Page 613 - les-miserables

the capital and the village of Montfermeil (Seine-et-Oise).
He is said to have profited by this interval of three or four
days of liberty, to withdraw a considerable sum deposited
by him with one of our leading bankers. This sum has been
estimated at six or seven hundred thousand francs. If the
indictment is to be trusted, he has hidden it in some place
known to himself alone, and it has not been possible to lay
hands on it. However that may be, the said Jean Valjean has
just been brought before the Assizes of the Department of
the Var as accused of highway robbery accompanied with
violence, about eight years ago, on the person of one of
those honest children who, as the patriarch of Ferney has
said, in immortal verse,

“... Arrive from Savoy every year,
And who, with gentle hands, do clear
Those long canals choked up with soot.’

This bandit refused to defend himself. It was proved by
the skilful and eloquent representative of the public pros-
ecutor, that the theft was committed in complicity with
others, and that Jean Valjean was a member of a band of
robbers in the south. Jean Valjean was pronounced guilty
and was condemned to the death penalty in consequence.
This criminal refused to lodge an appeal. The king, in his
inexhaustible clemency, has deigned to commute his pen-
alty to that of penal servitude for life. Jean Valjean was
immediately taken to the prison at Toulon.
The reader has not forgotten that Jean Valjean had reli-

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