road, the path, the bushes, sleep! On the second evening he was caught. He had not rested or eaten for thirty-six hours.

The naval court punished him for this offence to three years added to his term, making eight.

In the sixth year, his turn to escape came again; he tried but could not get away clear. He was missed at the mastercall. The alarm-gun was fired, and the watch found him at night hidden under the keel of a ship building in the dry dock; he resisted the warders who seized him-escape and rebellion! Provided for in the law, this was punished with five years added, with two of them to be on the double chain. Thirteen years. On the tenth year, his turn to escape was round once more. He tried but succeeded no better. They gave him three years for that Sixteen years! At last, during his thirteenth year, he broke out and was able to enjoy four hours' absence. Three years for that release. Nineteen years. In October, 1815, he was liberated, having been put away in 1796 for breaking a pane of glass and stealing a loaf of bread.

He had entered quivering and sobbing; he came out feeling less. Despairing at entering, he departed gloomy.

What had passed in his soul?

Society must look at these things, since it creates them.

Jean was an ignorant man, but not a fool. Natural light had been kindled in him. Misfortune, which is also a light, augmented what day was in him. Under the scourge and in chains, in the dungeon, and fatigue, under the scorching sun or on the prison plank bed, he withdrew to commune with his conscience, and he reflected.

He sat in judgment on himself and acknowledged that he was wrong to have seized society by the collar, so to say, and demand that it should give him bread.

Then he tried society, and condemned it to his hatred. He made it responsible for the doom he underwent, and said to himself that he might one day fight this out with it. He declared that the balance was not even between the injury he had done and what was visited on him; his punishment might not be really injustice but it was surely iniquity.

Therefore, human society having done nothing but harm to him, leaving him the vanquished in the strife of life, he would use his only weapon, his hate, which he meant to sharpen in his captivity and take out on the battle-ground with him..

Sorrowful to say, after having judged the society which had

made him unfortunate, he condemned the Providence which allows society.

We must not omit a detail: Jean was of physical strength unapproached by his fellow prisoners. At hard labor, to haul on a hawser, to walk round the capstan, etc., Jean was worth any four. He could lift and carry enormous weights on his back and so easily replace the instrument known as the derrick that he had been given its name by his mates.

His suppleness surpassed his vigor. Perpetually dreaming of breaking out of prison, some old felons finally make a science of combined skill and strength. Everlastingly envious of the fly and the bird, such practise all their arts. To climb up a smooth wall, to "work up" a corner like a chimney-sweep, to find foothold and a grip where ordinary men see nothing tangible these were child's play for Valjean. Sometimes he scaled the room of the prison with no better place to second than an angle.

Thus, in nineteen years, the inoffensive pitch-gatherer of Faverolles and the dread "old lag" of Toulon Jail had become what his release-paper described not without reason as "a most dangerous man.'

Year after year, his soul had withered, slowly but inevitably. With the dryness of heart had come that of the eye. On leaving the galleys, he was one who had not shed a tear in nearly twenty years.

When Jean heard the strange words "You are free!" it was an unheard-of, incredible time; a beam of light such as shines on those truly in life suddenly burst in upon him. But it was fated soon to grow pale. Dazzled with the idea of freedom, he believed in a new existence. But he was soon to learn what kind of liberty his Yellow Passport gave.

Besides, there was more bitterness. He had calculated his earnings, during his prison life, to amount to 171 francs. It is only fair to note that he had forgotten to calculate the loss by holidays and Sundays, which reduced the gross amount by some twenty-four francs. Be that as it may, divers stoppages brought his pile to 109 francs and fifteen sous, which was paid over to him on his departure. He did not comprehend these clippings and thought he was "played with"-to put it plain, that he was robbed.

