Il n’y a guère autre chose que cela dans le monde : s’aimer

Jean Valjean’s deathbed words, Il n’y a guère autre chose que cela dans le monde : s’aimer, distill his final message to Cosette and Marius Pontmercy: to love one another. Spoken as he is dying, the sentence is both a maxim about life and an intimate farewell, rooted in the memories, forgiveness, and blessing he shares with them in his last moments.

Meaning in Context

The expression comes after Jean Valjean recalls the happiness he shared with Cosette: her childhood, their years together, and the first time he took her hand at Montfermeil. His recollections make the sentence personal rather than abstract. The love he commends is the bond his memories have just shown, now entrusted to Cosette and Marius Pontmercy as he prepares to leave them.

His farewell also places affection beside loss. He acknowledges that the years of shared life have ended and tells them not to weep, while imagining that they will still see him smile when night comes. The maxim does not deny separation; it offers love as what remains meaningful across it.

The Farewell Scene

Before speaking the maxim, Jean Valjean asks Cosette to remember her mother and the suffering and love that shaped her life. He tells the young couple to forgive those who treated Cosette cruelly and urges them to love one another always. The sentence gathers these separate acts of farewell—memory, forgiveness, and counsel—into a single principle.

Material details give the scene its tenderness and restraint. Jean Valjean points out a five-hundred-franc note in the drawer that he has left untouched for the poor, and recalls the little dress Cosette wore as a child. As his sight dims, he says he sees light, declares himself happy to die, and asks the two of them to bring their beloved heads close so he can lay his hands upon them. Cosette and Marius Pontmercy kneel beside him, each holding one of his hands; the hands no longer move.

Significance

The expression is the emotional culmination of Jean Valjean’s final speech. Its universal wording arises from a particular relationship: a dying man addresses the two people he calls his children and asks them to preserve their love for one another. The closing image of their shared kneeling beside his still hands gives that counsel its consequence. His last words do not undo death or restore their former life together; they leave the couple with a charge to carry love forward.