Page 150 - les-miserables

sake of clothing and nourishing seven little children.
He set out for Toulon. He arrived there, after a journey
of twenty-seven days, on a cart, with a chain on his neck.
At Toulon he was clothed in the red cassock. All that had
constituted his life, even to his name, was effaced; he was
no longer even Jean Valjean; he was number 24,601. What
became of his sister? What became of the seven children?
Who troubled himself about that? What becomes of the
handful of leaves from the young tree which is sawed off at
the root?
It is always the same story. These poor living beings,
these creatures of God, henceforth without support, with-
out guide, without refuge, wandered away at random,—who
even knows?— each in his own direction perhaps, and little
by little buried themselves in that cold mist which engulfs
solitary destinies; gloomy shades, into which disappear in
succession so many unlucky heads, in the sombre march of
the human race. They quitted the country. The clock-tower
of what had been their village forgot them; the boundary
line of what had been their field forgot them; after a few
years’ residence in the galleys, Jean Valjean himself forgot
them. In that heart, where there had been a wound, there
was a scar. That is all. Only once, during all the time which
he spent at Toulon, did he hear his sister mentioned. This
happened, I think, towards the end of the fourth year of
his captivity. I know not through what channels the news
reached him. Some one who had known them in their own
country had seen his sister. She was in Paris. She lived in a
poor street Rear Saint-Sulpice, in the Rue du Gindre. She

150 Les Miserables