1516 Les Miserables
some face and a delicious costume if one does not display
them?
He also noticed that Cosette had no longer the same taste
for the back garden. Now she preferred the garden, and did
not dislike to promenade back and forth in front of the
railed fence. Jean Valjean, who was shy, never set foot in the
garden. He kept to his back yard, like a dog.
Cosette, in gaining the knowledge that she was beau-
tiful, lost the grace of ignoring it. An exquisite grace, for
beauty enhanced by ingenuousness is ineffable, and noth-
ing is so adorable as a dazzling and innocent creature who
walks along, holding in her hand the key to paradise with-
out being conscious of it. But what she had lost in ingenuous
grace, she gained in pensive and serious charm. Her whole
person, permeated with the joy of youth, of innocence, and
of beauty, breathed forth a splendid melancholy.
It was at this epoch that Marius, after the lapse of six
months, saw her once more at the Luxembourg.