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of faith, of candor, of hope, of aspiration, and of illusion.
Cosette had left the convent when she was still almost a
child; she was a little more than fourteen, and she was at the
‘ungrateful age”; we have already said, that with the excep-
tion of her eyes, she was homely rather than pretty; she had
no ungraceful feature, but she was awkward, thin, timid
and bold at once, a grown-up little girl, in short.
Her education was finished, that is to say, she has been
taught religion, and even and above all, devotion; then
‘history,’ that is to say the thing that bears that name in
convents, geography, grammar, the participles, the kings of
France, a little music, a little drawing, etc.; but in all other
respects she was utterly ignorant, which is a great charm
and a great peril. The soul of a young girl should not be left
in the dark; later on, mirages that are too abrupt and too
lively are formed there, as in a dark chamber. She should be
gently and discreetly enlightened, rather with the reflection
of realities than with their harsh and direct light. A useful
and graciously austere half-light which dissipates puerile
fears and obviates falls. There is nothing but the maternal
instinct, that admirable intuition composed of the memo-
ries of the virgin and the experience of the woman, which
knows how this half-light is to be created and of what it
should consist.
Nothing supplies the place of this instinct. All the nuns
in the world are not worth as much as one mother in the
formation of a young girl’s soul.
Cosette had had no mother. She had only had many
mothers, in the plural.