e other tender emotions of his youth, if he
had ever had any, had fallen into an abyss.

When he saw Cosette, when he had taken possession of her, carried her
off, and delivered her, he felt his heart moved within him.

All the passion and affection within him awoke, and rushed towards that
child. He approached the bed, where she lay sleeping, and trembled with
joy. He suffered all the pangs of a mother, and he knew not what it
meant; for that great and singular movement of a heart which begins to
love is a very obscure and a very sweet thing.

Poor old man, with a perfectly new heart!

Only, as he was five and fifty, and Cosette eight years of age, all that
might have been love in the whole course of his life flowed together
into a sort of ineffable light.

It was the second white apparition which he had encountered. The Bishop
had caused the dawn of virtue to rise on his horizon; Cosette caused the
dawn of love to rise.

The early days passed in this dazzled state.

Cosette, on her side, had also, unknown to herself, become another
being, poor little thing! She was so little when her mother left her,
that she no longer remembered her. Like all children, who resemble young
shoots of the vine, which cling to everything, she had tried to love;
she had not succeeded. All had repulsed her,--the Thenardiers, their
children, other children. She had loved the dog, and he had died, after
which nothing and nobody would have anything to do with her. It is a sad
thing to say, and we have already intimated it, that, at eight years of
age, her heart was cold. It was not her fault; it was not the faculty
of loving that she lacked; alas! it was the possibility. Thus, from the
very first day, all her sentient and thinking powers loved this kind
man. She felt that which she had never felt before--a sensation of
expansion.

The man no longer produced on her the effect of being old or poor; she
thought Jean Valjean handsome, just as she thought the hovel pretty.

These are the effects of the dawn, of childhood, of joy. The novelty of
the earth and of life counts for something here. Nothing is so charming
as the coloring reflection of happiness on a garret. We all have in our
past a delightful garret.

Nature, a difference of fifty years, had set a profound gulf between
Jean Valjean and Cosette; destiny filled in this gulf. Destiny suddenly
united and wedded with its irresistible power these two uprooted
existences, differing