de of life, Sir."

Jean Valjean paused. Marius listened. Such chains of ideas and of
anguishes cannot be interrupted. Jean Valjean lowered his voice once
more, but it was no longer a dull voice--it was a sinister voice.

"You ask why I speak? I am neither denounced, nor pursued, nor tracked,
you say. Yes! I am denounced! yes! I am tracked! By whom? By myself.
It is I who bar the passage to myself, and I drag myself, and I push
myself, and I arrest myself, and I execute myself, and when one holds
oneself, one is firmly held."

And, seizing a handful of his own coat by the nape of the neck and
extending it towards Marius:

"Do you see that fist?" he continued. "Don't you think that it holds
that collar in such a wise as not to release it? Well! conscience
is another grasp! If one desires to be happy, sir, one must never
understand duty; for, as soon as one has comprehended it, it is
implacable. One would say that it punished you for comprehending it;
but no, it rewards you; for it places you in a hell, where you feel God
beside you. One has no sooner lacerated his own entrails than he is at
peace with himself."

And, with a poignant accent, he added:

"Monsieur Pontmercy, this is not common sense, I am an honest man. It is
by degrading myself in your eyes that I elevate myself in my own. This
has happened to me once before, but it was less painful then; it was
a mere nothing. Yes, an honest man. I should not be so if, through my
fault, you had continued to esteem me; now that you despise me, I am so.
I have that fatality hanging over me that, not being able to ever have
anything but stolen consideration, that consideration humiliates me,
and crushes me inwardly, and, in order that I may respect myself, it is
necessary that I should be despised. Then I straighten up again. I am
a galley-slave who obeys his conscience. I know well that that is most
improbable. But what would you have me do about it? it is the fact.
I have entered into engagements with myself; I keep them. There are
encounters which bind us, there are chances which involve us in duties.
You see, Monsieur Pontmercy, various things have happened to me in the
course of my life."

Again Jean Valjean paused, swallowing his saliva with an effort, as
though his words had a bitter after-taste, and then he went on:

"When one has such a horror hanging over one, one has not the right to
make others share it without their knowledge, one has not the right to
m