Cosette Fauchelevent

Cosette spends a great deal of her Milliways time out back, at least in good weather, taking a stroll with her hand tucked into Marius or Valjean's elbow. She's very fond of that. It's like walking in their dear old Luxembourg Gardens, which of course she still does too at home, but here everything is wilder, and the passersby can be so peculiar; it's lovely.

But right now she's alone, except for the little grey dog trotting at her heels. It feels deliciously wild and daring to be out here alone, as it always does. But she's going to meet her mother for a morning picnic out by the lake, and what could be more respectable than that?

"Come along, ma puce," she says to her dog happily, "you know Mother is very kind, so you'll have plenty of tre-- did you hear that?"

Panza doesn't answer, of course, but she's looking in the same direction the sound seemed to come from, towards a clump of bushes near the forest's edge.

And it was a high, stifled whimper, like the sound of some small injured animal.

Cosette's alone. But the sun is shining and Panza is with her and it's a clump of bushes, not the forest's dark shadows, and -- and it's a hurt animal, something small and uncomprehending and in pain, and what if she can help it?

Her young face firms in decision, under the brim of her lace-trimmed bonnet, and she turns her steps that way.

Marius has ducked into the hall to call for hot drinks. So it's Cosette and her father, alone at last in his Milliways room.

Part of her wants to weep once more for joy. Part of her wants to shout at him. She turns away abruptly to grab a quilt from his bed.

"Here," she says, "put this quilt over your lap, Father. It's winter here. You must take care of yourself! I tell you, we will be here often. You will grow quite sick of us! And then in Paris you will come to live with us. I have a room all ready. I won't hear a word against it. You will be with us, we will all be together, you will be a father to your little Cosette again, and we will all be very happy."

As she chatters she tucks the quilt around him, and pulls a footstool near. If he wants, he can put his feet onto it. Otherwise, she'll settle onto it, to sit at his feet like a confiding child.

Cosette steps through the door at Milliways. She's in her garden, just as she was. She is awake.

So she feels, at least. But she felt awake at Milliways, too, save that her surroundings were clearly that of a dream. And if her dream has ended, then it was a very peculiar one, very long, and yet contained in the space of a moment's dreaming abstraction. For here is her father just coming to the door now, buttoning up his coat and saying with an indulgent air, "Yes, my child, I am here."

She resolves to wait. If she slips from this dream of reality into another, she will know when she wakes. If she truly is awake, she'll know that too.

Besides, ahead of her is time with Marius.

Cosette lets herself be distracted by the walk with her father, the sights of Paris in winter around her, the sociability of a little conversation with Marius's flattering peacock of a grandfather, the joy of sitting with Marius in quiet conversation and in loving silence. She's used to keeping her own thoughts deep inside her, anyway.

When they leave the Gillenormand household -- reluctantly for Cosette, without discernable opinion from her politely smiling father -- she has decided that she's really awake. None of this felt like a dream at all; nothing was strange, nothing changed in the way of dreams.

Walking homewards on her father's arm, she's very thoughtful.