After a silence, she would add, as if guessing that he was sad too,-- "And, father, is there anything the matter with you?" "With me? Oh, nothing," he would reply. These two beings who had loved each other so exclusively, and one of them with such a touching love, and had lived for a long time one through the other, were now suffering side by side, one on account of the other, without confessing it, without anger, and with a smile. CHAPTER VIII. THE CHAIN-GANG. The more unhappy of the two was Jean Valjean; for youth, even in its sorrow, has always a brilliancy of its own. At certain moments Jean Valjean suffered so intensely that he became childish, for it is the peculiarity of grief to bring out a man's childish side. He felt invincibly that Cosette was slipping from him; and he would have liked to struggle, hold her back, and excite her by some external and brilliant achievement. These ideas, childish, as we said, but at the same time senile, gave him through their very childishness a very fair notion of the influence of gold lace upon the imagination of girls. One day Count Coutard, Commandant of Paris, passed along the street on horseback, and in full-dress uniform. He envied this gilded man, and said to himself: What a happiness it would be to be able to put on that coat, which was an undeniable thing; that if Cosette saw him in it it would dazzle her, and when he passed before the Tuileries gates the sentinels would present arms to him, and that would be sufficient for Cosette, and prevent her looking at young men.