Les Misérables, page 247
CHAPTER V--THE ROSE PERCEIVES THAT IT IS AN ENGINE OF WAR
One day, Cosette chanced to look at herself in her mirror, and she saidto herself: "Really!" It seemed to her almost that she was pretty. Thisthrew her in a singularly troubled state of mind. Up to that moment shehad never thought of her face. She saw herself in her mirror, but shedid not look at herself. And then, she had so often been told that shewas homely; Jean Valjean alone said gently: "No indeed! no indeed!" Atall events, Cosette had always thought herself homely, and had grown upin that belief with the easy resignation of childhood. And here, allat once, was her mirror saying to her, as Jean Valjean had said: "Noindeed!" That night, she did not sleep. "What if I were pretty!" shethought. "How odd it would be if I were pretty!" And she recalled thoseof her companions whose beauty had produced a sensation in the convent,and she said to herself: "What! Am I to be like Mademoiselle So-and-So?"
The next morning she looked at herself again, not by accident this time,and she was assailed with doubts: "Where did I get such an idea?" saidshe; "no, I am ugly." She had not slept well, that was all, her eyeswere sunken and she was pale. She had not felt very joyous on thepreceding evening in the belief that she was beautiful, but it made hervery sad not to be able to believe in it any longer. She did not look atherself again, and for more than a fortnight she tried to dress her hairwith her back turned to the mirror.
In the evening, after dinner, she generally embroidered in wool ordid some convent needlework in the drawing-room, and Jean Valjean readbeside her. Once she raised her eyes from her work, and was renderedquite uneasy by the manner in which her father was gazing at her.
On another occasion, she was passing along the street, and it seemedto her that some one behind her, whom she did not see, said: "A prettywoman! but badly dressed." "Bah!" she thought, "he does not mean me.I am well dressed and ugly." She was then wearing a plush hat and hermerino gown.
At last, one day when she was in the garden, she heard poor oldToussaint saying: "Do you notice how pretty Cosette is growing, sir?"Cosette did not hear her father's reply, but Toussaint's words causeda sort of commotion within her. She fled from the garden, ran up toher room, flew to the looking-glass,--it was three months since shehad looked at herself,--and gave vent to a cry. She had just dazzledherself.
She was beautiful and lovely; she could not help agreeing with Toussaintand her mirror. Her figure was formed, her skin had grown white, herhair was lustrous, an unaccustomed splendor had been lighted in her blueeyes. The consciousness of her beauty burst upon her in an instant, likethe sudden advent of daylight; other people noticed it also, Toussainthad said so, it was evidently she of whom the passer-by had spoken,there could no longer be any doubt of that; she descended to the gardenagain, thinking herself a queen, imagining that she heard the birdssinging, though it was winter, seeing the sky gilded, the sun amongthe trees, flowers in the thickets, distracted, wild, in inexpressibledelight.
Jean Valjean, on his side, experienced a deep and undefinable oppressionat heart.
In fact, he had, for some time past, been contemplating with terror thatbeauty which seemed to grow more radiant every day on Cosette's sweetface. The dawn that was smiling for all was gloomy for him.
Cosette had been beautiful for a tolerably long time before she becameaware of it herself. But, from the very first day, that unexpected lightwhich was rising slowly and enveloping the whole of the young girl'sperson, wounded Jean Valjean's sombre eye. He felt that it was a changein a happy life, a life so happy that he did not dare to move for fearof disarranging something. This man, who had passed through all mannerof distresses, who was still all bleeding from the bruises of fate, whohad been almost wicked and who had become almost a saint, who, afterhaving dragged the chain of the galleys, was now dragging the invisiblebut heavy chain of indefinite misery, this man whom the law had notreleased from its grasp and who could be seized at any moment andbrought back from the obscurity of his virtue to the broad daylight ofpublic opprobrium, this man accepted all, excused all, pardoned all, andmerely asked of Providence, of man, of the law, of society, of nature,of the world, one thing, that Cosette might love him!
That Cosette might continue to love him! That God would not preventthe heart of the child from coming to him, and from remaining with him!Beloved by Cosette, he felt that he was healed, rested, appeased, loadedwith benefits, recompensed, crowned. Beloved by Cosette, it was wellwith him! He asked nothing more! Had any one said to him: "Do you wantanything better?" he would have answered: "No." God might have said tohim: "Do you desire heaven?" and he would have replied: "I should loseby it."
