The transition had not been softened, and they would have been stunned, had they not been dazzled by it.
“Do you understand anything about it?” said Marius to Cosette.
“No,” replied Cosette, “but it seems to me that the good God is caring for us.”
Jean Valjean did everything, smoothed away every difficulty, arranged everything, made everything easy.
He hastened towards Cosette’s happiness with as much ardor, and, apparently with as much joy, as Cosette herself.
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.
Cosette was the only scion of an extinct family; Cosette was not his own daughter, but the daughter of the other Fauchelevent.
Two brothers Fauchelevent had been gardeners to the convent of the Petit-Picpus.
Inquiry was made at that convent; the very best information and the most respectable references abounded; the good nuns, not very apt and but little inclined to fathom questions of paternity, and not attaching any importance to the matter, had never understood exactly of which of the two Fauchelevents Cosette was the daughter.
They said what was wanted and they said it with zeal.
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.
As for the five hundred and eighty thousand francs, they constituted a legacy bequeathed to Cosette by a dead person, who desired to remain unknown.
The original legacy had consisted of five hundred and ninety-four thousand francs; but ten thousand francs had been expended on the education of Mademoiselle Euphrasie, five thousand francs of that amount having been paid to the convent.
This legacy, deposited in the hands of a third party, was to be turned over to Cosette at her majority, or at the date of her marriage.
This, taken as a whole, was very acceptable, as the reader will perceive, especially when the sum due was half a million.
There were some peculiarities here and there, it is true, but they were not noticed; one of the interested parties had his eyes blindfolded by love, the others by the six hundred thousand francs.
Cosette learned that she was not the daughter of that old man whom she had so long called father.
He was merely a kinsman; another Fauchelevent was her real father. At any other time this would have broken her heart.
But at the ineffable moment which she was then passing through, it cast but a slight shadow, a faint cloud, and she was so full of joy that the cloud did not last long.
She had Marius.
The young man arrived, the old man was effaced; such is life.
And then, Cosette had, for long years, been habituated to seeing enigmas around her; every being who has had a mysterious childhood is always prepared for certain renunciations.
Nevertheless, she continued to call Jean Valjean: Father.
Cosette, happy as the angels, was enthusiastic over Father Gillenormand.
It is true that he overwhelmed her with gallant compliments and presents.
While Jean Valjean was building up for Cosette a normal situation in society and an unassailable status, M. Gillenormand was superintending the basket of wedding gifts.
Nothing so amused him as being magnificent.
He had given to Cosette a robe of Binche guipure which had descended to him from his own grandmother.
“These fashions come up again,” said he, “ancient things are the rage, and the young women of my old age dress like the old women of my childhood.”
He rifled his respectable chests of drawers in Coromandel lacquer, with swelling fronts, which had not been opened for years.—“Let us hear the confession of these dowagers,” he said, “let us see what they have in their paunches.”
He noisily violated the pot-bellied drawers of all his wives, of all his mistresses and of all his grandmothers.
Pekins, damasks, lampas, painted moires, robes of shot gros de Tours, India kerchiefs embroidered in gold that could be washed, dauphines without a right or wrong side, in the piece, Genoa and Alencon point lace, parures in antique goldsmith’s work, ivory bon-bon boxes ornamented with microscopic battles, gewgaws and ribbons—he lavished everything on Cosette.
Cosette, amazed, desperately in love with Marius, and wild with gratitude towards M. Gillenormand, dreamed of a happiness without limit clothed in satin and velvet.
Her wedding basket seemed to her to be upheld by seraphim.
Her soul flew out into the azure depths, with wings of Mechlin lace.
The intoxication of the lovers was only equalled, as we have already said, by the ecstasy of the grandfather.
A sort of flourish of trumpets went on in the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire.
Every morning, a fresh offering of bric-a-brac from the grandfather to Cosette.
All possible knickknacks glittered around her.
One day Marius, who was fond of talking gravely in the midst of his bliss, said, apropos of I know not what incident:
“The men of the revolution are so great, that they have the prestige of the ages, like Cato and like Phocion, and each one of them seems to me an antique memory.”
“Moire antique!” exclaimed the old gentleman. “Thanks, Marius.
That is precisely the idea of which I was in search.”
And on the following day, a magnificent dress of tea-rose colored moire antique was added to Cosette’s wedding presents.