However, properly speaking, he lived in the Rue Plumet, and he had arranged his existence there in the following fashion:— Cosette and the servant occupied the pavilion; she had the big sleeping-room with the painted pier-glasses, the boudoir with the gilded fillets, the justice’s drawing-room furnished with tapestries and vast armchairs; she had the garden.
Jean Valjean had a canopied bed of antique damask in three colors and a beautiful Persian rug purchased in the Rue du Figuier-Saint-Paul at Mother Gaucher’s, put into Cosette’s chamber, and, in order to redeem the severity of these magnificent old things, he had amalgamated with this bric-à-brac all the gay and graceful little pieces of furniture suitable to young girls, an étagère, a bookcase filled with gilt-edged books, an inkstand, a blotting-book, paper, a work-table incrusted with mother of pearl, a silver-gilt dressing-case, a toilet service in Japanese porcelain.
Long damask curtains with a red foundation and three colors, like those on the bed, hung at the windows of the first floor. On the ground floor, the curtains were of tapestry. All winter long, Cosette’s little house was heated from top to bottom.
Jean Valjean inhabited the sort of porter’s lodge which was situated at the end of the back courtyard, with a mattress on a folding-bed, a white wood table, two straw chairs, an earthenware water-jug, a few old volumes on a shelf, his beloved valise in one corner, and never any fire.
He dined with Cosette, and he had a loaf of black bread on the table for his own use. When Toussaint came, he had said to her: 'It is the young lady who is the mistress of this house. '—'And you, monsieur? ' Toussaint replied in amazement.
—'I am a much better thing than the master, I am the father. ' Cosette had been