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 sparing the royal personage a sight of it.

Jean Valjean returned home utterly overwhelmed. Such encounters are
shocks, and the memory that they leave behind 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 dejection to notice her words and reply to
them. But when Cosette was leaving him in the evening, to betake herself
to bed, he heard her say in a low voice, and as though talking to
herself: "It seems to me, that if I were to find one of those men in my
pathway, oh, my God, I should die merely from the sight of him close at
hand."

Fortunately, chance ordained that on the morrow of that tragic day,
there was some official solemnity apropos of I know not what,--fetes in
Paris, a review in the Champ de Mars, jousts on the Seine, theatrical
performances in the Champs-Elysees, fireworks at the Arc de l'Etoile,
illuminations everywhere. Jean Valjean did violence to his habits, and
took Cosette to see these rejoicings, for the purpose of diverting her
from the memory of the day before, and of effacing, beneath the smiling
tumult of all Paris, the abominable thing which had passed before her.
The review with which the festival was spiced made the presence of
uniforms perfectly natural; Jean Valjean donned his uniform of a
national g