"Is this little girl yours?"
F.—"Yes, Reverend Mother."
"Are you her father?"
F.—"Her grandfather."
The vocal mother said to the prioress in a whisper, "He answers well."
Jean Valjean had not said a word. The prioress looked attentively at Cosette, and whispered to the vocal mother, "She will be ugly."
The two mothers consulted for a few minutes in a very low voice in a corner of the parlor, and then the prioress turned and said,—
"Father Fauvent, you will get another knee-cap and bell, for we shall require two in future."
On the morrow two bells were really heard in the garden, and the nuns could not resist the temptation of raising a corner of their veils. They could see under the shade of the trees two men digging side by side, Fauvent and another. It was an enormous event; and silence was so far broken that they whispered, "It is an assistant gardener," while the vocal mothers added, "It is a brother of Father Fauvent's."
Jean Valjean was in fact permanently installed; he had the leathern knee-cap and bell, and was henceforth official. He called himself Ultime Fauchelevent. The most powerful determining cause of his admission was the remark of the prioress with reference to Cosette,—"She will be ugly." The prioress, once she had prognosticated this, felt an affection for Cosette, and gave her a place in the boarding-school. This is very logical after all; for although there may be no looking-glasses in a convent, women are conscious of their face. Now, girls who feel themselves pretty have a disinclination to take the veil; and as profession is generally in an inverse ratio to the beauty, more is hoped from ugly than from pretty girls.