15 4 2 Les Miserables
dejection to notice her words and reply to them. But when
Cosette was leaving him in the evening, to betake herself to
bed, he heard her say in a low voice, and as though talking
to herself: ‘It seems to me, that if I were to find one of those
men in my pathway, oh, my God, I should die merely from
the sight of him close at hand.’
Fortunately, chance ordained that on the morrow of that
tragic day, there was some official solemnity apropos of I
know not what,— fetes in Paris, a review in the Champ de
Mars, jousts on the Seine, theatrical performances in the
Champs-Elysees, fireworks at the Arc de l’Etoile, illumina-
tions everywhere. Jean Valjean did violence to his habits,
and took Cosette to see these rejoicings, for the purpose of
diverting her from the memory of the day before, and of
effacing, beneath the smiling tumult of all Paris, the abomi-
nable thing which had passed before her. The review with
which the festival was spiced made the presence of uniforms
perfectly natural; Jean Valjean donned his uniform of a na-
tional guard with the vague inward feeling of a man who
is betaking himself to shelter. However, this trip seemed to
attain its object. Cosette, who made it her law to please her
father, and to whom, moreover, all spectacles were a novelty,
accepted this diversion with the light and easy good grace
of youth, and did not pout too disdainfully at that flutter of
enjoyment called a public fete; so that Jean Valjean was able
to believe that he had succeeded, and that no trace of that
hideous vision remained.
Some days later, one morning, when the sun was shin-
ing brightly, and they were both on the steps leading to the