Page 394 - les-miserables

the deuce! he has stolen! There is no use in my saying that
he has not been guilty of theft, for he has! I remain here; I
go on: in ten years I shall have made ten millions; I scatter
them over the country; I have nothing of my own; what is
that to me? It is not for myself that I am doing it; the pros-
perity of all goes on augmenting; industries are aroused
and animated; factories and shops are multiplied; fami-
lies, a hundred families, a thousand families, are happy;
the district becomes populated; villages spring up where
there were only farms before; farms rise where there was
nothing; wretchedness disappears, and with wretchedness
debauchery, prostitution, theft, murder; all vices disappear,
all crimes: and this poor mother rears her child; and behold
a whole country rich and honest! Ah! I was a fool! I was ab-
surd! what was that I was saying about denouncing myself?
I really must pay attention and not be precipitate about any-
thing. What! because it would have pleased me to play the
grand and generous; this is melodrama, after all; because
I should have thought of no one but myself, the idea! for
the sake of saving from a punishment, a trifle exaggerated,
perhaps, but just at bottom, no one knows whom, a thief,
a good-for-nothing, evidently, a whole country-side must
perish! a poor woman must die in the hospital! a poor little
girl must die in the street! like dogs; ah, this is abominable!
And without the mother even having seen her child once
more, almost without the child’s having known her mother;
and all that for the sake of an old wretch of an apple-thief
who, most assuredly, has deserved the galleys for something
else, if not for that; fine scruples, indeed, which save a guilty

394 Les Miserables