Page 2267 - les-miserables

Marius, my boy, you are a Baron, you are rich, don’t go to
pettifogging, I beg of you.’
Cosette and Marius had passed abruptly from the sepul-
chre to paradise. The transition had not been softened, and
they would have been stunned, had they not been dazzled
by it.
‘Do you understand anything about it?’ said Marius to
Cosette.
‘No,’ replied Cosette, ‘but it seems to me that the good
God is caring for us.’
Jean Valjean did everything, smoothed away every dif-
ficulty, arranged everything, made everything easy. He
hastened towards Cosette’s happiness with as much ardor,
and, apparently with as much joy, as Cosette herself.
As he had been a mayor, he understood how to solve that
delicate problem, with the secret of which he alone was ac-
quainted, Cosette’s civil status. If he were to announce her
origin bluntly, it might prevent the marriage, who knows?
He extricated Cosette from all difficulties. He concocted for
her a family of dead people, a sure means of not encounter-
ing any objections. Cosette was the only scion of an extinct
family; Cosette was not his own daughter, but the daughter
of the other Fauchelevent. Two brothers Fauchelevent had
been gardeners to the convent of the Petit-Picpus. Inquiry
was made at that convent; the very best information and the
most respectable references abounded; the good nuns, not
very apt and but little inclined to fathom questions of pater-
nity, and not attaching any importance to the matter, had
never understood exactly of which of the two Fauchelevents

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