This could not last. Assuredly--and we lay stress on the fact--he had not yielded without resistance to this monster, to this infamous angel, to this hideous hero, at whom he felt almost as indignant as stupefied. Twenty times while in that hackney coach face to face with Jean Valjean the legal tiger had roared within him. Twenty times he had felt tempted to hurl himself on Jean Valjean, to seize and devour him,--that is to say, arrest him. What more simple, in fact,--shout to the nearest post before which he passed, "Here is a convict who has broken his ban!" and then go away, leave the condemned man there, be ignorant of the rest, and interfere no further? This man is eternally the prisoner of the law, and the law will do what it pleases with him. What was fairer? Javert had said all this to himself; he had wished to go further,--to act, apprehend the man,--and then, as now, had been unable; and each time that his hand was convulsively raised to Jean Valjean's collar, it fell back as if under an enormous weight, and he heard in the bottom of his heart a voice, a strange voice, crying to him, "That is well. Give up your saviour, then send for Pontius Pilate's basin, and wash your hands in it!" Then his thoughts reverted to himself, and by the side of Jean Valjean aggrandized he saw himself degraded. A convict was his benefactor, but why had he allowed that man to let him live? He had the right of being killed at that barricade, and should have employed that right. It would have been better to call the other insurgents to his aid against Jean Valjean, and have himself shot by force. His supreme agony was the disappearance of certainty, and he felt himself uprooted. The code was now only a stump in his hand, and he had to deal with scruples of an unknown species. There was within him a sentimental revelation entirely distinct from the legal affirmation, his sole measure hitherto, and it was not sufficient to remain in his old honesty. A whole order of unexpected facts arose and subjugated him, an entire new world appeared to his soul; benefits accepted and returned, devotion, mercy, indulgence, violence done by pity to austerity, no more definitive condemnation, no more damnation, the possibility of a tear in the eye of the law, and perhaps some justice according to God acting in an inverse ratio to justice according to man. He perceived in the darkness the rising of an unknown moral sun, and he was horrified and dazzled. He was an owl forced to look like the eagle.