hind her, whom she did not see, said: "A pretty
woman! but badly dressed." "Bah!" she thought, "he does not mean me.
I am well dressed and ugly." She was then wearing a plush hat and her
merino gown.

At last, one day when she was in the garden, she heard poor old
Toussaint saying: "Do you notice how pretty Cosette is growing, sir?"
Cosette did not hear her father's reply, but Toussaint's words caused
a sort of commotion within her. She fled from the garden, ran up to
her room, flew to the looking-glass,--it was three months since she
had looked at herself,--and gave vent to a cry. She had just dazzled
herself.

She was beautiful and lovely; she could not help agreeing with Toussaint
and her mirror. Her figure was formed, her skin had grown white, her
hair was lustrous, an unaccustomed splendor had been lighted in her blue
eyes. The consciousness of her beauty burst upon her in an instant, like
the sudden advent of daylight; other people noticed it also, Toussaint
had said so, it was evidently she of whom the passer-by had spoken,
there could no longer be any doubt of that; she descended to the garden
again, thinking herself a queen, imagining that she heard the birds
singing, though it was winter, seeing the sky gilded, the sun among
the trees, flowers in the thickets, distracted, wild, in inexpressible
delight.

Jean Valjean, on his side, experienced a deep and undefinable oppression
at heart.

In fact, he had, for some time past, been contemplating with terror that
beauty which seemed to grow more radiant every day on Cosette's sweet
face. The dawn that was smiling for all was gloomy for him.

Cosette had been beautiful for a tolerably long time before she became
aware of it herself. But, from the very first day, that unexpected light
which was rising slowly and enveloping the whole of the young girl's
person, wounded Jean Valjean's sombre eye. He felt that it was a change
in a happy life, a life so happy that he did not dare to move for fear
of disarranging something. This man, who had passed through all manner
of distresses, who was still all bleeding from the bruises of fate, who
had been almost wicked and who had become almost a saint, who, after
having dragged the chain of the galleys, was now dragging the invisible
but heavy chain of indefinite misery, this man whom the law had not
released from its grasp and who could be seized at any moment and
brought back from the obscurity of his virtue to the broad