Page 2347 - les-miserables

the means which a poor damned wretch takes to open his
breast and force his duty to come forth; you have before you,
sir, a wretched man.’
Marius slowly crossed the room, and, when he was quite
close to Jean Valjean, he offered the latter his hand.
But Marius was obliged to step up and take that hand
which was not offered, Jean Valjean let him have his own
way, and it seemed to Marius that he pressed a hand of mar-
ble.
‘My grandfather has friends,’ said Marius; ‘I will procure
your pardon.’
‘It is useless,’ replied Jean Valjean. ‘I am believed to be
dead, and that suffices. The dead are not subjected to sur-
veillance. They are supposed to rot in peace. Death is the
same thing as pardon.’
And, disengaging the hand which Marius held, he add-
ed, with a sort of inexorable dignity:
‘Moreover, the friend to whom I have recourse is the
doing of my duty; and I need but one pardon, that of my
conscience.’
At that moment, a door at the other end of the drawing-
room opened gently half way, and in the opening Cosette’s
head appeared. They saw only her sweet face, her hair was in
charming disorder, her eyelids were still swollen with sleep.
She made the movement of a bird, which thrusts its head
out of its nest, glanced first at her husband, then at Jean
Valjean, and cried to them with a smile, so that they seemed
to behold a smile at the heart of a rose:
‘I will wager that you are talking politics. How stupid

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