d for certain renunciations.
Nevertheless, she continued to call Jean Valjean:
Father.
Cosette, happy as the angels, was enthusiastic over Father Gillenormand. It is true that he overwhelmed her with gallant compliments and presents.
While Jean Valjean was building up for Cosette a normal situation in society and an unassailable status, M. Gillenormand was superintending the basket of wedding gifts.
Nothing so amused him as being magnificent.
He had given to Cosette a robe of Binche guipure which had descended to him from his own grandmother.
"These fashions come up again," said he, "ancient things are the rage, and the young women of my old age dress like the old women of my childhood."
He rifled his respectable chests of drawers in Coromandel lacquer, with swelling fronts, which had not been opened for years.--"Let us hear the confession of these dowagers," he said, "let us see what they have in their paunches."
He noisily violated the pot-bellied drawers of all his wives, of all his mistresses and of all his grandmothers. Pekins, damasks, lampas, painted moires, robes of shot gros de Tours, India kerchiefs embroidered in gold that could be washed, dauphines without a right or wrong side, in the piece, Genoa and Alencon point lace, parures in antique goldsmith''s work, ivory bon-bon boxes ornamented with microscopic battles, gewgaws and ribbons-- he lavished everything on Cosette.