Great griefs contain exhaustion, and discourage us with life; the man into whom they enter feels something retire from him. In youth their visit is mournful, at a later date it is sinister. Alas! when the blood is hot, when the hair is black, when the head is upright on the body like the flame on the candle, when the heart, full of a yearning love, still has palpitations which may be given to it in return, when a man has time to recover from the wound, when all women are there, and all the smiles, and all the future, and the whole horizon, when the strength of life is complete,--if despair be a frightful thing under such circumstances, what is it then in old age, when years are growing more and more livid, at that twilight hour when the stars of the tomb are beginning to become visible? While Jean Valjean was thinking, Toussaint came in; he rose and asked her,-- "Do you know whereabout it is?" Toussaint, in her stupefaction, could only answer,-- "I beg your pardon, sir." Jean Valjean continued,-- "Did you not say just now that they were fighting?" "Oh yes, sir," Toussaint replied; "over at St. Merry." There are some mechanical movements which come to us, without our cognizance, from our deepest thoughts. It was doubtless under the impulse of a movement of this nature, of which he was scarce conscious, that Jean Valjean found himself five minutes later in the street. He was bareheaded, and sat down on the bench before his house, seemingly listening. Night had set in. CHAPTER II. THE GAMIN THE ENEMY OF LAMPS.