On the following morning, at daybreak, Jean Valjean is still by Cosette's bedside. He watches there motionless, waiting for her to wake. Some new thing has come into his soul. He has never loved anything. For twenty-five years he has been alone in the world. He has never been father, lover, husband, friend. In the prison he was vicious, gloomy, chaste, ignorant, and shy. The heart of that ex-convict was full of virginity. His sister and her children have left him only a vague memory which has almost vanished. When he saw Cosette, when he had taken possession of her, carried her off, and delivered her, he felt his heart moved within him. All the passion and affection within him awoke and rushed towards that child. He approaches the bed where she lies sleeping and trembles with joy. He suffers all the pangs of a mother, and he does not know what it means, for that great movement of a heart which begins to love is a very obscure and a very sweet thing. Poor old man, with a perfectly new heart. He is five and fifty, and Cosette is eight. All that might have been love in the whole course of his life flows together into a sort of ineffable light. It is the second white apparition he has encountered. The Bishop caused the dawn of virtue to rise on his horizon. Cosette causes the dawn of love to rise. The early days pass in this dazzled state.
Cosette, unknown to herself, has become another being. She was so little when her mother left her that she no longer remembers her. Like all children, who resemble young shoots of the vine, she has tried to love. She has not succeeded. All have repulsed her: the Thenardiers, their children, other children. She loved the dog, and he died, after which nothing and nobody would have anything to do with her. At eight years of age her heart was cold. It was not the faculty of loving that she lacked. It was the possibility. From the very first day, all her sentient and thinking powers love this kind man. She feels a sensation of expansion she has never felt. The man no longer produces on her the effect of being old or poor. She thinks Jean Valjean handsome, just as she thought the hovel pretty. These are the effects of the dawn, of childhood, of joy. Nature, a difference of fifty years, had set a profound gulf between them. Destiny filled this gulf in. Destiny united these two uprooted existences, differing in age, alike in sorrow. One completed the other. Cosette's instinct sought a father, as Jean Valjean's instinct sought a child. To meet was to find each other. At the mysterious moment when their hands touched, they were welded together. Taking the words in their most absolute sense, separated from every one by the walls of the tomb, Jean Valjean was the widower, and Cosette was the orphan. That situation caused him to become her father after a celestial fashion. The impression produced on her in the forest of Chelles by his hand grasping hers in the dark was not an illusion. The entrance of that man into the destiny of that child had been the advent of God.
He has chosen his refuge well. There he seems perfectly secure. The chamber he occupies with Cosette is the one whose window opens on the boulevard. This being the only window in the house, no neighbours' glances are to be feared. The ground floor of Number 50-52 is a dilapidated wagon-house for market-gardeners, with no communication to the first story. One old woman, ornamented with the name of principal lodger, and in reality entrusted with the functions of portress, had let him the lodging on Christmas Eve. He represented himself as a gentleman of means ruined by Spanish bonds, coming to live with his little daughter. He paid six months in advance, and commissioned her to furnish the chamber. It was this good woman who had lighted the fire on the evening of their arrival. Week followed week. These two beings lead a happy life in that hovel. Cosette laughs, chatters, and sings from daybreak. Children have their morning song as well as birds. When he clasps her tiny red hand, all cracked with chilblains, and kisses it, the poor child, who is used to being beaten, does not know the meaning of this and runs away in confusion. At times she becomes serious and stares at her little black gown. She is no longer in rags. She is in mourning. She has emerged from misery, and she is entering into life. He undertakes to teach her to read. Sometimes, as he makes her spell, he remembers that it was with the idea of doing evil that he learned to read in prison. This idea has ended in teaching a child to read. Then the ex-convict smiles with the pensive smile of the angels. To teach Cosette to read, and to let her play, constitutes nearly the whole of his existence. He talks of her mother, and he makes her pray. She calls him father, and knows no other name for him. He passes hours watching her dress and undress her doll. Life appears to him full of interest. Men seem good and just. He sees no reason why he should not live to be a very old man, now that this child loves him. At times he reflects with a sort of joy that she will be ugly. Who knows whether he had not been on the eve of growing discouraged and of falling once more? The memory of the Bishop was growing dim. He loved and grew strong again. He protected her, and she strengthened him. Thanks to him, she could walk through life. Thanks to her, he could continue in virtue. He was that child's stay, and she was his prop.
