Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [307]
With faith in her beauty, the entire feminine soul blossomed within her. She was horrified at the wool and ashamed of the plush. Her father had never refused her anything. She knew at once the whole science of the hat, the dress, the cloak, the boot, the cuff, the stuff which sits well, the colour which is becoming, that science which makes the Parisian woman something so charming, so deep, and so dangerous. The phrase heady woman was invented for her.
In less than a month little Cosette was, in that Thebaid of the Rue de Babylone, not only one of the prettiest women, which is something, but one of “the best dressed” in Paris, which is much more. She would have liked to meet “her passer-by” to hear what he would say, and “to show him!” The truth is that she was ravishing in every point, and that she distinguished marvellously well between a Gérard hat and an Herbaut hat.
Jean Valjean beheld these ravages with anxiety. He, who felt that he could never more than creep, or walk at the most, saw wings growing on Cosette.
Still, merely by simple inspection of Cosette’s toilette, a woman would have recognised that she had no mother. Certain little proprieties, certain special conventionalities, were not observed by Cosette. A mother, for instance, would have told her that a young girl does not wear damask.
The first day that Cosette went out with her dress and mantle of black damask and her white crape hat she came to take Jean Valjean’s arm, gay, radiant, rosy, proud, and brilliant. “Father,” said she, “how do you like this?” Jean Valjean answered in a voice which resembled the bitter voice of envy: “Charming!” He seemed as usual during the walk. When they came back he asked Cosette:
“Are you not going to wear your dress and hat any more?”
This occurred in Cosette’s room. Cosette turned towards the wardrobe where her boarding-school dress was hanging.
“That disguise!” said she. “Father, what would you have me do with it? Oh! to be sure, no, I shall never wear those horrid things again. With that machine on my head, I look like Madame Mad-dog.”
Jean Valjean sighed deeply.
From that day, he noticed that Cosette, who previously was always asking to stay in, saying: “Father, I enjoy myself better here with you,” was now always asking to go out. Indeed, what is the use of having a pretty face and a delightful dress, if you do not show them?
He also noticed that Cosette no longer had the same taste for the back-yard. She now preferred to stay in the garden, walking even without displeasure before the grating. Jean Valjean, unsociably, did not set his foot in the garden. He stayed in his back-yard, like a dog.
Cosette, by learning that she was beautiful, lost the grace of not knowing it; an exquisite grace, for beauty heightened by artlessness is ineffable, and nothing is so adorable as dazzling innocence, going on her way, and holding in her hand, all unconscious, the key of a paradise. But what she lost in ingenuous grace, she gained in pensive and serious charm. Her whole person, pervaded by the joys of youth, innocence, and beauty, breathed a splendid melancholy.
It was at this period that Marius, after the lapse of six months, saw her again at the Luxembourg Gardens.
3 (6)
THE BATTLE COMMENCES
COSETTE, in her seclusion, like Marius in his, was all ready to take fire. Destiny, with its mysterious and fatal patience, was slowly bringing these two beings near each other, fully charged and all languishing with the stormy electricities of passion,—these two souls which held love as two clouds hold lightning, and which were to meet and mingle in a glance like clouds in a flash.
The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only. The rest is only the rest, and comes afterwards.