Cosette and her father walked along the street. She chit-chattered joviantly about a pair of doves she witnessed at the Luxemburg and the story she made up of how they met and fell in love. Jean Valjean listened. Sometimes he would close his eyes and listen to the gentle music of Cosette's voice. Other times he would turn and gaze upon her with a look that any man with a beloved daughter would recognize. And other times still he would respond to Cosette: "How often do they see each other in the garden?" "Were they fated to meet?" "Did they know each other in childhood?" "Do their fathers approve?"

But always, he would smile.

And Cosette would smile too. It did not take much for the girl to do so, and so she was happy most of the time. Valjean thought it was perhaps compensation for all the time she spent unhappy as a child.

The pair often walked like this. And often they would witness every facet of life in the streets of their Paris. They saw the rich in their nice restaurants, they saw the Bourgeois out strolling about as they did, they saw beggars sleeping in the gutters, and they saw children of all walks of life acting in that universal way that all children do.

One day, Cosette and Valjean happened upon a beggar family. The man was small and ratlike, the woman almost monstrous. They had two daughters. The younger was pulling on her mother's tattered shawl. The older one, Cosette remarked, was about the same age as her and in a terribly destitute state. Cosette cast her a sad glance and continued looking forward, when something compelled her to look back upon the wretched girl. She didn't know what it was. Perhaps it was curiousity; perhaps it was fate.

Cosette looked upon the girl. And this time, she truly looked at her. Cosette saw ratty hair, a sickly pallor, bony shoulders, scabby knees, tattered rags, dirty feet, and a dull gleam in those sunken eyes that resembled both quiet resignation and a dreamer's fiery soul. Cosette looked at this poor creature and something stirred in the back of her mind. She crossed over into a state almost like frightful reverie. Cosette looked into this sad creature's eyes and felt something like a familiar electricity, intriguing her, frightening her, and for a reason she could not explain, she had a feeling, like a steel cable connecting the two girls together, that the other felt the same way too. Cosette was torn between running away and staying to stare at the girl; both options terrified her, and she didn't know why or how, but that excited her greatly.

Cosette hadn't notice when Valjean had pulled her away after her legs had stopped walkin, or when they arrived at their home, or that she hadn't even touched her supper, or that she went to bed without saying a single word. But what she had noticed was that before she fell into a fitful slumber fraught with dreams from a distant life, a memory struck her like a bolt of lightning, her insides twisted in a way that was strange and warm, and a single whisper escaped and lingered on those soft, red lips of hers: "Éponine."