Little Gervais — Les Misérables

Jean Valjean leaves the town as though fleeing it. He takes whatever paths present themselves and retraces his steps all morning, eating nothing, not hungry. A sort of rage sits on him; he cannot tell against whom, or whether he is touched or humiliated. The frightful calm that injustice had given him is giving way. He does not know what will replace it. Late flowers in the hedges recall a childhood he has not visited in twenty years. Those memories are almost intolerable. As the sun declines he sits behind a bush on a deserted ruddy plain. Nothing on the horizon except the Alps. Not even a village spire. A joyous sound: a little Savoyard of about ten, hurdy-gurdy on his hip, marmot-box on his back, singing, playing knuckle-bones with his coins. Among them, one forty-sou piece. The child does not see him. The white piece escapes, rolls to the brushwood, and reaches Jean Valjean. He sets his foot upon it.

Little Gervais walks straight up, with the confidence of ignorance. Sir, my money. What is your name? Go away. The child weeps, grasps the collar, tries to move the iron-shod shoe. Valjean raises his head as if amazed, stretches toward his cudgel, and cries in a terrible voice, Who is there. The boy answers with his name and his forty sous. Valjean rises, foot still on the silver. Will you take yourself off. The child runs without turning his neck. Valjean hears him sob, then the boy is gone. The sun has set. He has eaten nothing. He stands looking at a fragment of blue earthenware. He shivers, buttons his blouse, steps, and sees the forty-sou piece half ground into the earth, shining among the pebbles. It is as if he had received a galvanic shock. He recoils. The coin is an open eye riveted on him. He seizes it, stares over the plain like a terrified wild animal, and runs the way the child went, shouting Little Gervais into a silence that swallows the voice.

A priest on horseback has seen no one. Valjean forces coins on him for his poor, then, wildly, asks to be arrested: he is a thief. The priest puts spurs to his horse. At a crossing of three paths the moon is up. He shouts the name a last time, falls on a stone, fists in his hair, and cries that he is a wretch. Then his heart bursts. It is the first time he has wept in nineteen years. The Bishop's words return: a promised honest man, a soul bought and given to God. Pride had been the fortress. Pardon was the greatest assault yet. If he is not henceforth the best of men he will be the worst. The theft of forty sous was not the man; it was the beast, habit placing a foot while the intelligence struggled. When intelligence reawakened it beheld an action of which he was no longer capable. He sees the galley-convict in front of him, then a torch that is the Bishop. As the Bishop grows, Valjean the shade vanishes. He weeps like a child. A carrier at three in the morning sees a man kneeling on the pavement in the shadow, in front of the door of Monseigneur Welcome.