horization of
the days which were lengthening, he arrived earlier and departed later.

One day Cosette chanced to say "father" to him. A flash of joy
illuminated Jean Valjean's melancholy old countenance. He caught her
up: "Say Jean."--"Ah! truly," she replied with a burst of laughter,
"Monsieur Jean."--"That is right," said he. And he turned aside so that
she might not see him wipe his eyes.

CHAPTER III--THEY RECALL THE GARDEN OF THE RUE PLUMET

This was the last time. After that last flash of light, complete
extinction ensued. No more familiarity, no more good-morning with a
kiss, never more that word so profoundly sweet: "My father!" He was at
his own request and through his own complicity driven out of all his
happinesses one after the other; and he had this sorrow, that after
having lost Cosette wholly in one day, he was afterwards obliged to lose
her again in detail.

The eye eventually becomes accustomed to the light of a cellar. In
short, it sufficed for him to have an apparition of Cosette every day.
His whole life was concentrated in that one hour.

He seated himself close to her, he gazed at her in silence, or he talked
to her of years gone by, of her childhood, of the convent, of her little
friends of those bygone days.

One afternoon,--it was on one of those early days in April, already
warm and fresh, the moment of the sun's great gayety, the gardens which
surrounded the windows of Marius and Cosette felt the emotion of waking,
the hawthorn was on the point of budding, a jewelled garniture of
gillyflowers spread over the ancient walls, snapdragons yawned through
the crevices of the stones, amid the grass there was a charming
beginning of daisies, and buttercups, the white butterflies of the
year were making their first appearance, the wind, that minstrel of the
eternal wedding, was trying in the trees the first notes of that grand,
auroral symphony which the old poets called the springtide,--Marius said
to Cosette:--"We said that we would go back to take a look at our garden
in the Rue Plumet. Let us go thither. We must not be ungrateful."--And
away they flitted, like two swallows towards the spring. This garden of
the Rue Plumet produced on them the effect of the dawn. They already
had behind them in life something which was like the springtime of their
love. The house in the Rue Plumet being held on a lease, still belonged
to Cosette. They went to that garden and that house. There they
foun