was five hundred and eighty-four thousand, five hundred
francs. Jean Valjean withdrew the five hundred francs for himself.--"We
shall see hereafter," he thought.

The difference between that sum and the six hundred and thirty thousand
francs withdrawn from Laffitte represented his expenditure in ten years,
from 1823 to 1833. The five years of his stay in the convent had cost
only five thousand francs.

Jean Valjean set the two candlesticks on the chimney-piece, where they
glittered to the great admiration of Toussaint.

Moreover, Jean Valjean knew that he was delivered from Javert. The
story had been told in his presence, and he had verified the fact in
the Moniteur, how a police inspector named Javert had been found drowned
under a boat belonging to some laundresses, between the Pont au Change
and the Pont-Neuf, and that a writing left by this man, otherwise
irreproachable and highly esteemed by his superiors, pointed to a fit
of mental aberration and a suicide.--"In fact," thought Jean Valjean,
"since he left me at liberty, once having got me in his power, he must
have been already mad."

CHAPTER VI--THE TWO OLD MEN DO EVERYTHING, EACH ONE AFTER HIS OWN
FASHION, TO RENDER COSETTE HAPPY

Everything was made ready for the wedding. The doctor, on being
consulted, declared that it might take place in February. It was then
December. A few ravishing weeks of perfect happiness passed.

The grandfather was not the least happy of them all. He remained for a
quarter of an hour at a time gazing at Cosette.

"The wonderful, beautiful girl!" he exclaimed. "And she has so sweet and
good an air! she is, without exception, the most charming girl that I
have ever seen in my life. Later on, she'll have virtues with an odor of
violets. How graceful! one cannot live otherwise than nobly with such
a creature. Marius, my boy, you are a Baron, you are rich, don't go to
pettifogging, I beg of you."

Cosette and Marius had passed abruptly from the sepulchre to paradise.
The transition had not been softened, and they would have been stunned,
had they not been dazzled by it.

"Do you understand anything about it?" said Marius to Cosette.

"No," replied Cosette, "but it seems to me that the good God is caring
for us."

Jean Valjean did everything, smoothed away every difficulty, arranged
everything, made everything easy. He hastened towards Cosette's
happiness with as much ardor, and, apparently with as much joy, as
Cosette