He, the galley-slave, might have hidden himself forever in an honest family; he had withstood this temptation.
And with what motive?
Through a conscientious scruple.
He himself explained this with the irresistible accents of truth.
In short, whatever this Jean Valjean might be, he was, undoubtedly, a conscience which was awakening.
There existed some mysterious re-habilitation which had begun; and, to all appearances, scruples had for a long time already controlled this man.
Such fits of justice and goodness are not characteristic of vulgar natures.
An awakening of conscience is grandeur of soul.
Jean Valjean was sincere.
This sincerity, visible, palpable, irrefragable, evident from the very grief that it caused him, rendered inquiries useless, and conferred authority on all that that man had said.
Here, for Marius, there was a strange reversal of situations.
What breathed from M. Fauchelevent? distrust.
What did Jean Valjean inspire? confidence.
In the mysterious balance of this Jean Valjean which the pensive Marius struck, he admitted the active principle, he admitted the passive principle, and he tried to reach a balance.
But all this went on as in a storm.
Marius, while endeavoring to form a clear idea of this man, and while pursuing Jean Valjean, so to speak, in the depths of his thought, lost him and found him again in a fatal mist.
The deposit honestly restored, the probity of the confession—these were good.
This produced a lightening of the cloud, then the cloud became black once more.
Troubled as were Marius’ memories, a shadow of them returned to him.
After all, what was that adventure in the Jondrette attic?
Why had that man taken to flight on the arrival of the police, instead of entering a complaint?
Here Marius found the answer.
Because that man was a fugitive from justice, who had broken his ban.
Another question: Why had that man come to the barricade?
For Marius now once more distinctly beheld that recollection which had reappeared in his emotions like sympathetic ink at the application of heat.
This man had been in the barricade.
He had not fought there.
What had he come there for?
In the presence of this question a spectre sprang up and replied: “Javert.”
Marius recalled perfectly now that funereal sight of Jean Valjean dragging the pinioned Javert out of the barricade, and he still heard behind the corner of the little Rue Mondetour that frightful pistol shot.
Obviously, there was hatred between that police spy and the galley-slave.
The one was in the other’s way.
Jean Valjean had gone to the barricade for the purpose of revenging himself.
He had arrived late.
He probably knew that Javert was a prisoner there.
The Corsican vendetta has penetrated to certain lower strata and has become the law there; it is so simple that it does not astonish souls which are but half turned towards good; and those hearts are so constituted that a criminal, who is in the path of repentance, may be scrupulous in the matter of theft and unscrupulous in the matter of vengeance.
Jean Valjean had killed Javert.
At least, that seemed to be evident.
This was the final question, to be sure; but to this there was no reply.
This question Marius felt like pincers.
How had it come to pass that Jean Valjean’s existence had elbowed that of Cosette for so long a period?
What melancholy sport of Providence was that which had placed that child in contact with that man?
Are there then chains for two which are forged on high? and does God take pleasure in coupling the angel with the demon?
So a crime and an innocence can be room-mates in the mysterious galleys of wretchedness?
In that defiling of condemned persons which is called human destiny, can two brows pass side by side, the one ingenuous, the other formidable, the one all bathed in the divine whiteness of dawn, the other forever blemished by the flash of an eternal lightning?
Who could have arranged that inexplicable pairing off?
In what manner, in consequence of what prodigy, had any community of life been established between this celestial little creature and that old criminal?
Who could have bound the lamb to the wolf, and, what was still more incomprehensible, have attached the wolf to the lamb?
For the wolf loved the lamb, for the fierce creature adored the feeble one, for, during the space of nine years, the angel had had the monster as her point of support.
Cosette’s childhood and girlhood, her advent in the daylight, her virginal growth towards life and light, had been sheltered by that hideous devotion.