Page 2423 - les-miserables

Jean Valjean, who had suddenly grown grand, emerged
from his cloud. Marius could not repress a cry of joy.
‘Well, then this unhappy wretch is an admirable man!
the whole of that fortune really belonged to him! he is Mad-
eleine, the providence of a whole countryside! he is Jean
Valjean, Javert’s savior! he is a hero! he is a saint!’
‘He’s not a saint, and he’s not a hero!’ said Thenardier.
‘He’s an assassin and a robber.’
And he added, in the tone of a man who begins to feel
that he possesses some authority:
‘Let us be calm.’
Robber, assassin—those words which Marius thought
had disappeared and which returned, fell upon him like an
ice-cold shower-bath.
‘Again!’ said he.
‘Always,’ ejaculated Thenardier. ‘Jean Valjean did not rob
Madeleine, but he is a thief. He did not kill Javert, but he is
a murderer.’
‘Will you speak,’ retorted Marius, ‘of that miserable
theft, committed forty years ago, and expiated, as your own
newspapers prove, by a whole life of repentance, of self-ab-
negation and of virtue?’
‘I say assassination and theft, Monsieur le Baron, and I
repeat that I am speaking of actual facts. What I have to
reveal to you is absolutely unknown. It belongs to unpub-
lished matter. And perhaps you will find in it the source of
the fortune so skilfully presented to Madame la Baronne by
Jean Valjean. I say skilfully, because, by a gift of that nature
it would not be so very unskilful to slip into an honorable

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