house and the town dazed and stupefied. It was a new world he
had come into.

He walked on for miles, and then sat down by the roadside to think.

Presently a small Savoyard boy passed him, and as he passed dropped a
two-franc piece on the ground.

Jean Valjean placed his foot upon it. In vain the boy prayed him for the
coin. Jean Valjean sat motionless, deep in thought.

Only when the boy had gone on, in despair, did Jean Valjean wake from
his reverie.

He shouted out, "Little Gervais, little Gervais!" for the boy had told
him his name. The lad was out of sight and hearing, and no answer came.

The enormity of his crime came home to him, and Jean Valjean fell on the
ground, and for the first time in nineteen years he wept.

_II.--Father Madeleine_

On a certain December night in 1815 a stranger entered the town of
M----, at the very time when a great fire had just broken out in the
town hall.

This man at once rushed into the flames, and at the risk of his own life
saved the two children of the captain of gendarmes. In consequence of
this act no one thought of asking for his passport.

The stranger settled in the town; by a happy invention he improved the
manufacture of the black beads, the chief industry of M----, and in
three years, from a very small capital, he became a rich man, and
brought prosperity to the place.

In 1820, Father Madeleine, for so the stranger was called, was made
Mayor of M---- by unanimous request, an honour he had declined the
previous year. Before he came everything was languishing in the town,
and now, a few years later, there was healthy life for all.

Father Madeleine employed everybody who came to him. The only condition
he made was--honesty. From the men he expected good-will, from the
women, purity.

Prosperity did not make Father Madeleine change his habits. He performed
his duties as mayor, but lived a solitary and simple life, avoiding
society. His strength, although he was a man of fifty, was enormous. It
was noticed that he read more as his leisure increased, and that as the
years went by his speech became gentler and more polite.

One person only in all the district looked doubtfully at the mayor, and
that was Javert, inspector of police.

Javert, born in prison, was the incarnation of police duty--implacable,
resolute, fanatical. He arrived in M---- when Father Madeleine was
already a rich man, and he felt sure he had seen him before.

One day in 1823 the