Section 4 - Saint-Denis and Idyll of the Rue Plumet
Book Five- An End Unlike the Beginning
Cosette's grief over not seeing Marius begins to fade. One day she notices that a handsome young officer of the lancers, who is in fact Theodule Gillenormand, passes the garden at a certain hour every day. She makes it a point to be at the gate when he goes by. The lancer's comrades notice her attention but he shrugs if off as nothing unusual.
In early April, Jean Valjean goes away on one of his unexplained journey's that he would make when he needed money. These journeys would keep him away from home for a few nights. The first evening he is gone Cosette is alarmed to hear what she believes is a man's footsteps in the garden. She looks out the window but sees nothing. The next evening she is walking in the garden and the light of the moon casts the shadow of a figure wearing a hat next to her own. Frightened she turns around but no one is there. When Jean Valjean returns she tells him of her experiences and he becomes anxious. He prowls the garden the next two nights with a club and on the second night calls her out to see that her shadow of a man in a hat must have been cast from a stove pipe on the neighboring house's roof.
Several nights later, however, she is walking in the garden when she is surprised to find a stone upon a bench near the garden gate that had not been there a moment before. She locks herself in the house and sleeps badly that night. The next morning she is calm and she examines the stone and finds a letter underneath. The letter is full of meditations upon love and Cosette instantly knows that it is from the young man in the Luxembourg. That evening she puts on a pretty dress and goes into the garden to wait. He comes to her and admits that he loves her. She admits that she loves him and they kiss. They spend the evening talking and holding hands and only later do they learn each others names.
Analysis
Cosette appears to be her old happy self and content to be in the company of Valjean, until one night when Marius appears in her garden and declares his love for her. She responds favorably to his feelings.
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