ay in front of him,
he perceived a light. This time it was not that terrible light; it was
good, white light. It was daylight. Jean Valjean saw the outlet.

A damned soul, who, in the midst of the furnace, should suddenly
perceive the outlet of Gehenna, would experience what Jean Valjean felt.
It would fly wildly with the stumps of its burned wings towards that
radiant portal. Jean Valjean was no longer conscious of fatigue, he no
longer felt Marius' weight, he found his legs once more of steel, he ran
rather than walked. As he approached, the outlet became more and more
distinctly defined. It was a pointed arch, lower than the vault, which
gradually narrowed, and narrower than the gallery, which closed in as
the vault grew lower. The tunnel ended like the interior of a funnel;
a faulty construction, imitated from the wickets of penitentiaries,
logical in a prison, illogical in a sewer, and which has since been
corrected.

Jean Valjean reached the outlet.

There he halted.

It certainly was the outlet, but he could not get out.

The arch was closed by a heavy grating, and the grating, which, to all
appearance, rarely swung on its rusty hinges, was clamped to its stone
jamb by a thick lock, which, red with rust, seemed like an enormous
brick. The keyhole could be seen, and the robust latch, deeply sunk in
the iron staple. The door was plainly double-locked. It was one of those
prison locks which old Paris was so fond of lavishing.

Beyond the grating was the open air, the river, the daylight, the shore,
very narrow but sufficient for escape. The distant quays, Paris, that
gulf in which one so easily hides oneself, the broad horizon, liberty.
On the right, down stream, the bridge of Jena was discernible, on the
left, upstream, the bridge of the Invalides; the place would have been a
propitious one in which to await the night and to escape. It was one
of the most solitary points in Paris; the shore which faces the
Grand-Caillou. Flies were entering and emerging through the bars of the
grating.

It might have been half-past eight o'clock in the evening. The day was
declining.

Jean Valjean laid Marius down along the wall, on the dry portion of the
vaulting, then he went to the grating and clenched both fists round the
bars; the shock which he gave it was frenzied, but it did not move. The
grating did not stir. Jean Valjean seized the bars one after the other,
in the hope that he might be able to tear away the leas