Page 387 - les-miserables

ject, hideous crime!
For the first time in eight years, the wretched man had
just tasted the bitter savor of an evil thought and of an evil
action.
He spit it out with disgust.
He continued to question himself. He asked himself se-
verely what he had meant by this, ‘My object is attained!’
He declared to himself that his life really had an object; but
what object? To conceal his name? To deceive the police?
Was it for so petty a thing that he had done all that he had
done? Had he not another and a grand object, which was
the true one—to save, not his person, but his soul; to be-
come honest and good once more; to be a just man? Was
it not that above all, that alone, which he had always de-
sired, which the Bishop had enjoined upon him—to shut
the door on his past? But he was not shutting it! great God!
he was re-opening it by committing an infamous action! He
was becoming a thief once more, and the most odious of
thieves! He was robbing another of his existence, his life,
his peace, his place in the sunshine. He was becoming an as-
sassin. He was murdering, morally murdering, a wretched
man. He was inflicting on him that frightful living death,
that death beneath the open sky, which is called the galleys.
On the other hand, to surrender himself to save that man,
struck down with so melancholy an error, to resume his
own name, to become once more, out of duty, the convict
Jean Valjean, that was, in truth, to achieve his resurrection,
and to close forever that hell whence he had just emerged; to
fall back there in appearance was to escape from it in reality.

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