Page 1530 - les-miserables

CHAPTER VIII

THE CHAIN-GANG

Jean Valjean was the more unhappy of the two. Youth,
even in its sorrows, always possesses its own peculiar radi-
ance.
At times, Jean Valjean suffered so greatly that he became
puerile. It is the property of grief to cause the childish side
of man to reappear. He had an unconquerable conviction
that Cosette was escaping from him. He would have liked to
resist, to retain her, to arouse her enthusiasm by some exter-
nal and brilliant matter. These ideas, puerile, as we have just
said, and at the same time senile, conveyed to him, by their
very childishness, a tolerably just notion of the influence
of gold lace on the imaginations of young girls. He once
chanced to see a general on horseback, in full uniform, pass
along the street, Comte Coutard, the commandant of Paris.
He envied that gilded man; what happiness it would be, he
said to himself, if he could put on that suit which was an in-
contestable thing; and if Cosette could behold him thus, she
would be dazzled, and when he had Cosette on his arm and
passed the gates of the Tuileries, the guard would present
arms to him, and that would suffice for Cosette, and would

1530 Les Miserables