Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [443]
Two arm-chairs were placed at the corners of the fireplace. Between the chairs was spread, in guise of a carpet, an old bed-side rug, showing more warp than wool.
Suddenly he started up. Cosette was behind him.
He had not seen her come in, but he had felt that she was coming.
He turned. He gazed at her. She was adorably beautiful. But what he looked upon with that deep look, was not her beauty but her soul.
“Ah, well!” exclaimed Cosette, “father, I knew that you were singular, but I should never have thought this. What an idea! Marius tells me that it is you who wish me to receive you here.”
“Yes, it is I.”
“I expected the answer. Well, I warn you that I am going to make a scene. Let us begin at the beginning. Father, kiss me.”
And she offered her cheek.
Jean Valjean remained motionless.
“You do not stir. I see it. You act guilty. But it is all the same, I forgive you. Jesus Christ said: ‘Offer the other cheek.’ Here it is.”
And she offered the other cheek.
Jean Valjean did not move. It seemed as if his feet were nailed to the floor.
“This is getting serious,” said Cosette. “What have I done to you? I declare I am confounded. You owe me amends. You will dine with us.”
“I have dined.”
“That is not true. I will have Monsieur Gillenormand scold you. Grandfathers are made to scold fathers. Come. Go up to the parlour with me. Immediately.”
“Impossible.”
Cosette here lost ground a little. She ceased to order and passed to questions.
“But why not? and you choose the ugliest room in the house to see me in. It is horrible here.”
“You know, madame, I am peculiar, I have my whims.”
Cosette clapped her little hands together.
“Madame! Still again! What does this mean?”
Jean Valjean fixed upon her that distressing smile to which he sometimes had recourse:
“You have wished to be madame. You are so.”
“Not to you, father.”
“Don’t call me father any more.”
“What.”
“Call me Monsieur Jean. Jean, if you will.”
“You are no longer father? I am no longer Cosette? Monsieur Jean? What does this mean? but these are revolutions, these are! what then has happened? look me in the face now. And you will not live with us! And you will not have my room! What have I done to you? what have I done to you? Is there anything the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Well then?”
“All is as usual.”
“Why do you change your name?”
“You have certainly changed yours.”
He smiled again with that same smile and added:
“Since you are Madame Pontmercy I can surely be Monsieur Jean.”
“I don’t understand anything about it. It is all nonsense; I shall ask my husband’s permission for you to be Monsieur Jean. I hope that he will not consent to it. You make me a great deal of trouble. You may have whims, but you must not grieve your darling Cosette. It is wrong. You have no right to be naughty, you are too good.”
He made no answer.
She seized both his hands hastily and, with an irresistible impulse, raising them towards her face, she pressed them against her neck under her chin, which is a deep token of affection.
“Oh!” said she to him, “be good!”
And she continued:
“This is what I call being good: being nice, coming to stay here, there are birds here as well as in the Rue Plumet, living with us, leaving that hole in the Rue de l‘Homme Armé, not giving us riddles to guess, being like other people, dining with us, breakfasting with us, being my father.”
He disengaged his hands.
“You have no more need of a father, you have a husband.”
Cosette could not contain herself.
“I no more need of a father! To things like that which have no common sense, one really doesn’t know what to say!”
“If Toussaint was here,” replied Jean Valjean, like one who is in search of authorities and who catches at every straw, “she would be the first to acknowledge