The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-09-16

@HE next morning at daybreak
 @ 5saa. vatican wa. again ,..s' stand, d.
 ing by Cosette's bedside; he was motionless and waiting for her to wake: something new was entering his soul. Jean yaljean had never loved anything. For twenty-five years, he had been alone in the world, and had never been father lover, husband, nor friend. At the galleys he was wicked, gloomy chaste ignorant, and fero- cious-the heart of the old convict was full of virginities. His sister and his sisters children had only left in him vague and distant reminiscence, which in the end entirely faded away; he had and, not being able to do so, forgot them-human nature Is thus constitu- ted. The other tender emotions of his youth, if he had any. had fallen into an abyss. When he saw Cosette. when he carried her off, he felt his entrails stirred up: all the passion and affection there was in him was aroused and turned toward his child. He went up to the bed on which she slept and he
 
 a mother, and knew not what it was for the great and strange emotion of a heart which is preparing to love Is a very obscure and sweet thing. Still, as he was 55 years of age, and Cosette B. all the love he might have felt during life was melted into a species of ineffable glow. This was the sec ond white apparition he met; the bishop had caused that dawn of virtue to rise on his horizon. and Cosette now produced that of love.
 The first day passed In this bedazzle- ment. On her side Cosette became un- consciously different poor little crea- turei She was so little when her mother left her that she did not re- member; and like all children, who re- semble the young vine twigs that cling to everything, she tried to love and had not succeeded. All had repulsed her. the Thenadlers, their children, and other children; she had loved the dog which died, and after that nothing and mo- body, would have anything to do with her. It Is a sad thing to say but at the age of she had cold heart; it was not her fault, it was not that she lacked the faculty of loving. but it was alas, the possibility. Hence, from tn e first day, all that felt and thought with in her began to love the good man and she experienced what she had never known before, feeling of expansion. The man no longer even produced the effect of being old and poor she found Jean Valjean handsome in the same way as she found the garret pretty. Such are the effects of dawn, child hood, youth and joy. The novelty of earth and life has something to do with 1t, and nothing Is so charming as the coloring reflection of happiness upon an attic; In this way we have all a blue garret in our past. Nature had placed profound interval, of fifty years, between Jean Valjean and Co., sette; but destiny filled up this separ- ation. Destiny suddenly united, and these two uprooted existences so dif- ferent in age similar in sorrow, and the one, in fact, was the complement of the other. Cosette's instinct sought a father, in the same way as Jean Val jeans sought child and to meet was to find each other. At the mysterio--1 moment when their two hands clasped 1 they were welded together and when their souls saw each other they recog- nized that each was necessary to the other. and joined in a close embrace. Taking the words in their most com prehenslve and absolute meaning, we may say that, separated from every thing by the walls of the tombs. Jean Vatican was the widower as Cosette was the orphan, and this situation caused Jean Valjean to become in a celestial manner Cosette's father. And, 1 in truth, the mysterious impression pro- duced upon Cosette in the Chelles wood by Jean Valjean's hand grasping hers | in the darkness was not an illusion but a reality.
 | Weeks passed away, and tMse two le-
 ings led a happy life in this wretcheu
 garret. With the dawn Cosette began 1 laughing chattering and singing, for chil-
 dren, like the birds, have their matin song. At times it happened that Jean i Valjean took her little red chilolained 1 hand and kissed it; the poor child, ac- customed to be beaten, did not know what 1 this meant, and went away quite ashamed. At one moment she became se- rious, and looked at her little black | frock. Cosette was no longer dressed in
 rags, but in mourning; she had left l wretchedness and was entering life Jean
 Valjean set to work teaching her to read.
 At times he thought it was with the idea | of doing evil that he learned to read at
 the galleys. and this idea had turned to | teaching a child to read. Then the old l galley slave smiled the pensive smile of
 the angels. He felt it in premediation of heaven, and he lost himself in a reverie for good thoughts have their depths as well as the wicked. Teaching l Cosette to read. and letting her play al- l most constituted Jean valjean's entire l life; and then he spoke to her about her