n, and I give it to God."

CHAPTER XIII--LITTLE GERVAIS

Jean Valjean left the town as though he were fleeing from it. He set out
at a very hasty pace through the fields, taking whatever roads and paths
presented themselves to him, without perceiving that he was incessantly
retracing his steps. He wandered thus the whole morning, without having
eaten anything and without feeling hungry. He was the prey of a throng
of novel sensations. He was conscious of a sort of rage; he did not
know against whom it was directed. He could not have told whether he was
touched or humiliated. There came over him at moments a strange emotion
which he resisted and to which he opposed the hardness acquired during
the last twenty years of his life. This state of mind fatigued him.
He perceived with dismay that the sort of frightful calm which the
injustice of his misfortune had conferred upon him was giving way within
him. He asked himself what would replace this. At times he would have
actually preferred to be in prison with the gendarmes, and that things
should not have happened in this way; it would have agitated him less.
Although the season was tolerably far advanced, there were still a few
late flowers in the hedge-rows here and there, whose odor as he passed
through them in his march recalled to him memories of his childhood.
These memories were almost intolerable to him, it was so long since they
had recurred to him.

Unutterable thoughts assembled within him in this manner all day long.

As the sun declined to its setting, casting long shadows athwart the
soil from every pebble, Jean Valjean sat down behind a bush upon a large
ruddy plain, which was absolutely deserted. There was nothing on the
horizon except the Alps. Not even the spire of a distant village. Jean
Valjean might have been three leagues distant from D---- A path which
intersected the plain passed a few paces from the bush.

In the middle of this meditation, which would have contributed not
a little to render his rags terrifying to any one who might have
encountered him, a joyous sound became audible.

He turned his head and saw a little Savoyard, about ten years of age,
coming up the path and singing, his hurdy-gurdy on his hip, and his
marmot-box on his back.

One of those gay and gentle children, who go from land to land affording
a view of their knees through the holes in their trousers.

Without stopping his song, the lad halted in his march from tim