Kabanata Kabanata 237 · CHANGE OF GATE

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 Lenôtre, 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

Thénardiers 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.