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Updated: April 30, 2025
Jean Valjean stepped up to the mirror. He read the four lines again, but he did not believe them. They produced on him the effect of appearing in a flash of lightning. It was a hallucination, it was impossible. It was not so. Little by little, his perceptions became more precise; he looked at Cosette's blotting-book, and the consciousness of the reality returned to him.
Strange and sad to say, at that very moment, Marius had not yet received Cosette's letter; chance had treacherously carried it to Jean Valjean before delivering it to Marius. Up to that day, Jean Valjean had not been vanquished by trial.
Their unhappiness formed a halo round their happiness. The long agony of their love was terminating in an ascension. It was the same enchantment in two souls, tinged with voluptuousness in Marius, and with modesty in Cosette. They said to each other in low tones: "We will go back to take a look at our little garden in the Rue Plumet." The folds of Cosette's gown lay across Marius.
By the side of this duty there was another to elucidate, if possible, the source of Cosette's fortune. The opportunity appeared to present itself. Perhaps Thenardier knew something. It might prove useful to see the bottom of this man. He commenced with this. Thenardier had caused the "honest rustler" to disappear in his fob, and was gazing at Marius with a gentleness that was almost tender.
On the following month they were again in need of money. The woman took Cosette's outfit to Paris, and pawned it at the pawnbroker's for sixty francs. As soon as that sum was spent, the Thenardiers grew accustomed to look on the little girl merely as a child whom they were caring for out of charity; and they treated her accordingly.
And he sat erect in his chair, his arms outstretched and trembling, haggard, livid, gloomy, an immense joy in his eyes. Cosette, stifling with emotion, fell upon Jean Valjean's breast. "Father!" said she. Jean Valjean, overcome, stammered: "Cosette! she! you! Madame! it is thou! Ah! my God!" And, pressed close in Cosette's arms, he exclaimed: "It is thou! thou art here! Thou dost pardon me then!"
Jean Valjean stood for several minutes, erect and motionless in the darkness, beneath those radiant windows. He listened. The confused sounds of the banquet reached his ear. He heard the loud, commanding tones of the grandfather, the violins, the clatter of the plates, the bursts of laughter, and through all that merry uproar, he distinguished Cosette's sweet and joyous voice.
As he put these questions to himself, he touched Cosette's hands. They were icy cold. "Ah! good God!" he cried. He spoke to her in a low voice: "Cosette!" She did not open her eyes. He shook her vigorously. She did not wake. "Is she dead?" he said to himself, and sprang to his feet, quivering from head to foot. The most frightful thoughts rushed pell-mell through his mind.
Last of all, an inexplicable circumstance which had just attracted his attention, and from which he had not yet recovered, had added to his state of alarm. On the morning of that very day, when he alone of the household was stirring, while strolling in the garden before Cosette's shutters were open, he had suddenly perceived on the wall, the following line, engraved, probably with a nail:
And in all this generalisation of interest, we never miss those small humanities that are at the opposite pole of excellence in art; and while we admire the intellect that could see life thus largely, we are touched with another sentiment for the tender heart that slipped the piece of gold into Cosette's sabot, that was virginally troubled at the fluttering of her dress in the spring wind, or put the blind girl beside the deformity of the laughing man.
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