Page 967 - les-miserables

Cosette had permission to pass an hour with him every
day. As the sisters were melancholy and he was kind, the
child made comparisons and adored him. At the appointed
hour she flew to the hut. When she entered the lowly cabin,
she filled it with paradise. Jean Valjean blossomed out and
felt his happiness increase with the happiness which he af-
forded Cosette. The joy which we inspire has this charming
property, that, far from growing meagre, like all reflections,
it returns to us more radiant than ever. At recreation hours,
Jean Valjean watched her running and playing in the dis-
tance, and he distinguished her laugh from that of the rest.
For Cosette laughed now.
Cosette’s face had even undergone a change, to a certain
extent. The gloom had disappeared from it. A smile is the
same as sunshine; it banishes winter from the human coun-
tenance.
Recreation over, when Cosette went into the house again,
Jean Valjean gazed at the windows of her class-room, and at
night he rose to look at the windows of her dormitory.
God has his own ways, moreover; the convent contribut-
ed, like Cosette, to uphold and complete the Bishop’s work
in Jean Valjean. It is certain that virtue adjoins pride on one
side. A bridge built by the devil exists there. Jean Valjean
had been, unconsciously, perhaps, tolerably near that side
and that bridge, when Providence cast his lot in the convent
of the Petit-Picpus; so long as he had compared himself only
to the Bishop, he had regarded himself as unworthy and had
remained humble; but for some time past he had been com-
paring himself to men in general, and pride was beginning

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