Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [169]
“Yes, madame!” cried Cosette, starting up out of sleep, “here I am! here I am!”
And she threw herself from the bed, her eyelids still half closed with the weight of slumber, stretching out her hand towards the comer of the wall.
“Oh! what shall I do? Where is my broom?” said she.
By this time her eyes were fully open, and she saw the smiling face of Jean Valjean.
“Oh! yes—so it is!” said the child. “Good morning, monsieur.”
Children at once accept joy and happiness with quick familiarity, being themselves naturally all happiness and joy.
Cosette noticed Catharine at the foot of the bed, laid hold of her at once, and, playing the while, asked Jean Valjean a thousand questions.—Where was she? Was Paris a big place? Was Madame Thénardier really very far away? Wouldn’t she come back again, etc., etc. All at once she exclaimed, “How pretty it is here!”
It was a frightful hovel, but she felt free.
“Must I sweep?” she continued at length.
“Play!” replied Jean Valjean.
And thus the day passed by. Cosette, without troubling herself with trying to understand anything about it, was inexpressibly happy with her doll and her good friend.
3
TWO MISFORTUNES MINGLED MAKE HAPPINESS
THE DAWN of the next day found Jean Valjean again near the bed of Cosette. He waited there, motionless, to see her wake.
Something new was entering his soul.
Jean Valjean had never loved anything. For twenty-five years he had been alone in the world. He had never been a father, lover, husband, or friend. At the galleys, he was cross, sullen, abstinent, ignorant, and intractable. The old convict had a virginal heart. His sister and her children had left in his memory only a vague and distant impression, which had finally almost entirely vanished. He had made every exertion to find them again, and, not succeeding, had forgotten them. Human nature is thus constituted. The other tender emotions of his youth, if any such he had, were lost in an abyss.
When he saw Cosette, when he had taken her, carried her away, and rescued her, he felt his heart moved. All that he had of feeling and affection was aroused and vehemently attracted towards this child. He would approach the bed where she slept, and would tremble there with delight; he felt inward stirrings, like a mother, and knew not what they were; for it is something very incomprehensible and very sweet, this grand and strange emotion of a heart in its first love.
Poor old heart, so young!
But, as he was fifty-five and Cosette was but eight years old, all that he might have felt of love in his entire life melted into a sort of ineffable radiance.3
This was the second white vision he had seen. The bishop had caused the dawn of virtue on his horizon; Cosette evoked the dawn of love.
The first few days rolled by amid this bewilderment.
For her part, Cosette, too, unconsciously underwent a change, poor little creature! She was so small when her mother left her, that she could not recollect her now. As all children do, like the young shoots of the vine that cling to everything, she had tried to love. She had not been able to succeed. Everybody had rejected her—the Thénardiers, their children, other children. She had loved the dog; it died, and after that no person and no thing would have aught to do with her. Mournful thing to tell, and one which we have already hinted, at the age of eight her heart was cold. This was not her fault; it was not the faculty of love that she lacked; alas! it was the possibility. And so, from the very first day, all that thought and felt in her began to love this kind old friend. She now felt sensations utterly unknown to her before—a sensation of budding and of growth.
Her kind friend no longer impressed as old and poor. In her eyes Jean Valjean was handsome, just as the garret had seemed pretty.
Such are the effects of the aurora-glow of childhood, youth, and joy. The newness of earth and of life has something to do with it. Nothing is so charming as the ruddy tints that happiness can shed around