Sweet fifteen

Marius sees Cosette sitting and chatting with Valjean on a bench on a street in Paris.

He is a handsome young man of 20 or so, and Hugo describes her as "sweet fifteen."

There is a moment when girls bloom in a twinkling, and become roses all at once.

Yesterday we left them children, today we find them disturbing."

A glimmer of Nabokov, perhaps.

Though at fifteen she is a shade too old to qualify as one of Humbert Humbert's nymphettes.

Marius falls in love with her, just from seeing her.

Reading Les Miserables.