|
CHANGE OF GATE
It seemed that this garden, created in olden days to conceal
wanton mysteries, had been transformed and become fitted to shelter
chaste mysteries.
There were no longer either arbors, or bowling greens, or
tunnels, or grottos; there was a magnificent, dishevelled obscurity
falling like a veil over all.
Paphos had been made over into Eden. It is impossible to say
what element of repentance had rendered this retreat wholesome.
This flower-girl now offered her blossom to the soul.
This coquettish garden, formerly decidedly compromised, had
returned to virginity and modesty.
A justice assisted by a gardener, a goodman who thought that
he was a continuation of Lamoignon, and another goodman who thought
that he was a continuation of Lenotre, had turned it about, cut,
ruffled, decked, moulded it to gallantry; nature had taken possession
of it once more, had filled it with shade, and had arranged it
for love.
There was, also, in this solitude, a heart which was quite
ready. Love had only to show himself; he had here a temple composed
of verdure, grass, moss, the sight of birds, tender shadows, agitated
branches, and a soul made of sweetness, of faith, of candor, of
hope, of aspiration, and of illusion.
Cosette had left the convent when she was still almost a child;
she was a little more than fourteen, and she was at the "ungrateful
age"; we have already said, that with the exception of her
eyes, she was homely rather than pretty; she had no ungraceful
feature, but she was awkward, thin, timid and bold at once, a
grown-up little girl, in short.
Her education was finished, that is to say, she has been taught
religion, and even and above all, devotion; then "history,"
that is to say the thing that bears that name in convents, geography,
grammar, the participles, the kings of France, a little music,
a little drawing, etc.; but in all other respects she was utterly
ignorant, which is a great charm and a great peril.
The soul of a young girl should not be left in the dark; later
on, mirages that are too abrupt and too lively are formed there,
as in a dark chamber. She should be gently and discreetly enlightened,
rather with the reflection of realities than with their harsh
and direct light. A useful and graciously austere half-light which
dissipates puerile fears and obviates falls.
There is nothing but the maternal instinct, that admirable
intuition composed of the memories of the virgin and the experience
of the woman, which knows how this half-light is to be created
and of what it should consist.
Nothing supplies the place of this instinct.
All the nuns in the world are not worth as much as one mother
in the formation of a young girl's soul.
Cosette had had no mother.
She had only had many mothers, in the plural.
As for Jean Valjean, he was, indeed, all tenderness, all solicitude;
but he was only an old man and he knew nothing at all.
Now, in this work of education, in this grave matter of preparing
a woman for life, what science is required to combat that vast
ignorance which is called innocence!
Nothing prepares a young girl for passions like the convent.
The convent turns the thoughts in the direction of the unknown.
The heart, thus thrown back upon itself, works downward within
itself, since it cannot overflow, and grows deep, since it cannot
expand. Hence visions, suppositions, conjectures, outlines of
romances, a desire for adventures, fantastic constructions, edifices
built wholly in the inner obscurity of the mind, sombre and secret
abodes where the passions immediately find a lodgement as soon
as the open gate permits them to enter.
The convent is a compression which, in order to triumph over
the human heart, should last during the whole life.
On quitting the convent, Cosette could have found nothing
more sweet and more dangerous than the house in the Rue Plumet.
It was the continuation of solitude with the beginning of liberty;
a garden that was closed, but a nature that was acrid, rich, voluptuous,
and fragrant; the same dreams as in the convent, but with glimpses
of young men; a grating, but one that opened on the street.
Still, when she arrived there, we repeat, she was only a child.
Jean Valjean gave this neglected garden over to her.
"Do what you like with it," he said to her.
This amused Cosette; she turned over all the clumps and all
the stones, she hunted for "beasts"; she played in it,
while awaiting the time when she would dream in it; she loved
this garden for the insects that she found beneath her feet amid
the grass, while awaiting the day when she would love it for the
stars that she would see through the boughs above her head.
And then, she loved her father, that is to say, Jean Valjean,
with all her soul, with an innocent filial passion which made
the goodman a beloved and charming companion to her.
It will be remembered that M. Madeleine had been in the habit
of reading a great deal.
Jean Valjean had continued this practice; he had come to converse
well; he possessed the secret riches and the eloquence of a true
and humble mind which has spontaneously cultivated itself. He
retained just enough sharpness to season his kindness; his mind
was rough and his heart was soft.
During their conversations in the Luxembourg, he gave her
explanations of everything, drawing on what he had read, and also
on what he had suffered. As she listened to him, Cosette's eyes
wandered vaguely about.
