ok me in the face. And you won''t live with us!
And you won''t have my chamber! What have I done to you?
Has anything happened?"
"Nothing."
"Well then?"
"Everything is as usual."
"Why do you change your name?"
"You have changed yours, surely."
He smiled again with the same smile as before and added:
"Since you are Madame Pontmercy, I certainly can be Monsieur Jean."
"I don''t understand anything about it.
All this is idiotic. I shall ask permission of my husband for you to be `Monsieur Jean.'' I hope that he will not consent to it.
You cause me a great deal of pain.
One does have freaks, but one does not cause one''s little Cosette grief.
That is wrong.
You have no right to be wicked, you who are so good."
He made no reply.
She seized his hands with vivacity, and raising them to her face with an irresistible movement, she pressed them against her neck beneath her chin, which is a gesture of profound tenderness.
"Oh!" she said to him, "be good!"
And she went on:
"This is what I call being good:
being nice and coming and living here,-- there are birds here as there are in the Rue Plumet,--living with us, quitting that hole of a Rue de l''Homme Arme, not giving us riddles to guess, being like all the rest of the world, dining with us, breakfasting with us, being my father."