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Updated: April 30, 2025
As he had been a mayor, he understood how to solve that delicate problem, with the secret of which he alone was acquainted, Cosette's civil status. If he were to announce her origin bluntly, it might prevent the marriage, who knows? He extricated Cosette from all difficulties. He concocted for her a family of dead people, a sure means of not encountering any objections.
It was an odd moment when Cosette's rags met and clasped the ribbons and fresh pink muslins of the doll. "Madame," she resumed, "may I put her on a chair?" "Yes, my child," replied the Thenardier. It was now the turn of Eponine and Azelma to gaze at Cosette with envy.
Any one to behold him thus motionless would have pronounced him dead; all at once he shuddered convulsively, and his mouth, glued to Cosette's garments, kissed them; then it could be seen that he was alive. Who could see? Since Jean Valjean was alone, and there was no one there. The One who is in the shadows. The days that follow weddings are solitary.
Cosette's grief, which had been so poignant and lively four or five months previously, had, without her being conscious of the fact, entered upon its convalescence. Nature, spring, youth, love for her father, the gayety of the birds and flowers, caused something almost resembling forgetfulness to filter gradually, drop by drop, into that soul, which was so virgin and so young.
Many weeks passed in this manner. A new life gradually took possession of Cosette: the relations which marriage creates, visits, the care of the house, pleasures, great matters. Cosette's pleasures were not costly, they consisted in one thing: being with Marius. The great occupation of her life was to go out with him, to remain with him.
An acte de notoriete was drawn up. Cosette became in the eyes of the law, Mademoiselle Euphrasie Fauchelevent. She was declared an orphan, both father and mother being dead. Jean Valjean so arranged it that he was appointed, under the name of Fauchelevent, as Cosette's guardian, with M. Gillenormand as supervising guardian over him.
A neighbor of the Thenardiers met this mother as she was setting out, and came back with the remark: "I have just seen a woman crying in the street so that it was enough to rend your heart." When Cosette's mother had taken her departure, the man said to the woman: "That will serve to pay my note for one hundred and ten francs which falls due to-morrow; I lacked fifty francs.
"What is she making?" went on the stranger, in a gentle voice which contrasted strangely with his beggarly garments and his porter's shoulders. The Thenardier deigned to reply: "Stockings, if you please. Stockings for my little girls, who have none, so to speak, and who are absolutely barefoot just now." The man looked at Cosette's poor little red feet, and continued:
People halted in the Rue Saint-Antoine, in front of Saint-Paul, to gaze through the windows of the carriage at the orange-flowers quivering on Cosette's head. Then they returned home to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire. Marius, triumphant and radiant, mounted side by side with Cosette the staircase up which he had been borne in a dying condition.
Questions which he put to himself without being able to solve them, and which irritated him. He had pondered it all night long. He could not be Cosette's father. Was he her grandfather? Then why not make himself known at once? When one has a right, one asserts it. This man evidently had no right over Cosette. What was it, then? Thenardier lost himself in conjectures.
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