taly, whom the message of the Directory
to the Five Hundred, of the 2d of Floreal, year IV., calls Buona-Parte,
was announced in Paris; on that same day a great gang of galley-slaves
was put in chains at Bicetre. Jean Valjean formed a part of that gang.
An old turnkey of the prison, who is now nearly eighty years old, still
recalls perfectly that unfortunate wretch who was chained to the end of
the fourth line, in the north angle of the courtyard. He was seated on
the ground like the others. He did not seem to comprehend his position,
except that it was horrible. It is probable that he, also, was
disentangling from amid the vague ideas of a poor man, ignorant of
everything, something excessive. While the bolt of his iron collar was
being riveted behind his head with heavy blows from the hammer, he wept,
his tears stifled him, they impeded his speech; he only managed to
say from time to time, "I was a tree-pruner at Faverolles." Then still
sobbing, he raised his right hand and lowered it gradually seven times,
as though he were touching in succession seven heads of unequal heights,
and from this gesture it was divined that the thing which he had done,
whatever it was, he had done for the sake of clothing and nourishing
seven little children.

He set out for Toulon. He arrived there, after a journey of twenty-seven
days, on a cart, with a chain on his neck. At Toulon he was clothed in
the red cassock. All that had constituted his life, even to his name,
was effaced; he was no longer even Jean Valjean; he was number 24,601.
What became of his sister? What became of the seven children? Who
troubled himself about that? What becomes of the handful of leaves from
the young tree which is sawed off at the root?

It is always the same story. These poor living beings, these creatures
of God, henceforth without support, without guide, without refuge,
wandered away at random,--who even knows?--each in his own direction
perhaps, and little by little buried themselves in that cold mist which
engulfs solitary destinies; gloomy shades, into which disappear in
succession so many unlucky heads, in the sombre march of the human race.
They quitted the country. The clock-tower of what had been their village
forgot them; the boundary line of what had been their field forgot them;
after a few years' residence in the galleys, Jean Valjean himself forgot
them. In that heart, where there had been a wound, there was a scar.
That is all. Only once