Les Misérables, v. 2/5: Cosette

by Victor Hugo

  CHAPTER III.

  TWO EVILS MAKE A GOOD.

  The next morning at daybreak Jean Valjean was again standing byCosette's bedside; he was motionless and waiting for her to awake:something new was entering his soul. Jean Valjean had never lovedanything. For twenty-five years he had been alone in the world, andhad never been father, lover, husband, or friend. At the galleys hewas wicked, gloomy, chaste, ignorant, and ferocious,--the heart ofthe old convict was full of virginities. His sister and his sister'schildren had only left in him a vague and distant reminiscence, whichin the end entirely faded away: he had made every effort to find themagain, and, not being able to do so, forgot them,--human nature is thusconstituted. The other tender emotions of his youth, if he had any, hadfallen into an abyss. When he saw Cosette, when he carried her off,he felt his heart stirred: all the passion and affection there was inhim was aroused and rushed toward this child. He went up to the bed onwhich she slept, and he trembled with joy: he felt pangs like a mother,and knew not what it was; for the great and strange emotion of a heartwhich is preparing to love is a very obscure and sweet thing. Poor oldheart still young! But as he was fifty-five years of age and Cosetteeight, all the love he might have felt during life was melted into aspecies of ineffable glow. This was the second white apparition he met:the Bishop had caused the dawn of virtue to rise on his horizon, andCosette now produced that of love.

  The first days passed in this bedazzlement. On her side Cosette becameunconsciously different, poor little creature! She was so little whenher mother left her that she did not remember; and like all children,who resemble the young vine-twigs that cling to everything, she triedto love, and had not succeeded. All had repulsed her,--the Thénardiers,their children, and other children; she had loved the dog which died,and after that nothing and nobody would have anything to do with her.It is a sad thing to say, but at the age of eight she had a cold heart.It was not her fault, it was not that she lacked the faculty of loving;but it was, alas! the possibility. Hence, from the first day, allthat felt and thought within her began to love the good man; and sheexperienced what she had never known before,--a feeling of expansion.The man no longer even produced the effect upon her of being old orpoor; she found Jean Valjean handsome, in the same way as she found thegarret pretty. Such are the effects of dawn, childhood, youth, and joy.The novelty of earth and life have something to do in it, and nothingis so charming as the coloring reflection of happiness upon an attic;in this way we have all a blue garret in our past. Nature had placeda profound interval, of fifty years, between Jean Valjean and Cosette;but destiny filled up this separation. Destiny suddenly united, andaffianced with its irresistible power, these two uprooted existencesso different in age, so similar in sorrow; and the one, in fact, wasthe complement of the other. Cosette's instinct sought a father, inthe same way as Jean Valjean's sought a child, and to meet was to findeach other. At the mysterious moment when their two hands clasped theywere welded together; and when their two souls saw each other theyrecognized that each was necessary to the other, and joined in a closeembrace. Taking the words in their most comprehensive and absolutemeaning, we may say that, separated from everything by the walls ofthe tombs, Jean Valjean was the widower as Cosette was the orphan, andthis situation caused Jean Valjean to become in a celestial mannerCosette's father. And, in truth, the mysterious impression producedupon Cosette in the Chelles wood by Jean Valjean's hand grasping hersin the darkness was not an illusion but a reality.

  Jean Valjean had selected his asylum well, and in a security whichmight appear perfect. The room he occupied with Cosette was the onewhose window looked out on the boulevard, and as it was the only one ofthe sort in the house, he had not to fear the curiosity of neighbors,either in front or on his side. The ground-floor of No. 50-52, a sortof rickety pentice, was employed as a tool-house by nursery-gardeners,and had no communication with the first floor. The latter, as we havesaid, contained several rooms, and a few garrets, one of which alonewas occupied by the old woman who looked after Jean Valjean. It wasthis old woman who was known as the chief lodger, and who in realityperformed the duties of porter, that let him the room on Christmasday. He had represented himself as an annuitant ruined by the Spanishbonds, who meant to live there with his little daughter. He paid sixmonths' rent in advance, and requested the old woman to furnish theroom in the way we have seen; and it was this woman who lit the stoveand prepared everything on the evening of their arrival. Weeks passedaway, and these two beings led a happy life in this wretched garret.With the dawn Cosette began laughing, chattering, and singing; forchildren, like the birds, have their matin song. Sometimes it happenedthat Jean Valjean took her little red chilblained hand and kissed it;the poor child, accustomed to be beaten, did not know what this meant,and went away quite ashamed. At times she became serious, and lookedat her little black frock. Cosette was no longer dressed in rags, butin mourning; she had left wretchedness, and was entering life. JeanValjean set to work teaching her to read. Occasionally he thought thatit was with the idea of doing evil that he learned to read at thegalleys, and this idea had turned to teaching a child to read. Thenthe old galley-slave smiled the pensive smile of the angels. He feltin it a premeditation of heaven, and he lost himself in a reverie, forgood thoughts have their depths as well as wicked. Teaching Cosetteto read, and letting her play, almost constituted Jean Valjean'sentire life; and then, he spoke to her about her mother, and made herplay. She called him "father," and knew him by no other name. He spenthours in watching her dress and undress her doll, and listening toher prattle. From this moment life appeared to him full of interest;men seemed to him good and just; he no longer reproached any one inhis thoughts, and perceived no reason why he should not live to agreat age, now that this child loved him. He saw a future illumined byCosette, as by a delicious light; and as the best men are not exemptfrom a selfish thought, he said to himself at times joyfully that shewould be ugly.

  Although it is only a personal opinion, we fancy that at the pointwhich Jean Valjean had reached when he began to love Cosette, herequired this fresh impulse to continue in the right path. He had justseen, under new aspects, the wickedness of men and the wretchedness ofsociety; but the aspects were incomplete, and only fatally showed himone side of the truth,--the fate of woman comprised in Fantine, andpublic authority personified in Javert; he had returned to the galleys,but this time for acting justly; he had drunk the new cup of bitternessto the dregs; disgust and weariness seized upon him; the veryrecollection of the Bishop was approaching an eclipse, and though itwould have perhaps reappeared afterwards luminous and triumphant, stillthis holy recollection was beginning to fade. Who knows whether JeanValjean was not on the eve of growing discouraged and relapsing? Buthe loved and became strong again. Alas! he was no less tottering thanCosette; he protected her and she strengthened him; through him, shewas able to advance in her life; through her, he could continue in thepath of virtue. Oh unfathomable and divine mystery of the equilibriumof destiny!