Valjean, so to speak, to the bottom of his thoughts, lost him, and found him again in a fatal mist. The honest restoration of the trust-money and the probity of the confession were good, and formed as it were a break in the cloud; but then the cloud became black again. However confused Marius's reminiscences might be, some shadows still returned to him. What, after all, was that adventure in the Jondrette garret? Why, on the arrival of the police, did that man, instead of complaining, escape? Here Marius found the answer,--because this man was a convict who had broken his ban. Another question, Why did this man come to the barricade? For at present Marius distinctly saw again that recollection, which reappeared in his emotions like sympathetic ink before the fire. This man was at the barricade and did not fight; what did he want there? Before this question a spectre rose and gave the answer,--Javert. Marius perfectly remembered now the mournful vision of Jean Valjean dragging the bound Javert out of the barricade, and heard again behind the angle of the little Mondétour Lane the frightful pistol-shot. There was probably a hatred between this spy and this galley-slave, and one annoyed the other. Jean Valjean went to the barricade to revenge himself; he arrived late, and was probably aware that Javert was a prisoner there. Corsican Vendetta has penetrated certain lower strata of society, and is the law with them; it is so simple that it does not astonish minds which have half returned to virtue, and their hearts are so constituted that a criminal, when on the path of repentance, may be scrupulous as to a robbery and not so as to a vengeance. Jean Valjean had killed Javert, or at least that seemed evident. The last question of all admitted of no reply, and this question Marius felt like a pair of pincers. How was it that the existence of Jean Valjean had so long brushed against that of Cosette? What was this gloomy sport of Providence which had brought this man and this child in contact? Are there chains for two forged in heaven, and does God take pleasure in coupling the angel with the demon? A crime and an innocence can, then, be chamber companions in the mysterious hulks of misery? In that defile of condemned men which is called human destiny, two foreheads may pass along side by side, one simple, the other formidable,--one all bathed in the divine whiteness of dawn, the other eternally branded? Who can have determined this inexplicable approximation? In what way, in consequence of what prodigy, could a community of life have been established between this celestial child and this condemned old man? Who could have attached the lamb to the wolf, and even more incomprehensible still, the wolf to the lamb? For the wolf loved the lamb, the ferocious being adored the weak being, and for nine years the angel had leaned on the monster for support. The childhood and maidenhood of Cosette and her virgin growth toward life and light had