not a mail-wagon which runs to Arras? When will it pass?"

"To-night. Both the posts pass at night; the one going as well as the
one coming."

"What! It will take you a day to mend this wheel?"

"A day, and a good long one."

"If you set two men to work?"

"If I set ten men to work."

"What if the spokes were to be tied together with ropes?"

"That could be done with the spokes, not with the hub; and the felly is
in a bad state, too."

"Is there any one in this village who lets out teams?"

"No."

"Is there another wheelwright?"

The stableman and the wheelwright replied in concert, with a toss of the
head.

"No."

He felt an immense joy.

It was evident that Providence was intervening. That it was it who had
broken the wheel of the tilbury and who was stopping him on the road.
He had not yielded to this sort of first summons; he had just made every
possible effort to continue the journey; he had loyally and scrupulously
exhausted all means; he had been deterred neither by the season, nor
fatigue, nor by the expense; he had nothing with which to reproach
himself. If he went no further, that was no fault of his. It did not
concern him further. It was no longer his fault. It was not the act of
his own conscience, but the act of Providence.

He breathed again. He breathed freely and to the full extent of his
lungs for the first time since Javert's visit. It seemed to him that the
hand of iron which had held his heart in its grasp for the last twenty
hours had just released him.

It seemed to him that God was for him now, and was manifesting Himself.

He said himself that he had done all he could, and that now he had
nothing to do but retrace his steps quietly.

If his conversation with the wheelwright had taken place in a chamber
of the inn, it would have had no witnesses, no one would have heard him,
things would have rested there, and it is probable that we should not
have had to relate any of the occurrences which the reader is about
to peruse; but this conversation had taken place in the street. Any
colloquy in the street inevitably attracts a crowd. There are always
people who ask nothing better than to become spectators. While he was
questioning the wheelwright, some people who were passing back and forth
halted around them. After listening for a few minutes, a young lad, to
whom no one had paid any heed, detached himself from the group and ran
off.

At the moment when the traveller, after t