Cosette adored the goodman. She was always at his heels. Where Jean Valjean was, there happiness was. Jean Valjean lived neither in the pavilion nor the garden; she took greater pleasure in the paved back courtyard, than in the enclosure filled with flowers, and in his little lodge furnished with straw-seated chairs than in the great drawing-room hung with tapestry, against which stood tufted easy-chairs. Jean Valjean sometimes said to her, smiling at his happiness in being importuned: “Do go to your own quarters! Leave me alone a little!”

She gave him those charming and tender scoldings which are so graceful when they come from a daughter to her father.

“Father, I am very cold in your rooms; why don’t you have a carpet here and a stove?”

“Dear child, there are so many people who are better than I and who have not even a roof over their heads.”

“Then why is there a fire in my rooms, and everything that is needed?”