Nothing is truly small, as anyone knows who has peered into the secrets of Nature. Though philosophy may reach no final conclusion as to original cause or ultimate extent, the contemplative mind is moved to ecstasy by this merging of forces into unity. Everything works upon everything else.
The science of mathematics applies to the clouds; the radiance of starlight nourishes the rose; no thinker will dare to say that the scent of hawthorn is valueless to the constellations. Who can predict the course of a molecule? How do we know that the creation of worlds is not determined by the fall of grains of sand? Who can measure the action and counter-action between the infinitely great and the infinitely small, the play of causes in the depths of being, the cataclysms of creation? The cheese-mite has its worth; the smallest is large and the largest is small; everything balances within the laws of necessity, a terrifying vision for the mind. Between living things and objects there is a miraculous relationship; within that inexhaustible compass, from the sun to the grub, there is no room for disdain; each thing needs every other thing. Light does not carry the scents of earth into the upper air without knowing what it is doing with them; darkness confers the essence of the stars upon the sleeping flowers. Every bird that flies carries a shred of the infinite in its claws. The process of birth is the shedding of a meteorite or the peck of a hatching swallow on the shell of its egg; it is the coming of an earthworm or of Socrates, both equally important to the scheme of things. Where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and which has the wider vision? You may choose. A patch of mould is a galaxy of blossom; a nebula is an ant-heap of stars. There is the same affinity, if still more inconceivable, between the things of the mind and material things. Elements and principles are intermingled; they combine and marry and each increases and completes the other, so that the material and the moral world both are finally manifest. The phenomenon perpetually folds in upon itself. In the vast cosmic changes universal life comes and goes in unknown quantities, borne by the mysterious flow of invisible currents, making use of everything, wasting not a single sleeper’s dream, sowing an animalcule here and shattering a star there, swaying and writhing, turning light into a force and thought into an element; disseminated yet indivisible, dissolving all things except that geometrical point, the self; reducing all things to the core which is the soul, and causing all things to flower into God; all activities from the highest to the humblest – harnessing the movements of the earth and the flight of an insect – to the secret workings of an illimitable mechanism; perhaps – who can say? – governing, if only by the universality of the law, the evolution of a comet in the heavens by the circling of infusoria in a drop of water. A machine made of spirit A huge meshing of gears of which the first motive force is the gnat and the largest wheel the zodiac.
IV
The changed grille
It seemed that this garden, having been first created for the concealment of libertine mysteries, had deliberately transformed itself so as to render it suited to the harbouring of mysteries of a chaster kind. It no longer contained bowers or trim lawns, arbours or grottos, but was a place of magnificently ragged greenery that veiled it on all sides. Paphos, the town of Venus, had been turned into Eden, as though purged by some sort of repentance, and the coy retreat, so suspect in its purpose, had become a place of innocence and modesty. Nature had rescued it from the artifices of gallantry, filled it with shade and redesigned it for true love.
And in this solitude a ready heart was waiting. Love had only to show itself, and there to receive it was a temple, composed of verdure and grasses, birdsong, swaying branches, and soft shadow, and a spirit that was all tenderness and trust, candour, hopefulness, yearning, and illusion.
Cosette when she left the convent had been still not much more than a child, a little over fourteen and, as we have seen, at the ‘awkward age’. Except for her eyes she was more plain than pretty. Although she had no feature that was ugly, she was uncouth and skinny, at once shy and over-bold – in a word, a big little girl.
Her education was concluded. That is to say, she had been instructed in religion, above all in the arts of devotion; also in history, or what passed for history in the convent, geography, grammar and the parts of speech, the Kings of France, a little music and drawing, and housekeeping. But she was ignorant of all other matters, which is both a charm and a peril. A young girl’s mind must not be left too much in darkness or else too startling and too vivid imaginings may arise in it, as in a curtained room. She needs to be gently and cautiously enlightened, more by the reflection of reality than by its direct, harsh glare, a serviceable and gently austere half-light which dispels the terrors of youth and safeguards it against pitfalls. Only a mother’s instinct, that intuitive blend of maiden recollection and womanly experience, can understand the composition and the shedding of that half-light; there is no substitute for this. In the forming of a young girl’s soul not all the nuns in the world can take the place of a mother.
Cosette had had no mother, only a numerous assortment of mothers. As for Jean Valjean, with all his overflowing love and deep concern he was still no more than an elderly man who knew nothing at all.
But in this work of education, this most serious business of preparing a woman for life, how much wisdom is needed, how much skill in combating that state of profound ignorance that we call innocence! Nothing renders a girl more ripe for passion than a convent. It impels thought towards the unknown. The heart, turned in upon itself, shrinks, being unable to reach outwards, and probes more deeply, being unable to spread elsewhere. Hence the visions and fancies, the speculations, the tales invented and adventures secretly longed for, the castles of fantasy built solely in the mind, vacant and secret dwelling-places where passion may instal itself directly the door is opened. The convent is a prison which, if it is to confine the human heart, must endure for a lifetime.
