Page 148 - les-miserables

as a drudge. He did whatever he could. His sister worked
also but what could she do with seven little children? It was
a sad group enveloped in misery, which was being gradually
annihilated. A very hard winter came. Jean had no work.
The family had no bread. No bread literally. Seven chil-
dren!
One Sunday evening, Maubert Isabeau, the baker on the
Church Square at Faverolles, was preparing to go to bed,
when he heard a violent blow on the grated front of his shop.
He arrived in time to see an arm passed through a hole made
by a blow from a fist, through the grating and the glass. The
arm seized a loaf of bread and carried it off. Isabeau ran out
in haste; the robber fled at the full speed of his legs. Isabeau
ran after him and stopped him. The thief had flung away the
loaf, but his arm was still bleeding. It was Jean Valjean.
This took place in 1795. Jean Valjean was taken before
the tribunals of the time for theft and breaking and enter-
ing an inhabited house at night. He had a gun which he
used better than any one else in the world, he was a bit of a
poacher, and this injured his case. There exists a legitimate
prejudice against poachers. The poacher, like the smuggler,
smacks too strongly of the brigand. Nevertheless, we will
remark cursorily, there is still an abyss between these races
of men and the hideous assassin of the towns. The poacher
lives in the forest, the smuggler lives in the mountains or on
the sea. The cities make ferocious men because they make
corrupt men. The mountain, the sea, the forest, make savage
men; they develop the fierce side, but often without destroy-
ing the humane side.

148 Les Miserables