Page 463 - les-miserables

ing. I am a man who does not have something to eat every
day. I was coming from Ailly; I was walking through the
country after a shower, which had made the whole coun-
try yellow: even the ponds were overflowed, and nothing
sprang from the sand any more but the little blades of grass
at the wayside. I found a broken branch with apples on the
ground; I picked up the branch without knowing that it
would get me into trouble. I have been in prison, and they
have been dragging me about for the last three months;
more than that I cannot say; people talk against me, they tell
me, ‘Answer!’ The gendarme, who is a good fellow, nudges
my elbow, and says to me in a low voice, ‘Come, answer!’ I
don’t know how to explain; I have no education; I am a poor
man; that is where they wrong me, because they do not see
this. I have not stolen; I picked up from the ground things
that were lying there. You say, Jean Valjean, Jean Mathieu!
I don’t know those persons; they are villagers. I worked for
M. Baloup, Boulevard de l’Hopital; my name is Champ-
mathieu. You are very clever to tell me where I was born;
I don’t know myself: it’s not everybody who has a house in
which to come into the world; that would be too convenient.
I think that my father and mother were people who strolled
along the highways; I know nothing different. When I was
a child, they called me young fellow; now they call me old
fellow; those are my baptismal names; take that as you like.
I have been in Auvergne; I have been at Faverolles. Pardi.
Well! can’t a man have been in Auvergne, or at Faverolles,
without having been in the galleys? I tell you that I have not
stolen, and that I am Father Champmathieu; I have been

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