When the small family first arrived in Rue Plumet, a petite adventurer advanced eagerly on the vast wilds of India, in the back yard. After a procession of convicts passed and cause her father's hair to whiten another shade, she spend days peering out the cast iron bars of her garden prison. One afternoon (she doesn't think of it that way-- oh, how the days in a dark cell do run together!) a prison warden-- was that it? But of course, who else would traverse her desolate stone corridor?-- strode past, glanced unseeing at her, then started and looked again, drawing closer. She retreated a step in response.
"Bonjour, mademoiselle," he said, clearly somewhat startled by this apparition in the shrubbery. She retreated another step, not having expected this, not entirely sure how to react to this intrusion into her fantasy. She only nodded, casting her eyes down to the ground, where her feet pointed, slightly pigeon toed, in at each other.
"Are you a gypsy, hiding in those leaves, petite?" he asked with a laugh, regaining his composure and merry humor. Her head snaps up, her wide blue eyes rising to meet his.
"Mais oui," she gasped, delighted. She had never seen a gypsy, but other girls had, in that other life before the convent that she remembered none of. Ragged, colorful people, weren't they? And before she could even truly think it her plain gold crucifix necklace was layers of brightly hued baubles, her skirt a sweeping patchwork of colors and shades, swatches of every beautiful dress she had ever seen. . The man only laughed, a sound that made her dance a few shy gypsy steps away.
"Who are you, then?" she asked, staring directly at him in a way that did not at all befit a young Parisienne, but which suited a bohemienne quite well.
"Nothing quite so romantic as that, I fear, mademoiselle," he said, a laugh still playing at the corners of his mouth. "I am only a humble student."
"Surely that can be romantic, as well," she said, not entirely sure of the true requirements of romanticism.
"Surely not, mademoiselle," he replied, shaking his head in mock sorrow. "It is a very tedious existence. The only variety to be found is in the occasional changing of mistress-- ah, but you are too young and sweet to hear about such things."
"I know all about those things," she stated, fluttering long, dark gypsy lashes, swirling a bit a long, bright gypsy skirt.
"Of course you do, petite," he laughed, then gave his hat the slightest lift, for he was not the sort of fellow who believed in formalities of any form. "You think on those things, while I continue on my way, if I may."
"You may," she said, but darted with all a bohemienne's stealth behind the bushes and followed him down the street to the end of the garden, and he pretended he did not see or hear the clunking convent boots trying to move with gypsy's grace.
She and her father would travel daily to the park, and though he would demand she stay within sight, she would often slide off of the park bench and take off across the grass, twirling, perhaps, to feel her parti-colored gypsy skirt fly. She stumbled, one afternoon, to a stop, her hands on her knees as she panted, laughing with joy at physical exertion. Once she had caught her breath, she looked up and a gentleman sitting on one of the benches lining the path caught her eye.
It was his clothing, mostly, that struck her. The only man she saw regularly was her father, who always dressed in very plain, dark clothes. This gentleman wore short pants, and a colored overcoat and a waistcoat (what could be seen of it) of a most shocking hue. She stood, just looking, for a moment, rubbing absently at a smudge of dirt on her skirt, she felt her plain brown hair coming loose from its plaits. She trotted over to him.
"Bonjour, monsieur," she said politely. He paused a moment, waiting to reach the end of a passage, then looked up at her and started.
"Bonjour, mademoiselle," he said, his expression vaguely panicked as he racked his mind, trying to remember if he ought to know her, and where on earth he would have met such a small, plain little girl.
"What are you reading?" she asked, trying to peer and see. He quickly shut the book and covered the title, blushing.
"Just a history book, mademoiselle," he said. She blinked, confused. "About the former nobility, mademoiselle. Lords and ladies and such things."
This she understood. When she did not answer for a moment, he looked back down at his book, revealing an almost aristocratic profile. She decided at this moment that he must, due to his bright clothes and fine features and choice of reading material be, in fact, a prince. And before she even said another word she could feel the fine silk gown falling right down to her slippered toes, could feel the weight of curls piled in high style atop her head. Her back straightened, her chin lifted, and spoke.
"Why," she said, "I am a princess, myself."
He looked up sharply, startled, then let a gentle little smile cross his lips.
"Would not a princess be at the palace, not the Luxembourg, mademoiselle?" he asked.
"Oh, but…" she bit her lip, her mind working quickly. She was suddenly struck with an idea, and her face brightened. "Why, I am in disguise." All the more exciting! A flush rose into her cheeks at the mere thought.
"Truly, mademoiselle?" he asked, the soft smile still flickering on his mouth. She nodded, but was hardly listening, having already styled him as a prince in disguise, picturing her Papa as not truly her Papa (a thought so ridiculous that, for a moment, even her imagination could not quite tackle it), but only one protecting her from those powers that forced her to keep her royalty a secret.
"I bid you good day, monsieur," she said, dipping into the most graceful curtsey that she could manage. "I have important affairs to which I must attend."
He watched her for a moment as she started in a stately saunter back down the path to her father, who complimented (gently, softly, as was his way) her fine posture. Her disguised prince then opened his book again, returning to accounts of a time when princesses renounced their titles and no little girls dared adopt them.
When, one day, she walked with her father, her white bonnet on her head and her black shawl around her shoulders (but not a bonnet and shawl at all-- this day, rather, the roses and taffeta of a ballet dancer, for she had seen a picture in a book some days before), she heard a few words float back to her from one of the men who had just passed her.
"Pretty girl, but badly dressed."
She whirled around just in time to see a flash of a colored overcoat, of a young man who saw gypsies in gardens and a gentleman who read of princesses, and she looked down and saw her slightly wrinkled black dress that fell only to her mid calf, saw her wrinkled wool stockings and her heavy, scuffed boots, felt her battered white bonnet on her head and her tangled braids falling, frizzed with flyaways, down her back. And she felt her cheeks burn.
"Papa--" she began, but was abruptly stopped when a young man, clearly distracted, bumped into your.
"Beg your pardon, mademoiselle," he said, not raising his eyes to look at her. She, still holding her father's arm, watched him disappear into the street without so much as glancing at her or waiting for a reply. She recognized him, she was sure, from the Luxembourg, walking past in his mourning coat with that same abstracted look as he had worn when he ran into her. She had tried to catch his eye once, twice, when she was pretending to be a soldier, perhaps, or maybe only a princess. He had never looked, of course.
When she got home she went to her room. She glanced into her glass then jumped back, so startled she was by what she saw. Had it been always imagining it, then, that had put such roses in her cheeks, the veins of gold in her hair, the thick lashes to her eyes? She lowered those lashes and was startled by how alluring her own expression became. She pulled the dirty ribbons from the ends of her braids and combed through her hair with her fingers, letting the curls fall, loose, well past her shoulders. She thought of the young man in mourning, whose eyes would not raise to greet her even as he pushed her on the street, and she knew what her next role of make believe would be.
Cosette would be a lady.