บทที่ บทที่ 238 · THE ROSE PERCEIVES THAT IT IS AN ENGINE OF WAR

One day, Cosette chanced to look at herself in her mirror, and she said

to herself: “Really!” It seemed to her almost that she was pretty. This

threw her in a singularly troubled state of mind. Up to that moment she

had never thought of her face. She saw herself in her mirror, but she

did not look at herself. And then, she had so often been told that she

was homely; Jean Valjean alone said gently: “No indeed! no indeed!” At

all events, Cosette had always thought herself homely, and had grown up

in that belief with the easy resignation of childhood. And here, all at

once, was her mirror saying to her, as Jean Valjean had said: “No

indeed!” That night, she did not sleep. “What if I were pretty!” she

thought. “How odd it would be if I were pretty!” And she recalled those

of her companions whose beauty had produced a sensation in the convent,

and she said to herself: “What! Am I to be like Mademoiselle

So-and-So?”

The next morning she looked at herself again, not by accident this

time, and she was assailed with doubts: “Where did I get such an idea?”

said she; “no, I am ugly.” She had not slept well, that was all, her

eyes were sunken and she was pale. She had not felt very joyous on the

preceding evening in the belief that she was beautiful, but it made her

very sad not to be able to believe in it any longer. She did not look

at herself again, and for more than a fortnight she tried to dress her

hair with her back turned to the mirror.

In the evening, after dinner, she generally embroidered in wool or did

some convent needlework in the drawing-room, and Jean Valjean read

beside her. Once she raised her eyes from her work, and was rendered

quite uneasy by the manner in which her father was gazing at her.

On another occasion, she was passing along the street, and it seemed to

her that some one behind her, whom she did not see, said: “A pretty

woman! but badly dressed.” “Bah!” she thought, “he does not mean me. I

am well dressed and ugly.” She was then wearing a plush hat and her

merino gown.

At last, one day when she was in the garden, she heard poor old

Toussaint saying: “Do you notice how pretty Cosette is growing, sir?”

Cosette did not hear her father’s reply, but Toussaint’s words caused a

sort of commotion within her. She fled from the garden, ran up to her

room, flew to the looking-glass,—it was three months since she had

looked at herself,—and gave vent to a cry. She had just dazzled

herself.

She was beautiful and lovely; she could not help agreeing with

Toussaint and her mirror. Her figure was formed, her skin had grown

white, her hair was lustrous, an unaccustomed splendor had been lighted

in her blue eyes. The consciousness of her beauty burst upon her in an

instant, like the sudden advent of daylight; other people noticed it

also, Toussaint had said so, it was evidently she of whom the passer-by

had spoken, there could no longer be any doubt of that; she descended

to the garden again, thinking herself a queen, imagining that she heard

the birds singing, though it was winter, seeing the sky gilded, the sun

among the trees, flowers in the thickets, distracted, wild, in

inexpressible delight.

Jean Valjean, on his side, experienced a deep and undefinable

oppression at heart.

In fact, he had, for some time past, been contemplating with terror

that beauty which seemed to grow more radiant every day on Cosette’s

sweet face. The dawn that was smiling for all was gloomy for him.

Cosette had been beautiful for a tolerably long time before she became

aware of it herself. But, from the very first day, that unexpected

light which was rising slowly and enveloping the whole of the young

girl’s person, wounded Jean Valjean’s sombre eye. He felt that it was a

change in a happy life, a life so happy that he did not dare to move

for fear of disarranging something. This man, who had passed through

all manner of distresses, who was still all bleeding from the bruises

of fate, who had been almost wicked and who had become almost a saint,

who, after having dragged the chain of the galleys, was now dragging

the invisible but heavy chain of indefinite misery, this man whom the

law had not released from its grasp and who could be seized at any

moment and brought back from the obscurity of his virtue to the broad

daylight of public opprobrium, this man accepted all, excused all,

pardoned all, and merely asked of Providence, of man, of the law, of

society, of nature, of the world, one thing, that Cosette might love

him!

That Cosette might continue to love him! That God would not prevent the

heart of the child from coming to him, and from remaining with him!

Beloved by Cosette, he felt that he was healed, rested, appeased,

loaded with benefits, recompensed, crowned. Beloved by Cosette, it was

well with him! He asked nothing more! Had any one said to him: “Do you

want anything better?” he would have answered: “No.” God might have

said to him: “Do you desire heaven?” and he would have replied: “I

should lose by it.”