This simple man sufficed for Cosette's thought, the same as
the wild garden sufficed for her eyes.
When she had had a good chase after the butterflies, she came
panting up to him and said:
"Ah!
How I have run!"
He kissed her brow.
Cosette adored the goodman.
She was always at his heels. Where Jean Valjean was, there
happiness was.
Jean Valjean lived neither in the pavilion nor the garden;
she took greater pleasure in the paved back courtyard, than in
the enclosure filled with flowers, and in his little lodge furnished
with straw-seated chairs than in the great drawing-room hung with
tapestry, against which stood tufted easy-chairs. Jean Valjean
sometimes said to her, smiling at his happiness in being importuned:
"Do go to your own quarters! Leave me alone a little!"
She gave him those charming and tender scoldings which are
so graceful when they come from a daughter to her father.
"Father, I am very cold in your rooms; why don't you
have a carpet here and a stove?"
"Dear child, there are so many people who are better
than I and who have not even a roof over their heads."
"Then why is there a fire in my rooms, and everything
that is needed?"
"Because you are a woman and a child."
"Bah! must men be cold and feel uncomfortable?"
"Certain men."
"That is good, I shall come here so often that you will
be obliged to have a fire."
And again she said to him:--
"Father, why do you eat horrible bread like that?"
"Because, my daughter."
"Well, if you eat it, I will eat it too."
Then, in order to prevent Cosette eating black bread, Jean
Valjean ate white bread.
Cosette had but a confused recollection of her childhood.
She prayed morning and evening for her mother whom she had
never known. The Thenardiers had remained with her as two hideous
figures in a dream.
She remembered that she had gone "one day, at night,"
to fetch water in a forest.
She thought that it had been very far from Paris.
It seemed to her that she had begun to live in an abyss, and
that it was Jean Valjean who had rescued her from it. Her childhood
produced upon her the effect of a time when there had been nothing
around her but millepeds, spiders, and serpents. When she meditated
in the evening, before falling asleep, as she had not a very clear
idea that she was Jean Valjean's daughter, and that he was her
father, she fancied that the soul of her mother had passed into
that good man and had come to dwell near her.
When he was seated, she leaned her cheek against his white
hair, and dropped a silent tear, saying to herself:
"Perhaps this man is my mother."
Cosette, although this is a strange statement to make, in
the profound ignorance of a girl brought up in a convent,-- maternity
being also absolutely unintelligible to virginity,-- had ended
by fancying that she had had as little mother as possible. She
did not even know her mother's name.
Whenever she asked Jean Valjean, Jean Valjean remained silent.
If she repeated her question, he responded with a smile.
Once she insisted; the smile ended in a tear.
This silence on the part of Jean Valjean covered Fantine with
darkness.
Was it prudence?
Was it respect?
Was it a fear that he should deliver this name to the hazards
of another memory than his own?
So long as Cosette had been small, Jean Valjean had been willing
to talk to her of her mother; when she became a young girl, it
was impossible for him to do so.
It seemed to him that he no longer dared.
Was it because of Cosette?
Was it because of Fantine?
He felt a certain religious horror at letting that shadow
enter Cosette's thought; and of placing a third in their destiny.
The more sacred this shade was to him, the more did it seem
that it was to be feared. He thought of Fantine, and felt himself
overwhelmed with silence.
Through the darkness, he vaguely perceived something which
appeared to have its finger on its lips.
Had all the modesty which had been in Fantine, and which had
violently quitted her during her lifetime, returned to rest upon
her after her death, to watch in indignation over the peace of
that dead woman, and in its shyness, to keep her in her grave?
Was Jean Valjean unconsciously submitting to the pressure?
We who believe in death, are not among the number who will reject
this mysterious explanation.
Hence the impossibility of uttering, even for Cosette, that
name of Fantine.
One day Cosette said to him:--
"Father, I saw my mother in a dream last night.
She had two big wings. My mother must have been almost a saint
during her life."
"Through martyrdom," replied Jean Valjean.
However, Jean Valjean was happy.
When Cosette went out with him, she leaned on his arm, proud
and happy, in the plenitude of her heart.
Jean Valjean felt his heart melt within him with delight,
at all these sparks of a tenderness so exclusive, so wholly satisfied
with himself alone.
The poor man trembled, inundated with angelic joy; he declared
to himself ecstatically that this would last all their lives;
he told himself that he really had not suffered sufficiently to
merit so radiant a bliss, and he thanked God, in the depths of
his soul, for having permitted him to be loved thus, he, a wretch,
by that innocent being.
|
