Page 1495 - les-miserables

his duty as a national guard; the sum of his ambition lay in
resembling any other man who paid his taxes. This man had
for his ideal, within, the angel, without, the bourgeois.
Let us note one detail, however; when Jean Valjean went
out with Cosette, he dressed as the reader has already seen,
and had the air of a retired officer. When he went out alone,
which was generally at night, he was always dressed in a
workingman’s trousers and blouse, and wore a cap which
concealed his face. Was this precaution or humility? Both.
Cosette was accustomed to the enigmatical side of her des-
tiny, and hardly noticed her father’s peculiarities. As for
Toussaint, she venerated Jean Valjean, and thought every-
thing he did right.
One day, her butcher, who had caught a glimpse of Jean
Valjean, said to her: ‘That’s a queer fish.’ She replied: ‘He’s
a saint.’
Neither Jean Valjean nor Cosette nor Toussaint ever en-
tered or emerged except by the door on the Rue de Babylone.
Unless seen through the garden gate it would have been dif-
ficult to guess that they lived in the Rue Plumet. That gate
was always closed. Jean Valjean had left the garden unculti-
vated, in order not to attract attention.
In this, possibly, he made a mistake.

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