosette, although this is a strange statement to make,
in the profound ignorance of a girl brought up in a convent,--
maternity being also absolutely unintelligible to virginity,--
had ended by fancying that she had had as little mother as possible.
She did not even know her mother's name. Whenever she asked Jean Valjean,
Jean Valjean remained silent. If she repeated her question,
he responded with a smile. Once she insisted; the smile ended in a tear.
This silence on the part of Jean Valjean covered Fantine with darkness.
Was it prudence? Was it respect? Was it a fear that he should
deliver this name to the hazards of another memory than his own?
So long as Cosette had been small, Jean Valjean had been willing to talk
to her of her mother; when she became a young girl, it was impossible
for him to do so. It seemed to him that he no longer dared. Was it
because of Cosette? Was it because of Fantine? He felt a certain
religious horror at letting that shadow enter Cosette's thought;
and of placing a third in their destiny. The more sacred this
shade was to him, the more did it seem that it was to be feared.
He thought of Fantine, and felt himself overwhelmed with silence.
Through the darkness, he vaguely perceived something which appeared
to have its finger on its lips. Had all the modesty which had been
in Fantine, and which had violently quitted her during her lifetime,
returned to rest upon her after her death, to watch in indignation
over the peace of that dead woman, and in its shyness, to keep her in
her grave? Was Jean Valjean unconsciously submitting to the pressure?
We who believe in death, are not among the number who will reject
this mysterious explanation.
Hence the impossibility of uttering, even for Cosette, that name
of Fantine.
One day Cosette said to him:--
"Father, I saw my mother in a dream last night. She had two big wings.
My mother must have been almost a saint during her life."
"Through martyrdom," replied Jean Valjean.
However, Jean Valjean was happy.
When Cosette went out with him, she leaned on his arm, proud and happy,
in the plenitude of her heart. Jean Valjean felt his heart melt within
him with delight, at all these sparks of a tenderness so exclusive,
so wholly satisfied with himself alone. The poor man trembled,
inundated with angelic joy; he declared to himself ecstatically
that this would last all their lives; he told himself that he
really had not suffered sufficiently to merit so radiant a bliss,
and he thanked God, in the depths of his soul, for having permitted
him to be loved thus, he, a wretch, by that innocent being. _
Read next: VOLUME IV: BOOK THIRD - THE HOUSE IN THE RUE PLUMET: CHAPTER V. The Rose perceives that it is an Engine of War
Read previous: VOLUME IV: BOOK THIRD - THE HOUSE IN THE RUE PLUMET: CHAPTER III. Foliis ac Frondibus
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