Nothing could have been more delightful to Cosette when she left the convent, or more dangerous, than that house in the Rue Plumet.
It was at once the continuation of solitude and the beginning of freedom; an enclosed garden filled with a heady riot of nature; the same dream as in the convent, but with young men actually to be seen; a gate like the convent grille but giving on to the street.
Nevertheless, as we have said, when she came there Cosette was still a child. Jean Valjean made her a present of that untended garden. ‘Do what you like with it,’ he said. Cosette was at first amused by it. She explored the undergrowth and lifted stones in a search for ‘little creatures’, playing in the garden before she began to dream in it, loving it for the insects she found in the grass before she learned to love it for the stars shining through the branches above her head.
And then she wholeheartedly loved her father – that is to say, Jean Valjean – with an innocent, confiding love which made of him the most charming and desirable of companions. Monsieur Madeleine, we may recall, had read a great deal. Jean Valjean continued to do so, and had in consequence become an excellent talker, displaying the stored riches and eloquence of a humble and honest self-taught mind. His was a tough and gentle spirit, retaining just enough ruggedness to season its natural kindness. During their visits to the Luxembourg he discoursed upon whatever came into his head, drawing upon his wide reading and his past suffering. And Cosette listened while she gazed about her.
She adored him. She constantly sought him out. Where Jean Valjean was, there was contentment; and since he did not frequent the villa or the garden she was happier in the paved back-yard than in the blossoming enclosure, happier in the cottage with its rush-seated chairs than in her own tapestry-hung and richly furnished drawing-room. Jean Valjean would sometimes say, delighted at being thus pursued, ‘Now run along and leave me in peace.’
She gently chided him, with that especial charm which graces the scolding of a devoted daughter.
‘Father, it’s cold in here. Why don’t you have a carpet and a stove?’
‘Dear child, there are so many people more des
erving than I who have not even a roof over their heads.’
‘Then why should I have a fire and everything else I want?’
‘Because you’re a woman and a child.’
‘What nonsense! Do you mean that men ought to be cold and uncomfortable?’
‘Some men.’
‘Very well then. I shall come here so often that you’ll have to have a fire.’
She also asked:
‘Father, why do you eat that horrid bread?’
‘For reasons, my dear.’
‘Well, if you eat it, so shall I.g’
So to prevent Cosette eating black bread Valjean changed to white.
Cosette had only vague recollections of her childhood. She prayed morning and night for the mother she had never known. The Thénardiers haunted her memory like figures in a nightmare. She remembered that one day, ‘after dark’, she had gone into the wood for water, in some place which she thought must have been far distant from Paris. It seemed to her that she had begun her life in a kind of limbo from which Jean Valjean had rescued her, and that childhood had been a time of beetles, snakes, and spiders. Drowsily meditating at night before she fell asleep, she concluded, since she had no positive reason to believe that she was Valjean’s daughter and he her father, that her mother’s soul had passed into him and come to live with her. Sometimes when he was seated she would rest her cheek on his white head and shed a silent tear upon it, thinking to herself, ‘Perhaps after all this man is my mother!’
It sounds strange, but in her profound ignorance as a convent-bred child, and since in any case maternity is totally incomprehensible to virginity, she had come to believe that her mother had been almost non-existent. She did not even know her name, and when she asked Valjean he would not answer. If she repeated the question he merely smiled, and once, when she persisted, the smile was followed by a tear. Thus did Valjean by his silence hide the figure of Fantine in darkness. Was it from instinctive prudence, from respect for the dead, or from fear of surrendering that name to the hazards of any memory other than his own?
While Cosette had been still a child Valjean had talked to her readily enough about her mother, but now that she was a grown girl he found it impossible to do so. It seemed to him that he dared not. Whether because of Cosette herself, or because of Fantine, he experienced a kind of religious horror at the thought of introducing that shade into her thoughts, and of constituting the dead a third party of their lives. The more he held that shade in reverence, the more awesome did it seem. Thinking of Fantine he was compelled to silence as though amid her darkness he discerned the shape of a finger pressed to the lips. Could it be that all the shame of which Fantine was capable, which had been so savagely driven out of her by the events of her life, had furiously returned to mount fierce guard over her in death? We who have faith in death are not among those who would reject that mystical theory. Hence the impossibility he found in himself of uttering the name of Fantine, even to Cosette.
‘Father, last night I saw my mother in a dream. She had two big wings. She must have come near to sainthood in her life.’
‘Through martyrdom,’ said Jean Valjean.
Otherwise Valjean was content. When he took Cosette out she hung proudly on his arm, happy with a full heart, and at the tokens of affection which she reserved so exclusively for himself and which he alone could inspire, his whole being was suffused with tenderness. In his rapture he told himself, poor man, that this was a state of things that would last as long as he lived; he told himself that he had not suffered enough to warrant such radiant happiness, and he thanked God from the depths of his heart for having caused him, unworthy wretch that he was, to be so loved by a creature so innocent.