Everything which could affect this situation, if only on the surface,made him shudder like the beginning of something new. He had neverknown very distinctly himself what the beauty of a woman means; but heunderstood instinctively, that it was something terrible.
He gazed with terror on this beauty, which was blossoming out ever moretriumphant and superb beside him, beneath his very eyes, on the innocentand formidable brow of that child, from the depths of her homeliness, ofhis old age, of his misery, of his reprobation.
He said to himself: "How beautiful she is! What is to become of me?"
There, moreover, lay the difference between his tenderness and thetenderness of a mother. What he beheld with anguish, a mother would havegazed upon with joy.
The first symptoms were not long in making their appearance.
On the very morrow of the day on which she had said to herself:"Decidedly I am beautiful!" Cosette began to pay attention to hertoilet. She recalled the remark of that passer-by: "Pretty, but badlydressed," the breath of an oracle which had passed beside her and hadvanished, after depositing in her heart one of the two germs which aredestined, later on, to fill the whole life of woman, coquetry. Love isthe other.
With faith in her beauty, the whole feminine soul expanded within her.She conceived a horror for her merinos, and shame for her plush hat. Herfather had never refused her anything. She at once acquired the wholescience of the bonnet, the gown, the mantle, the boot, the cuff, thestuff which is in fashion, the color which is becoming, that sciencewhich makes of the Parisian woman something so charming, so deep, and sodangerous. The words _heady woman_ were invented for the Parisienne.
In less than a month, little Cosette, in that Thebaid of the Rue deBabylone, was not only one of the prettiest, but one of the "bestdressed" women in Paris, which means a great deal more.
She would have liked to encounter her "passer-by," to see what he wouldsay, and to "teach him a lesson!" The truth is, that she was ravishingin every respect, and that she distinguished the difference between abonnet from Gérard and one from Herbaut in the most marvellous way.
Jean Valjean watched these ravages with anxiety. He who felt thathe could never do anything but crawl, walk at the most, beheld wingssprouting on Cosette.
Moreover, from the mere inspection of Cosette's toilet, a womanwould have recognized the fact that she had no mother. Certain littleproprieties, certain special conventionalities, were not observed byCosette. A mother, for instance, would have told her that a young girldoes not dress in damask.
The first day that Cosette went out in her black damask gown and mantle,and her white crape bonnet, she took Jean Valjean's arm, gay, radiant,rosy, proud, dazzling. "Father," she said, "how do you like me in thisguise?" Jean Valjean replied in a voice which resembled the bitter voiceof an envious man: "Charming!" He was the same as usual during theirwalk. On their return home, he asked Cosette:--
"Won't you put on that other gown and bonnet again,--you know the ones Imean?"
This took place in Cosette's chamber. Cosette turned towards thewardrobe where her cast-off schoolgirl's clothes were hanging.
"That disguise!" said she. "Father, what do you want me to do with it?Oh no, the idea! I shall never put on those horrors again. With thatmachine on my head, I have the air of Madame Mad-dog."
Jean Valjean heaved a deep sigh.
From that moment forth, he noticed that Cosette, who had alwaysheretofore asked to remain at home, saying: "Father, I enjoy myself morehere with you," now was always asking to go out. In fact, what is theuse of having a handsome face and a delicious costume if one does notdisplay them?
He also noticed that Cosette had no longer the same taste for the backgarden. Now she preferred the garden, and did not dislike to promenadeback and forth in front of the railed fence. Jean Valjean, who was shy,never set foot in the garden. He kept to his back yard, like a dog.
Cosette, in gaining the knowledge that she was beautiful, lost the graceof ignoring it. An exquisite grace, for beauty enhanced by ingenuousnessis ineffable, and nothing is so adorable as a dazzling and innocentcreature who walks along, holding in her hand the key to paradisewithout being conscious of it. But what she had lost in ingenuous grace,she gained in pensive and serious charm. Her whole person, permeatedwith the joy of youth, of innocence, and of beauty, breathed forth asplendid melancholy.
It was at this epoch that Marius, after the lapse of six months, saw heronce more at the Luxembourg.
