Page 2364 - les-miserables

desire? All,— is not that enough? Jean Valjean’s personal af-
fairs did not concern him.
And bending over the fatal shadow of that man, he clung
fast, convulsively, to the solemn declaration of that unhap-
py wretch: ‘I am nothing to Cosette. Ten years ago I did not
know that she was in existence.’
Jean Valjean was a passer-by. He had said so himself.
Well, he had passed. Whatever he was, his part was fin-
ished.
Henceforth, there remained Marius to fulfil the part of
Providence to Cosette. Cosette had sought the azure in a
person like herself, in her lover, her husband, her celestial
male. Cosette, as she took her flight, winged and transfig-
ured, left behind her on the earth her hideous and empty
chrysalis, Jean Valjean.
In whatever circle of ideas Marius revolved, he always
returned to a certain horror for Jean Valjean. A sacred hor-
ror, perhaps, for, as we have just pointed out, he felt a quid
divinum in that man. But do what he would, and seek what
extenuation he would, he was certainly forced to fall back
upon this: the man was a convict; that is to say, a being who
has not even a place in the social ladder, since he is lower
than the very lowest rung. After the very last of men comes
the convict. The convict is no longer, so to speak, in the sem-
blance of the living. The law has deprived him of the entire
quantity of humanity of which it can deprive a man.
Marius, on penal questions, still held to the inexorable
system, though he was a democrat and he entertained all
the ideas of the law on the subject of those whom the law

2364 Les Miserables