judge's desk, to conceal
his face from the whole room; he could now see without being seen; he
had fully regained consciousness of the reality of things; gradually he
recovered; he attained that phase of composure where it is possible to
listen.

M. Bamatabois was one of the jurors.

He looked for Javert, but did not see him; the seat of the witnesses was
hidden from him by the clerk's table, and then, as we have just said,
the hall was sparely lighted.

At the moment of this entrance, the defendant's lawyer had just finished
his plea.

The attention of all was excited to the highest pitch; the affair had
lasted for three hours: for three hours that crowd had been watching a
strange man, a miserable specimen of humanity, either profoundly stupid
or profoundly subtle, gradually bending beneath the weight of a terrible
likeness. This man, as the reader already knows, was a vagabond who had
been found in a field carrying a branch laden with ripe apples, broken
in the orchard of a neighbor, called the Pierron orchard. Who was this
man? an examination had been made; witnesses had been heard, and they
were unanimous; light had abounded throughout the entire debate; the
accusation said: "We have in our grasp not only a marauder, a stealer
of fruit; we have here, in our hands, a bandit, an old offender who
has broken his ban, an ex-convict, a miscreant of the most dangerous
description, a malefactor named Jean Valjean, whom justice has long been
in search of, and who, eight years ago, on emerging from the galleys
at Toulon, committed a highway robbery, accompanied by violence, on the
person of a child, a Savoyard named Little Gervais; a crime provided
for by article 383 of the Penal Code, the right to try him for which
we reserve hereafter, when his identity shall have been judicially
established. He has just committed a fresh theft; it is a case of a
second offence; condemn him for the fresh deed; later on he will be
judged for the old crime." In the face of this accusation, in the face
of the unanimity of the witnesses, the accused appeared to be astonished
more than anything else; he made signs and gestures which were meant to
convey No, or else he stared at the ceiling: he spoke with difficulty,
replied with embarrassment, but his whole person, from head to foot, was
a denial; he was an idiot in the presence of all these minds ranged in
order of battle around him, and like a stranger in the midst of this
society which