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!
CHAPTER IV—THE REMARKS OF THE PRINCIPAL TENANT
Jean Valjean was prudent enough never to go out by day.
Every evening, at twilight, he walked for an hour or two, sometimes alone, often with Cosette, seeking the most deserted side alleys of the boulevard, and entering churches at nightfall.
He liked to go to Saint-Medard, which is the nearest church.
When he did not take Cosette with him, she remained with the old woman; but the child’s delight was to go out with the good man.
She preferred an hour with him to all her rapturous tete-a-tetes with Catherine.
He held her hand as they walked, and said sweet things to her.
It turned out that Cosette was a very gay little person.
The old woman attended to the housekeeping and cooking and went to market.
They lived soberly, always having a little fire, but like people in very moderate circumstances.
Jean Valjean had made no alterations in the furniture as it was the first day; he had merely had the glass door leading to Cosette’s dressing-room replaced by a solid door.
He still wore his yellow coat, his black breeches, and his old hat.
In the street, he was taken for a poor man.
It sometimes happened that kind-hearted women turned back to bestow a sou on him. Jean Valjean accepted the sou with a deep bow.
It also happened occasionally that he encountered some poor wretch asking alms; then he looked behind him to make sure that no one was observing him, stealthily approached the unfortunate man, put a piece of money into his hand, often a silver coin, and walked rapidly away.
This had its disadvantages.
He began to be known in the neighborhood under the name of the beggar who gives alms.
The old principal lodger, a cross-looking creature, who was thoroughly permeated, so far as her neighbors were concerned, with the inquisitiveness peculiar to envious persons, scrutinized Jean Valjean a great deal, without his suspecting the fact.
She was a little deaf, which rendered her talkative.
There remained to her from her past, two teeth,—one above, the other below,—which she was continually knocking against each other.
She had questioned Cosette, who had not been able to tell her anything, since she knew nothing herself except that she had come from Montfermeil.
One morning, this spy saw Jean Valjean, with an air which struck the old gossip as peculiar, entering one of the uninhabited compartments of the hovel.
She followed him with the step of an old cat, and was able to observe him without being seen, through a crack in the door, which was directly opposite him.
Jean Valjean had his back turned towards this door, by way of greater security, no doubt.