what he ought to do. He could not.

Something barred his way in that direction.

Something? What? Is there in the world, anything outside of the
tribunals, executory sentences, the police and the authorities? Javert
was overwhelmed.

A galley-slave sacred! A convict who could not be touched by the law!
And that the deed of Javert!

Was it not a fearful thing that Javert and Jean Valjean, the man made to
proceed with vigor, the man made to submit,--that these two men who were
both the things of the law, should have come to such a pass, that both
of them had set themselves above the law? What then! such enormities
were to happen and no one was to be punished! Jean Valjean, stronger
than the whole social order, was to remain at liberty, and he, Javert,
was to go on eating the government's bread!

His revery gradually became terrible.

He might, athwart this revery, have also reproached himself on
the subject of that insurgent who had been taken to the Rue des
Filles-du-Calvaire; but he never even thought of that. The lesser fault
was lost in the greater. Besides, that insurgent was, obviously, a dead
man, and, legally, death puts an end to pursuit.

Jean Valjean was the load which weighed upon his spirit.

Jean Valjean disconcerted him. All the axioms which had served him as
points of support all his life long, had crumbled away in the presence
of this man. Jean Valjean's generosity towards him, Javert, crushed him.
Other facts which he now recalled, and which he had formerly treated
as lies and folly, now recurred to him as realities. M. Madeleine
re-appeared behind Jean Valjean, and the two figures were superposed in
such fashion that they now formed but one, which was venerable. Javert
felt that something terrible was penetrating his soul--admiration for
a convict. Respect for a galley-slave--is that a possible thing? He
shuddered at it, yet could not escape from it. In vain did he struggle,
he was reduced to confess, in his inmost heart, the sublimity of that
wretch. This was odious.

A benevolent malefactor, merciful, gentle, helpful, clement, a convict,
returning good for evil, giving back pardon for hatred, preferring pity
to vengeance, preferring to ruin himself rather than to ruin his enemy,
saving him who had smitten him, kneeling on the heights of virtue, more
nearly akin to an angel than to a man. Javert was constrained to admit
to himself that this monster existed.

Things could not go on in this