Page 1512 - les-miserables

customed splendor had been lighted in her blue eyes. The
consciousness of her beauty burst upon her in an instant,
like the sudden advent of daylight; other people noticed it
also, Toussaint had said so, it was evidently she of whom the
passer-by had spoken, there could no longer be any doubt of
that; she descended to the garden again, thinking herself a
queen, imagining that she heard the birds singing, though it
was winter, seeing the sky gilded, the sun among the trees,
flowers in the thickets, distracted, wild, in inexpressible de-
light.
Jean Valjean, on his side, experienced a deep and unde-
finable oppression at heart.
In fact, he had, for some time past, been contemplating
with terror that beauty which seemed to grow more radiant
every day on Cosette’s sweet face. The dawn that was smil-
ing for all was gloomy for him.
Cosette had been beautiful for a tolerably long time be-
fore she became aware of it herself. But, from the very first
day, that unexpected light which was rising slowly and en-
veloping the whole of the young girl’s person, wounded
Jean Valjean’s sombre eye. He felt that it was a change in a
happy life, a life so happy that he did not dare to move for
fear of disarranging something. This man, who had passed
through all manner of distresses, who was still all bleeding
from the bruises of fate, who had been almost wicked and
who had become almost a saint, who, after having dragged
the chain of the galleys, was now dragging the invisible but
heavy chain of indefinite misery, this man whom the law
had not released from its grasp and who could be seized at

1512 Les Miserables