This chapter has us in the Inn again with Valjean, Cosette and the Thenardiers. It’s the next morning and we immediately see the Thenardiers thinking extractively again. They begin with an insanely inflated bill, and at th same time madame Thenardier is still reeling from the display of love. What will she do in the wake of seeing the object of her hate lavished with love? She’ll expel Cosette from her presence permanently. Why? because in looking a the child and these gifts, and the way it exposed her cruelty, she is confronted with her own monstrosity and need. She accuses Valjean of insanity as a balm to her own conscience, unable to actually confront the gross reality of who she is and what she does.
Valjean sees an opportunity here to rescue Cosette and remove her from this situation once and for all. He is willing to pay any cost, and ends up securing the child (making it clear to master Thenardier that he will never see the child again) for 1500 francs.
Cosette is given a new outfit - all black, garments of mourning, presumably for her mother though she does not know that. Together she leaves with Valjean entering into a new chapter of life, one that seemed to have begun with a frightened cry for help to a God she knew nothing of. Valjean is a mystery to her, but a beloved one. Hugo describes what this meant for the child beautifully:
Cosette was going away, she did not know with whom or whither. All she knew was that she was leaving the Thenardier’s house for good - no one had troubled to say good-bye to her nor had she said good-bye to anyone. She left that place both hated and hating, a small gentle creature in whom every natural instinct until that moment had been suppressed.”
This will be a hard journey ahead no doubt, and I am certain this isn’t an immediate “happily ever-after” situation. However, it is a very real new beginning. Love does that. It opens doors for new ways of seeing and thinking and living and it invites us to walk through them. Cosette takes her first steps forward into being a little girl here. Can she actually leave the trauma behind? Will she forever carry the “haggard gleam of terror” in her eyes, or will it fade and be replaced with life, light and joy?