Les Misérables, v. 4/5: The Idyll and the Epic

  CHAPTER IV.

  CHANGE OF GRATING.

  It seemed as if this garden, created in former times to conceallibertine mysteries, had been transformed and become fitting to shelterchaste mysteries. There were no longer any cradles, bowling-greens,covered walks, or grottos; but there was a magnificent tangledobscurity which fell all around, and Paphos was changed into Eden.A penitent feeling had refreshed this retreat, and the coquettishgarden, once on a time so compromised, had returned to virginity andmodesty. A president assisted by a gardener, a good fellow who believedhimself the successor of Lamoignon, and another good fellow who fanciedhimself the successor of Lenôtre, had turned it about, clipped it, andprepared it for purposes of gallantry, but nature had seized it again,filled it with shadow, and prepared it for love. There was, too, inthis solitude a heart which was quite ready, and love had only to showitself; for there were here a temple composed of verdure, grass, moss,the sighs of birds, gentle shadows, waving branches, and a soul formedof gentleness, faith, candor, hope, aspirations, and illusions.

  Cosette left the convent while still almost a child. She was but littlemore than fourteen, and at the "unpromising age," as we have said. Withthe exception of her eyes, she seemed rather ugly than pretty; stillshe had no ungraceful feature, but she was awkward, thin, timid andbold at the same time, in short, a grown-up little girl. Her educationwas finished, that is to say, she had been taught religion, and moreespecially devotion, also "history," that is to say, the thing socalled in a convent; geography, grammar, the participles, the kings ofFrance, and a little music, drawing, etc.; but in other respects shewas ignorant of everything, which is at once a charm and a peril. Themind of a young girl ought not to be left in darkness, for at a laterdate, mirages too sudden and vivid are produced in it as in a cameraobscura. She should be gently and discreetly enlightened, rather by thereflection of realities than by their direct and harsh light; for thisis a useful and gracefully obscure semi-light which dissipates childishfears and prevents falls. There is only the maternal instinct,--thatadmirable intuition into which the recollections of the virgin andthe experience of the wife enter,--that knows how or of what thissemi-light should be composed. Nothing can take the place of thisinstinct, and in forming a girl's mind, all the nuns in the world arenot equal to one mother. Cosette had had no mother, she had only hada great many mothers: as for Jean Valjean, he had within him everypossible tenderness and every possible anxiety; but he was only anold man who knew nothing at all. Now, in this work of education, inthis serious matter of preparing a woman for life, what knowledge isneeded to contend against the other great ignorance which is calledinnocence! Nothing prepares a girl for passions like the convent, forit directs her thoughts to the unknown. The heart is driven back onitself, and hence come visions, suppositions, conjectures, romancessketched, adventures longed for, fantastic constructions, and edificesbuilt entirely on the inner darkness of the mind,--gloomy and secretdwellings in which the passions alone find a lodging so soon as passingthrough the convent gate allows it. The convent is a compressionwhich must last the whole life, if it is to triumph over the humanheart. On leaving the convent, Cosette could not have found anythingsweeter or more dangerous than the house in the Rue Plumet. It was thecommencement of solitude with the commencement of liberty, a closedgarden, but a sharp, kind, rich, voluptuous, and odorous nature; therewere the same dreams as in the convent, but glimpses could be caught ofyoung men,--it was a grating, but it looked on the street. Still, werepeat, when Cosette first came here, she was but a child. Jean Valjeangave over to her this uncultivated garden, and said to her, "Do whatyou like with it." This amused Cosette, she moved all the tufts and allthe stones in search of "beasts;" she played about while waiting tillthe time came to think, and she loved this garden for the sake of theinsects which she found in the grass under her feet, while waiting tillshe should love it for the sake of the stars she could see through thebranches above her head.

