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!