“This is what I call being good: being nice and coming and living here⁠—there are birds here as there are in the Rue Plumet⁠—living with us, quitting that hole of a Rue de l’Homme Armé, not giving us riddles to guess, being like all the rest of the world, dining with us, breakfasting with us, being my father.”

He loosed her hands.

“You no longer need a father, you have a husband.”

Cosette became angry.

“I no longer need a father! One really does not know what to say to things like that, which are not common sense!”

“If Toussaint were here,” resumed Jean Valjean, like a person who is driven to seek authorities, and who clutches at every branch, “she would be the first to agree that it is true that I have always had ways of my own. There is nothing new in this. I always have loved my black corner.”