Bab Bab 107 · TWO MISFORTUNES MAKE ONE PIECE OF GOOD FORTUNE

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 Thénardiers,

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 reverie. 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!