Cosette and Marius beheld each other once more. What that interview was like we decline to say. There are things which one must not attempt to depict. The sun is one of them. The entire family, including Basque and Nicolette, were assembled in Marius's chamber at the moment when Cosette entered it. Precisely at that moment the grandfather was on the point of blowing his nose. He stopped short, holding his nose in his handkerchief, and gazing over it at Cosette. She appeared on the threshold. It seemed to him that she was surrounded by a glory. Adorable, he exclaimed. Then he blew his nose noisily. Cosette was intoxicated, delighted, frightened, in heaven. She wanted to fling herself into Marius's arms, and dared not. Ashamed of loving in the presence of all these people.
With Cosette, and behind her, there had entered a man with white hair who was grave yet smiling, though with a vague and heartrending smile. It was Fauchelevent. It was Jean Valjean. He was very well dressed, entirely in black, in perfectly new garments, and with a white cravat. The porter was a thousand leagues from recognising in this correct bourgeois the fear-inspiring bearer of the corpse who had sprung up at his door on that June night, tattered and masked in blood. Still his scent was aroused. He could not help fancying that he had seen that face before. Jean Valjean remained apart near the door. He had under his arm a package which bore considerable resemblance to an octavo volume enveloped in paper, greenish and mouldy. The aunt, who did not like books, asked in a low tone whether the gentleman always had books like that under his arm. The grandfather said he was a learned man, then, with a bow, asked on behalf of his grandson for the hand of the young lady, misnaming the visitor as was his aristocratic habit. That is settled. And, turning to Marius and Cosette, with both arms extended in blessing, he cried: Permission to adore each other. They did not require him to repeat it twice. They talked low. Cosette poured out the four months, the crumpled collar, the shoulder you could put a fist in, the lint, the callous on her fingers. Angel, said Marius. Then, as there were spectators, they paused and contented themselves with softly touching each other's hands. The grandfather told the rest of the room to make a noise, so that the children could chatter at their ease, and in a very low voice told the two to call each other thou. The aunt looked on in amazement at this irruption of light in her elderly household. It was a life which had been a failure gazing at that triumph, love. The grandfather told her to look at the happiness of others, then broke loose on pretty weddings and the use of marrying, executed a pirouette on his eighty-year-old heels, asked after Marius's intimate friend, and on hearing that Courfeyrac was dead, said that is good. He seated himself, made Cosette sit down, and took their four hands. Love each other. Be foolish about it. Only, he added, suddenly becoming gloomy, more than half of what he possessed was swallowed up in an annuity. After his death they would not have a sou.
At this point they heard a grave and tranquil voice. The young lady possesses six hundred thousand francs. It was the voice of Jean Valjean. So far he had not uttered a single word. No one seemed to be aware that he was there. He had remained standing erect and motionless, behind all these happy people. The startled grandfather asked what that name had to do with the question. I am she, replied Cosette. Minus fourteen or fifteen thousand francs, possibly, said Jean Valjean. And he laid on the table the package which the aunt had mistaken for a book. He opened it. It was a bundle of bank-notes. They were turned over and counted. Five hundred notes for a thousand francs each, and one hundred and sixty-eight of five hundred. In all, five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs. This is a fine book, said the grandfather. The aunt murmured the sum twice, and might as well have said six hundred thousand. The grandfather said that this arranged things well, that the boy had ferreted out the nest of a millionaire in his tree of dreams. As for Marius and Cosette, they were gazing at each other while this was going on. They hardly heeded this detail.
Coming Up in Chapter 346
The reader has, no doubt, understood, without necessitating a lengthy explanation, that Jean Valjean, after the affair of the other condemned man, had been able to come to Paris and to withdraw in season the sum earned by him, and that fearing recapture he had buried that sum in the forest of Montfermeil.
