Page 1523 - les-miserables

very queer, he wore gloves; in short, Jean Valjean cordially
detested this young man.
Cosette allowed nothing to be divined. Without know-
ing just what was the matter with her she was convinced that
there was something in it, and that it must be concealed.
There was a coincidence between the taste for the toi-
let which had recently come to Cosette, and the habit of
new clothes developed by that stranger which was very re-
pugnant to Jean Valjean. It might be accidental, no doubt,
certainly, but it was a menacing accident.
He never opened his mouth to Cosette about this strang-
er. One day, however, he could not refrain from so doing,
and, with that vague despair which suddenly casts the lead
into the depths of its despair, he said to her: ‘What a very
pedantic air that young man has!’
Cosette, but a year before only an indifferent little girl,
would have replied: ‘Why, no, he is charming.’ Ten years
later, with the love of Marius in her heart, she would have
answered: ‘A pedant, and insufferable to the sight! You are
right!’— At the moment in life and the heart which she had
then attained, she contented herself with replying, with su-
preme calmness: ‘That young man!’
As though she now beheld him for the first time in her
life.
‘How stupid I am!’ thought Jean Valjean. ‘She had not
noticed him. It is I who have pointed him out to her.’
Oh, simplicity of the old! oh, the depth of children!
It is one of the laws of those fresh years of suffering and
trouble, of those vivacious conflicts between a first love and

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