PTER VI--JEAN VALJEAN

Towards the middle of the night Jean Valjean woke.

Jean Valjean came from a poor peasant family of Brie. He had not learned
to read in his childhood. When he reached man's estate, he became a
tree-pruner at Faverolles. His mother was named Jeanne Mathieu; his
father was called Jean Valjean or Vlajean, probably a sobriquet, and a
contraction of viola Jean, "here's Jean."

Jean Valjean was of that thoughtful but not gloomy disposition which
constitutes the peculiarity of affectionate natures. On the whole,
however, there was something decidedly sluggish and insignificant about
Jean Valjean in appearance, at least. He had lost his father and mother
at a very early age. His mother had died of a milk fever, which had not
been properly attended to. His father, a tree-pruner, like himself, had
been killed by a fall from a tree. All that remained to Jean Valjean
was a sister older than himself,--a widow with seven children, boys and
girls. This sister had brought up Jean Valjean, and so long as she had a
husband she lodged and fed her young brother.

The husband died. The eldest of the seven children was eight years old.
The youngest, one.

Jean Valjean had just attained his twenty-fifth year. He took the
father's place, and, in his turn, supported the sister who had brought
him up. This was done simply as a duty and even a little churlishly
on the part of Jean Valjean. Thus his youth had been spent in rude and
ill-paid toil. He had never known a "kind woman friend" in his native
parts. He had not had the time to fall in love.

He returned at night weary, and ate his broth without uttering a word.
His sister, mother Jeanne, often took the best part of his repast from
his bowl while he was eating,--a bit of meat, a slice of bacon, the
heart of the cabbage,--to give to one of her children. As he went on
eating, with his head bent over the table and almost into his soup, his
long hair falling about his bowl and concealing his eyes, he had the air
of perceiving nothing and allowing it. There was at Faverolles, not
far from the Valjean thatched cottage, on the other side of the lane,
a farmer's wife named Marie-Claude; the Valjean children, habitually
famished, sometimes went to borrow from Marie-Claude a pint of milk, in
their mother's name, which they drank behind a hedge or in some alley
corner, snatching the jug from each other so hastily that the little
girls spilled it on their aprons and down the