Everything was made ready for the wedding. The doctor named February. It was then December. A few ravishing weeks of perfect happiness passed. The grandfather was not the least happy. He remained a quarter of an hour at a time gazing at Cosette. Marius and Cosette had passed abruptly from the sepulchre to paradise. The transition had not been softened. They would have been stunned had they not been dazzled. Jean Valjean did everything, smoothed away every difficulty, arranged everything, made everything easy. He hastened toward Cosette's happiness with as much ardour, and apparently as much joy, as Cosette herself. Having been a mayor, he alone knew the delicate problem of her civil status. To announce her origin bluntly might prevent the marriage. He concocted for her a family of dead people. Cosette became the only child of an extinct family, not his own daughter but the daughter of the other Fauchelevent. Two brothers of that name had been gardeners to the convent. Inquiry was made there. The nuns, not inclined to fathom questions of paternity, said what was wanted and said it with zeal. An official statement was drawn up. Cosette became, in the eyes of the law, an orphan named Euphrasie. Jean Valjean so arranged it that he was appointed, under the gardener's name, as her guardian, with the grandfather as supervising guardian over him. The five hundred and eighty thousand francs became a legacy from a dead person who desired to remain unknown. There were peculiarities, it is true, but they were not noticed. One of the interested parties had his eyes blindfolded by love, the others by the six hundred thousand francs.
Cosette learned that she was not the daughter of that old man whom she had so long called father. He was merely a kinsman. Another man of the same name was her real father. At any other time this would have broken her heart. In the ineffable moment she was then passing through, it cast but a slight shadow, a faint cloud, and she was so full of joy that the cloud did not last long. She had Marius. The young man arrived, the old man was effaced. Such is life. And then, Cosette had for long years been habituated to seeing enigmas around her. Every being who has had a mysterious childhood is always prepared for certain renunciations. Nevertheless, she continued to call Jean Valjean Father. While he was building up for her a normal situation in society, the grandfather was superintending the basket of wedding gifts. Nothing so amused him as being magnificent. He rifled chests that had not been opened for years, lavished old laces and gewgaws on her, and when Marius spoke gravely of the men of the revolution as antique memories, the old gentleman heard only the name of a silk and added, the next day, a dress of tea-rose moire antique. From these fripperies he extracted a bit of wisdom. Love is all very well, but there must be something else to go with it. Dry happiness resembles dry bread. One eats, but one does not dine. He wanted the superfluous, the useless, the extravagant, and he talked nonsense in connection with the wedding until the eighteenth century passed pell-mell through his dithyrambs. While he listened to himself, Cosette and Marius grew intoxicated as they gazed freely at each other.
The aunt surveyed all this with imperturbable placidity. Within five or six months she had experienced a certain amount of emotions: Marius returned, bleeding, dead, then living, betrothed, wedding a poor girl, wedding a millionairess. The six hundred thousand francs had been her last surprise. Then her indifference returned. She went regularly to service and beheld the two as two shadows. The shadow was herself. Moreover, the money had settled her indecision. Her father had not consulted her in the matter of consent. Somewhat resentful in her inmost soul, she had reserved the question of the inheritance. It is probable that, had the match been a poor one, she would have left him poor. But Cosette's half-million pleased her. One owes some consideration to six hundred thousand francs, and it was evident that she could not do otherwise than leave her fortune to these young people, since they did not need it. It was arranged that the couple should live with the grandfather. He insisted on resigning to them his chamber, the finest in the house. That will make me young again, he said. He hung the walls with a stuff he believed had draped a duchess's bed, set a little Saxe figure on the chimney-piece, and turned his library into the lawyer's study Marius needed.