Everything which could affect this situation, if only on the surface,

made him shudder like the beginning of something new. He had never

known very distinctly himself what the beauty of a woman means; but he

understood instinctively, that it was something terrible.

He gazed with terror on this beauty, which was blossoming out ever more

triumphant and superb beside him, beneath his very eyes, on the

innocent and formidable brow of that child, from the depths of her

homeliness, of his old age, of his misery, of his reprobation.

He said to himself: “How beautiful she is! What is to become of me?”

There, moreover, lay the difference between his tenderness and the

tenderness of a mother. What he beheld with anguish, a mother would

have gazed upon with joy.

The first symptoms were not long in making their appearance.

On the very morrow of the day on which she had said to herself:

“Decidedly I am beautiful!” Cosette began to pay attention to her

toilet. She recalled the remark of that passer-by: “Pretty, but badly

dressed,” the breath of an oracle which had passed beside her and had

vanished, after depositing in her heart one of the two germs which are

destined, later on, to fill the whole life of woman, coquetry. Love is

the other.

With faith in her beauty, the whole feminine soul expanded within her.

She conceived a horror for her merinos, and shame for her plush hat.

Her father had never refused her anything. She at once acquired the

whole science of the bonnet, the gown, the mantle, the boot, the cuff,

the stuff which is in fashion, the color which is becoming, that

science which makes of the Parisian woman something so charming, so

deep, and so dangerous. The words _heady woman_ were invented for the

Parisienne.

In less than a month, little Cosette, in that Thebaid of the Rue de

Babylone, was not only one of the prettiest, but one of the “best

dressed” women in Paris, which means a great deal more.

She would have liked to encounter her “passer-by,” to see what he would

say, and to “teach him a lesson!” The truth is, that she was ravishing

in every respect, and that she distinguished the difference between a

bonnet from Gérard and one from Herbaut in the most marvellous way.

Jean Valjean watched these ravages with anxiety. He who felt that he

could never do anything but crawl, walk at the most, beheld wings

sprouting on Cosette.

Moreover, from the mere inspection of Cosette’s toilet, a woman would

have recognized the fact that she had no mother. Certain little

proprieties, certain special conventionalities, were not observed by

Cosette. A mother, for instance, would have told her that a young girl

does not dress in damask.

The first day that Cosette went out in her black damask gown and

mantle, and her white crape bonnet, she took Jean Valjean’s arm, gay,

radiant, rosy, proud, dazzling. “Father,” she said, “how do you like me

in this guise?” Jean Valjean replied in a voice which resembled the

bitter voice of an envious man: “Charming!” He was the same as usual

during their walk. On their return home, he asked Cosette:—

“Won’t you put on that other gown and bonnet again,—you know the ones I

mean?”

This took place in Cosette’s chamber. Cosette turned towards the

wardrobe where her cast-off schoolgirl’s clothes were hanging.

“That disguise!” said she. “Father, what do you want me to do with it?

Oh no, the idea! I shall never put on those horrors again. With that

machine on my head, I have the air of Madame Mad-dog.”

Jean Valjean heaved a deep sigh.

From that moment forth, he noticed that Cosette, who had always

heretofore asked to remain at home, saying: “Father, I enjoy myself

more here with you,” now was always asking to go out. In fact, what is

the use of having a handsome face and a delicious costume if one does

not display them?

He also noticed that Cosette had no longer the same taste for the back

garden. Now she preferred the garden, and did not dislike to promenade

back and forth in front of the railed fence. Jean Valjean, who was shy,

never set foot in the garden. He kept to his back yard, like a dog.

Cosette, in gaining the knowledge that she was beautiful, lost the

grace of ignoring it. An exquisite grace, for beauty enhanced by

ingenuousness is ineffable, and nothing is so adorable as a dazzling

and innocent creature who walks along, holding in her hand the key to

paradise without being conscious of it. But what she had lost in

ingenuous grace, she gained in pensive and serious charm. Her whole

person, permeated with the joy of youth, of innocence, and of beauty,

breathed forth a splendid melancholy.

It was at this epoch that Marius, after the lapse of six months, saw

her once more at the Luxembourg.