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.

CHAPTER V--THE ROSE PERCEIVES THAT IT IS AN ENGINE OF WAR

One day, Cosette chanced to look at herself in her mirror, and she said
to herself: "Really!" It seemed to her almost that she was pretty. This
threw her in a singularly troubled state of mind. Up to that moment she
had never thought of her face. She saw herself in her mirror, but she
did not look at herself. And then, she had so often been told that she
was homely; Jean Valjean alone said gently: "No indeed! no indeed!" At
all events, Cosette had always thought herself homely, and had grown up
in that belief with the easy resignation of childhood. And here, all
at once, was her mirror saying to her, as Jean Valjean had said: "No
indeed!" That night, she did not sleep. "What if I were pretty!" she
thought. "How odd it would be if I were pretty!" And she recalled those
of her companions whose beauty had produced a sensation in the convent,
and she said to herself: "What! Am I to be like Mademoiselle So-and-So?"

The next morning she looked at herself again, not by accident this time,
and she was assailed with doubts: "Where did I get such an idea?" said
she; "no, I am ugly." She had not slept well, that was all, her eyes
were sunken and she was pale. She had not felt very joyous on the
preceding evening in the belief that she was beautiful, but it made her
very sad not to be able to believe in it any longer. She did not look at
herself again, and for more than a fortnight she tried to dress her hair
with her back turned to the mirror.

In the evening, after dinner, she generally embroidered in wool or
did some convent needlework in the drawing-room, and Jean Valjean read
beside her. Once she raised her eyes from her work, and was rendered
quite uneasy by the manner in which her father was gazing at her.

On another occasion, she was passing along the street, and it seemed
to her that some one be