  And then, too, she loved her father, that is to say, Jean Valjean,with all her soul, with a simple filial passion, which rendered theworthy man a desired and delightful companion to her. Our readerswill remember that M. Madeleine was fond of reading, and Jean Valjeancontinued in the same track; he had learned to speak well, and hepossessed the secret wealth and the eloquence of a humble, true, andself-cultivated intellect. He had retained just sufficient roughnessto season his kindness, and he had a rough mind and a soft heart.During their _tête-à-têtes_ in the Luxembourg garden he gave her longexplanations about all sorts of things, deriving his information fromwhat he had read, and also from what he had suffered. While Cosette waslistening to him, her eyes vaguely wandered around. This simple man wassufficient for Cosette's, thoughts, in the same way as the wild gardenwas for her eyes. When she had chased the butterflies for a while shewould run up to him panting, and say, "Oh! how tired I am!" and hewould kiss her forehead. Cosette adored this good man, and she was everat his heels, for wherever Jean Valjean was, happiness was. As he didnot live either in the pavilion or the garden, she was more attachedto the paved back-yard than to the flower-laden garden, and preferredthe little outhouse with the straw chairs to the large drawing-roomhung with tapestry, along which silk-covered chairs were arranged. JeanValjean at times said to her with a smile of a man who is delighted tobe annoyed: "Come, go to your own rooms! leave me at peace for a littlewhile."

  She scolded him in that charming tender way which is so graceful whenaddressed by a daughter to a parent.

  "Father, I feel very cold in your room; why don't you have a carpet anda stove?"

  "My dear child, there are so many persons more deserving than myselfwho have not even a roof to cover them."

  "Then, why is there fire in my room and everything that I want?"

  "Because you are a woman and a child."

  "Nonsense! then men must be cold and hungry?"

  "Some men."

  "Very good! I'll come here so often that you will be obliged to have afire."

  Or else it was,--

  "Father, why do you eat such wretched bread as that?"

  "Because I do, my daughter."

  "Well, if you eat it I shall eat it too."

  And so to prevent Cosette from eating black bread Jean Valjean atewhite. Cosette remembered her childhood but confusedly, and sheprayed night and morning for the mother whom she had never known. TheThénardiers were like two hideous beings seen in a dream, and shemerely remembered that she had gone "one day at night" to fetch waterin a wood,--she thought that it was a long distance from Paris. Itseemed to her as if she had commenced life in an abyss, and that JeanValjean had drawn her out of it, and her childhood produced on her theeffect of a time when she had had nought but centipedes, spiders, andsnakes around her. When she thought at night before she fell asleep,as she had no very clear idea of being Jean Valjean's daughter, sheimagined that her mother's soul had passed into this good man, andhad come to dwell near her. When he was sitting down she rested hercheek on his white hair, and silently dropped a tear, while saying toherself, "Perhaps this man is my mother!" Cosette, strange though itis to say, in her profound ignorance as a girl educated in a convent,and as, too, maternity is absolutely unintelligible to virginity,eventually imagined that she had had as little of a mother as waspossible. This mother's name she did not know, and whenever it happenedthat she spoke to Jean Valjean on the subject he held his tongue. Ifshe repeated her question he answered by a smile, and once, when shepressed him, the smile terminated in a tear. This silence on his partcast a night over Fantine. Was it through prudence? Was it throughrespect? Or was it through a fear of intrusting this name to thechances of another memory besides his own?

  So long as Cosette was young Jean Valjean readily talked to her abouther mother; but when she grew up it was impossible for him to doso,--he felt as if he dared not do it. Was it on account of Cosetteor of Fantine? He felt a species of religious horror at making thisshadow enter Cosette's thoughts, and rendering a dead woman a thirdperson in their society
. The more sacred this shade was to him, themore formidable was it. He thought of Fantine, and felt himselfoverwhelmed by the silence. He saw vaguely in the darkness somethingthat resembled a finger laid on a lip. Had all the modesty which was inFantine, and which during her life quitted her with violence, returnedafter her death, to watch indignantly over the dead woman's peace, andsternly guard her in the tomb? Was Jean Valjean himself unconsciouslyoppressed by it? We who believe in death are not prepared to rejectthis mysterious explanation, and hence arose the impossibility ofpronouncing, even to Cosette, the name of Fantine. One day Cosette saidto him,--

  "Father, I saw my mother last night in a dream. She had two largewings, and in life she must have been a sainted woman."

  "Through martyrdom," Jean Valjean replied. Altogether, though, hewas happy; when Cosette went out with him she leaned on his arm,proudly and happily, in the fulness of her heart. Jean Valjean felthis thoughts melt into delight at all these marks of a tendernessso exclusive and so satisfied with himself alone. The poor wretch,inundated with an angelic joy, trembled; he assured himself withtransport that this would last his whole life; he said to himself thathe had not really suffered enough to deserve such radiant happiness,and he thanked God in the depths of his soul for having allowedhim--the wretched--to be thus loved by this innocent being.