Valjean returns to Paris with the eagerness of a man separated from a loved one for ten years, or more. Except it has only been five days, and he has to pause when he realises time has not moved and in the city, he has just returned from visiting Cosette. It will be another twenty four hours before he can see her again.
He thinks he may spend the time thinking on the words of Combeferre and Bahorel, but they have slipped from him by the time he has reached his bedchamber and started to unknot his cravat. They belong to another world, where dead people try to persuade him that he is not what he has known himself to be for the better part of his life; that somehow there is virtue in stealing the love of a child, and trying to keep it for his own. Even speaking with Fantine, that poor soul who was wronged in so many ways; even the sting of her scolding and misunderstanding fades away to nothing. Milliways is another world, where dead people walk but should not touch the living; they are real to him and not, in the same way a dream is real until dawn breaks, and the sun washes it away.
He goes to bed. He wakes up, and eats some meat and bread, and counts the hours down by trying to read some of the book he wishes did not exist. But it pains him and he cannot concentrate, so in the end he just sits and waits until it is time. Then he stands and makes sure he is respectable, and starts the walk towards the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, and Cosette.
Weeks pass in this way. The days stretch longer, and so do his visits. At the beginning, he allowed himself to spend only minutes with her but the routine becomes familiar, she no longer objects to the cellar room, the spiders and cobwebs have been cleared from the windows, and he cannot drag himself away. He speaks of days past, her childhood when it was just the two of them and then of later days, with her little friends at the convent. And the tu address disappears from her lips; the "Madame," the "Monsieur Jean," renders him another person to Cosette. The pains he has taken in order to detach himself are working; she is gay, and cheerful, and loves him dearly – he feels it – but she is no longer so tender. He is no longer the focus of her love, and she has her life now, her household, her small troubles with the staff. He does not hold the same place in her eyes or in her affections, and he still cannot bring himself to go away.
One day, she forgets and calls him ‘father’. His heart lights up with joy, and he cannot stop it showing on his face. But he says, ‘say Jean,’ and she laughs.
‘Ah, truly! Monsieur Jean.’
He turns away so she will not see him wipe a tear from his eye. It is the last time she calls him ‘father’.
*
April, and the world bursts with new life before his eyes. He watches it from the window of his apartment, and sees it in the flowers growing behind railings on his walk to her house. The air smells greener under the usual grime of Paris; the air a little more fresh. He arrives a touch earlier every day, and leaves a little later.
Until, this day, today. Basque meets him at the gate. ‘Madame went out with Monsieur, and has not returned.’
He waits an hour, and she does not come. He departs in silence, his head drooping.
When he sees her the day after, she tells him that she went with Marius to visit the house in the Rue Plumet, that little sanctuary with the garden where the two of them had conducted their romance under Valjean’s unsuspecting nose. Indeed, she is so taken with this trip she forgets entirely that she had not seen him at all the day before. No matter, of course. He puts it from his mind, and asks her how they had travelled to the house.
"On foot."
"And how did you return?"
"In a hackney carriage."
They live so sparingly! They have money, and youth, and happiness; he had kept all that money to give her so that she might live well and enjoy herself. He does not understand this economy of the Baron’s.
"Why do you not have a carriage of your own? A pretty coupe would only cost you five hundred francs a month. You are rich."
"I don't know," replies Cosette.
"It is like Toussaint," he says. "She is gone. You have not replaced her. Why?"
"Nicolette suffices."
"But you ought to have a maid."
"Have I not Marius?"
"You ought to have a house of your own, your own servants, a carriage, a box at the theatre. There is nothing too fine for you. Why not profit by your riches? Wealth adds to happiness."
But Cosette says nothing. She follows Marius’s light, and this is evidently what he wants. Valjean falls to silence, troubled but not knowing what else to say. He is content to sit and look at her, and she is content to be looked at. It is well enough.
*
Early May, and the days are warmer still. Valjean comes earlier, and leaves later. When he feels that time has elapsed and she might leave the cellar to go upstairs, he uses the magic word: Marius. He pronounces him handsome, and clever; he praises his courage, his nobility, his eloquence; he has wit, he is every good thing. Cosette bests every attempt at praise, and so Valjean begins again and Cosette beats him again, and so on and so on, and in this way the time stretches, and he is in her company for longer and longer, living in her light while she shines for Marius, and Marius, and only Marius. The rest of his day is darkness, but it is enough to be there while she smiles, and speaks of her husband; he can exist while she lives for him, and talks of the life he wants her to enjoy above all else.
One day, Basque has to come twice to announce that the family are waiting for Madame la Baronne, so they might have dinner.
The next day, Valjean stays longer than ever. When a man is slipping down a cliff, he only tries harder to hold on...
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