Page 1541 - les-miserables

Cosette was no less terrified, but in a different way. She
did not understand; what she beheld did not seem to her to
be possible; at length she cried:—
‘Father! What are those men in those carts?’
Jean Valjean replied: ‘Convicts.’
‘Whither are they going?’
‘To the galleys.’
At that moment, the cudgelling, multiplied by a hundred
hands, became zealous, blows with the flat of the sword were
mingled with it, it was a perfect storm of whips and clubs;
the convicts bent before it, a hideous obedience was evoked
by the torture, and all held their peace, darting glances like
chained wolves.
Cosette trembled in every limb; she resumed:—
‘Father, are they still men?’
‘Sometimes,’ answered the unhappy man.
It was the chain-gang, in fact, which had set out before
daybreak from Bicetre, and had taken the road to Mans in
order to avoid Fontainebleau, where the King then was. This
caused the horrible journey to last three or four days longer;
but torture may surely be prolonged with the object of spar-
ing the royal personage a sight of it.
Jean Valjean returned home utterly overwhelmed. Such
encounters are shocks, and the memory that they leave be-
hind them resembles a thorough shaking up.
Nevertheless, Jean Valjean did not observe that, on his
way back to the Rue de Babylone with Cosette, the latter was
plying him with other questions on the subject of what they
had just seen; perhaps he was too much absorbed in his own

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