Four or five months earlier Cosette’s grief had been raw and sharp, but now, without her knowing it, it was healing. Spring, youth, her love for her father, the cheerfulness of birds and flowers seeped into her heart a little more each day. Whether the fire had gone out or was only banked under ash, no one could say. One day she suddenly thought of Marius and said: well, I don’t think about him any more.
In that very week a strikingly handsome lancer officer caught her eye as he passed the garden railing. He was fair and wasp-waisted, with a girl’s cheeks and a waxed moustache. His round, vain face was the opposite of Marius’s in every way. The next day he passed again, and Cosette made a note of the hour. From then on he went past the railing almost every day.
His comrades noticed that behind the railing of that neglected garden stood a rather pretty girl, nearly always there when he went by. When they told him she was watching him, he said: do I have time to look at every woman who looks at me? The handsome lieutenant’s name was Théodule Gillenormand. At that same time Marius was repeating to himself that if only he could see her once more before he died.