There is something more.
In what connection do you make this confession?
What is your motive?”
“My motive?” replied Jean Valjean in a voice so low and dull that one would have said that he was talking to himself rather than to Marius.
“From what motive, in fact, has this convict just said
‘I am a convict’?
Well, yes! the motive is strange.
It is out of honesty.
Stay, the unfortunate point is that I have a thread in my heart, which keeps me fast.
It is when one is old that that sort of thread is particularly solid.
All life falls in ruin around one; one resists.
Had I been able to tear out that thread, to break it, to undo the knot or to cut it, to go far away, I should have been safe. I had only to go away; there are diligences in the Rue Bouloy; you are happy; I am going.
I have tried to break that thread, I have jerked at it, it would not break, I tore my heart with it.
Then I said:
‘I cannot live anywhere else than here.’
I must stay.
Well, yes, you are right, I am a fool, why not simply remain here?
You offer me a chamber in this house, Madame Pontmercy is sincerely attached to me, she said to the armchair:
‘Stretch out your arms to him,’ your grandfather demands nothing better than to have me, I suit him, we shall live together, and take our meals in common, I shall give Cosette my arm . . . Madame Pontmercy, excuse me, it is a habit, we shall have but one roof, one table, one fire, the same chimney-corner in winter, the same promenade in summer, that is joy, that is happiness, that is everything.
We shall live as one family.
One family!”
At that word, Jean Valjean became wild.
He folded his arms, glared at the floor beneath his feet as though he would have excavated an abyss therein, and his voice suddenly rose in thundering tones:
“As one family!
No.
I belong to no family.
I do not belong to yours.
I do not belong to any family of men.
In houses where people are among themselves, I am superfluous.
There are families, but there is nothing of the sort for me.
I am an unlucky wretch; I am left outside.
Did I have a father and mother?
I almost doubt it.
On the day when I gave that child in marriage, all came to an end.
I have seen her happy, and that she is with a man whom she loves, and that there exists here a kind old man, a household of two angels, and all joys in that house, and that it was well, I said to myself:
‘Enter thou not.’
I could have lied, it is true, have deceived you all, and remained Monsieur Fauchelevent.
So long as it was for her, I could lie; but now it would be for myself, and I must not.
It was sufficient for me to hold my peace, it is true, and all would go on.
You ask me what has forced me to speak? a very odd thing; my conscience.
To hold my peace was very easy, however.
I passed the night in trying to persuade myself to it; you questioned me, and what I have just said to you is so extraordinary that you have the right to do it; well, yes, I have passed the night in alleging reasons to myself, and I gave myself very good reasons, I have done what I could.
But there are two things in which I have not succeeded; in breaking the thread that holds me fixed, riveted and sealed here by the heart, or in silencing some one who speaks softly to me when I am alone.
That is why I have come hither to tell you everything this morning.
Everything or nearly everything.
It is useless to tell you that which concerns only myself; I keep that to myself.
You know the essential points.
So I have taken my mystery and have brought it to you.
And I have disembowelled my secret before your eyes.
It was not a resolution that was easy to take.