Jean Valjean is prudent enough never to go out by day. Every evening, at twilight, he walks for an hour or two, sometimes alone, often with Cosette, seeking the most deserted side alleys of the boulevard, and entering churches at nightfall. He likes to go to Saint-Medard, which is the nearest church. When he does not take Cosette with him, she remains with the old woman, but the child's delight is to go out with the good man. She prefers an hour with him to all her rapturous talks with Catherine. He holds her hand as they walk, and says sweet things to her. It turns out that Cosette is a very gay little person. The old woman attends to the housekeeping and cooking and goes to market. They live soberly, always having a little fire, but like people in very moderate circumstances. He has made no alterations in the furniture as it was the first day. He has merely had the glass door leading to Cosette's dressing-room replaced by a solid door. He still wears his yellow coat, his black breeches, and his old hat. In the street he is taken for a poor man. Kind-hearted women sometimes turn back to bestow a sou on him. Jean Valjean accepts the sou with a deep bow. It also happens that he encounters some poor wretch asking alms. Then he looks behind him to make sure that no one is observing him, stealthily approaches the unfortunate man, puts a piece of money into his hand, often a silver coin, and walks rapidly away. This has its disadvantages. He begins to be known in the neighbourhood under the name of the beggar who gives alms.
The old principal lodger, a cross-looking creature thoroughly permeated, so far as her neighbours are concerned, with the inquisitiveness peculiar to envious persons, scrutinizes Jean Valjean a great deal, without his suspecting the fact. She is a little deaf, which renders her talkative. There remain to her from her past two teeth, one above, the other below, which she is continually knocking against each other. She has questioned Cosette, who has not been able to tell her anything, since she knows nothing herself except that she came from Montfermeil. One morning this spy sees Jean Valjean, with an air which strikes the old gossip as peculiar, entering one of the uninhabited compartments of the hovel. She follows him with the step of an old cat, and is able to observe him without being seen, through a crack in the door which is directly opposite him. Jean Valjean has his back turned towards this door, by way of greater security, no doubt. The old woman sees him fumble in his pocket and draw thence a case, scissors, and thread. Then he begins to rip the lining of one of the skirts of his coat, and from the opening he takes a bit of yellowish paper, which he unfolds. The old woman recognizes, with terror, the fact that it is a bank-bill for a thousand francs. It is the second or third only that she has seen in the course of her existence. She flees in alarm.
A moment later Jean Valjean accosts her and asks her to go and get this thousand-franc bill changed for him, adding that it is his quarterly income, which he received the day before. Where, thought the old woman. He did not go out until six o'clock in the evening, and the government bank certainly is not open at that hour. The old woman goes to get the bill changed, and mentions her surmises. That thousand-franc note, commented on and multiplied, produces a vast amount of terrified discussion among the gossips of the Rue des Vignes Saint-Marcel. A few days later, it chances that Jean Valjean is sawing some wood, in his shirt-sleeves, in the corridor. The old woman is in the chamber, putting things in order. She is alone. Cosette is occupied in admiring the wood as it is sawed. The old woman catches sight of the coat hanging on a nail, and examines it. The lining has been sewed up again. The good woman feels of it carefully, and thinks she observes in the skirts and revers thicknesses of paper. More thousand-franc bank-bills, no doubt. She also notices that there are all sorts of things in the pockets. Not only the needles, thread, and scissors which she has seen, but a big pocket-book, a very large knife, and, a suspicious circumstance, several wigs of various colours. Each pocket of this coat has the air of being in a manner provided against unexpected accidents. Thus the inhabitants of the house reached the last days of winter.