V
The rose discovers that it is a weapon of war
One day Cosette, glancing in her mirror, exclaimed, ‘Well!’ It struck her that she was almost pretty, and the discovery threw her into a strange state of perturbation. Until that moment she had given no thought to her looks. She had seen herself in the glass but without really looking. She had been told so often that she was plain, and Jean Valjean was the only person who said, ‘It’s not true.’ Despite this she had always considered herself plain, accustoming herself to the thought with the easy acceptance of childhood. And suddenly her mirror had confirmed what Jean Valjean said. She did not sleep that night. ‘Suppose I were pretty?’ she thought. ‘How strange to be pretty!’ She thought of girls whose looks had attracted notice in the convent, and she thought, ‘Can I really be like them?’
The next day she carefully studied herself and had doubts. ‘What can have got into me?’ she thought. ‘I’m quite ugly.’ The fact was simply that she had slept badly; there were shadows under her eyes and her face was pale. It had caused her no great delight on the previous evening to think that she might be a beauty, but now she was sorry that she could not think it. She no longer looked in the glass and for more than two weeks tried to do her hair with her back to the mirror.
She was accustomed in the evenings to do embroidery, or some other kind of convent work, in the salon while Jean Valjean sat reading beside her. Looking up on one occasion, she was dismayed to find her father gazing at her with a troubled expression. And on another occasion when they were out together she thought she heard a man’s voice behind her say, ‘A pretty girl, but badly dressed’ … ‘It can’t be me,’ she thought. ‘I’m well dressed and ugly.’ She was wearing her plush hat and woollen dress.
Finally, one day when she was in the garden she heard old Toussaint say: ‘Has Monsieur noticed how pretty Mademoiselle is growing?’ She did not hear her father’s reply, but Toussaint’s words filled her with amazement. She ran up to her bedroom and, for the first time in three months, looked hard at herself in the glass. She uttered a cry, delighted by what she saw.
She was beautiful as well as pretty; she could no longer doubt the testimony of Toussaint and her mirror. Her figure had filled out, her skin was finer, her hair more lustrous, and there was a new splendour in her blue eyes. The conviction of her beauty came to her in a single instant, like a burst of sunshine; besides, other people had noticed it, Toussaint had said so and the man in the street must, after all, have been talking about her. She ran downstairs and out into the garden feeling like a queen, seeing a golden sun stream through the branches, blossom on the bough, and hearing the song of birds, in a state of dizzy rapture.
Jean Valjean, for his part, had a sense of profound, indefinable unease. For some time he had been apprehensively watching this growing radiance of Cosette’s beauty, a bright dawn to others but to himself a dawn of ill-omen. She had been beautiful for a long time without realizing it; but he had known it from the first, and the glow which enveloped her represented a threat in his possessive eyes. He saw it as a portent of change in their life together, a life so happy that any change could only be for the worse. He was a man who had endured all the forms of suffering and was still bleeding from the wounds inflicted upon him by life. He had been almost a villain and had become almost a saint; and after being chained with prison irons he was still fettered with a chain that was scarcely less onerous although invisible, that of his prison record. The law had never lost its claim on him. It might at any moment lay hands on him and drag him out of his honourable obscurity into the glare of public infamy. He accepted this, bore no resentment, wished all men well and asked nothing of Providence, of mankind or society or of the law, except one thing – that Cosette should love him.
That Cosette should continue to love him! That God would not prevent her child’s heart from being and remaining wholly his! To be loved by Cosette was enough; it was rest and solace, the healing of all wounds, the only recompense and guerdon that he craved. It was all he wanted. Had any man asked him if he wished to be better off he would have answered, ‘No.’ Had God offered him Heaven itself he would have said, ‘I should be the loser.’
Anything that might affect this situation, even ruffle the surface, caused him to tremble
as at a portent of something new. He had never known much about the beauty of women, but he knew by instinct that it could be terrible. And across the gulf of his own age and ugliness, his past suffering and ignominy, he watched in dismay the superb and triumphant growth of beauty in the innocent features of this child. ‘Such loveliness!’ he thought. ‘So what will become of me?’
It was in this that the difference lay between his devotion and that of a mother. What caused him anguish would have brought a mother delight.
The first signs of change were not slow to appear.
From the morrow of the day on which she had said to herself ‘After all, I am beautiful!’ Cosette began to give thought to her appearance. The words of that unknown man in the street, that unregarded oracle, ‘Pretty, but badly dressed,’ had implanted in her heart one of the two germs that fill the life of every woman, the germ of coquetry. The other germ is love.
Being now confident of her beauty, her woman’s nature flowered within her. Wool and plush were thrust aside. Her father had never refused her anything. Instantly she knew all that there was to know about hats and gowns, cloaks, sleeves and slippers, the material that suits and the colour that matches: all that recondite lore that makes the women of Paris so alluring, so deep and so dangerous. The phrase ‘divine charmer’ was invented for the Parisienne.
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