The day following his being set free, at Grasse he saw some men unloading a wagon before a perfume distillery and he

offered his services. They were short-handed and in a hurry, and put him on the job. He was sharp, skilful, and robust, and did his best, so that the overseer seemed content. While he was working, a policeman came along who noticed him and asked him to show his papers. He had to produce the prison release. This done, Jean resumed his work. A little before he had asked one of the other workmen what they were to be paid and was answered Thirty sous is the day's wage." As he was obliged to go on his way next morning, he asked to be paid that night. The distillery man did not say a word but handed him fifteen sous. He protested, and was answered: "That is all your labor is worth." He persisted and the master, looking at him steadily, said: "Mind I don't have you locked up again!" Here he also considered he was robbed.

Society, the State, had robbed him in a wholesale way; now this individual robbed him by retail.

That is what happened him at Grasse; we know how he was welcomed in Digne.

As two in the morning was booming from the cathedral clock, Jean Valjean awoke. The bed was too good. It was twenty years since he had slept on a real bed, and the sensation was too novel not to break his rest, although he had lain down. dressed.

He had slept for four hours, and his weariness was gone. He was accustomed to sleep deeply in a short spell.

Opening his eyes he looked into the darkness all around him and shut them to go off to sleep again.

One may sleep after many different sensations have agitated the day, and many things busied the mind, but not go to sleep a second time. Sleep comes more readily than it returns. So was it with Jean, who could not doze off and had to muse. It was a time when one's ideas are confused. The brain oscillates vaguely. Old memories and the most recent float pellmell, cross confusedly, lose shape, grow out of all proportion, and suddenly disapper as in a muddy pool. Many thoughts beseiged him, but one came continually and drove away all the others. We state it immediately: he had remarked the silver plate put on the table by the housekeeper.

VOL. XII.- -13

The service possessed him. The articles were close by, at a few steps. As he was passing through the next room to enter this one, the old servant was putting the things away in a small locker by the head of the bed. He had taken notice of this receptacle, on the right, as you enter from the dining room. The silver was massive. Genuine old metal; with the ladle, one could get about two hundred francs for the lot. Double what he had earned in twenty years; true, he had earned more, but the Government had robbed him.

His mind wavered for a full hour, with something like a struggle. Three struck. He opened his eyes, sat up abruptly, extended his arms, and felt for his haversack, which he had thrown in the recess corner. He slung his legs over the edge of the bed, and setting his feet on the floor, was thus at his bedside, without clearly knowing what he was about.

In this attitude, he brooded for some time, with much that was gruesome to any one who had perceived him in the shadow, the only wakeful person in the house. Suddenly he stopped, took off his shoes and softly placed them on the rug by the bed ere resuming his moody position and immobility.

He might have dwelt so indefinitely till daybreak, if the clock had not struck it was a quarter or a half hour. The sound seemed to him to mean "Get to work!"

He started to his feet, still faltered a moment, and listened; all was silent throughout the house; he went with short steps to the window of which he had a glimpse.

It was not a very dark night, as there was full moon, though broad clouds driven by the wind ran over it. This made alternations of light and dark, eclipses and flashes, and a kind of twilight on the whole. This, while fit for one to see about them, was intermittent on account of the clouds, and resembled the effect in a cellar when passers go by.

Jean examined the window: it had no bars, looked out on the garden, and was fastened according to the rural mode with a plain catch. He opened it, but as a keen, cold breath rushed in, he shut it at once. He peered down on the garden with the glance which studies more than it merely looks. The garden was enclosed by a white wall low enough to be scaled easily. Beyond it he made out the tops of trees so regularly spaced out as to show it was a planted walk or a street bordered by timber.

After this survey, he shook himself like a man who had

screwed up his mind, walked back to the recess, where he took up his sack, out of which he drew something which he laid on the bed. He stuffed his shoes into one of his pockets, fastened up the sack which he loaded on his shoulders, put on his cap, pulling the peak down over his eyes, and groped for his club, which he went to stand up by the window. Returning to the bed, he resolutely picked up the article he had left on it: it resembled an iron bar, sharpened at one end.

In the dark it was hard to tell the purpose of this toolwhether made for a lever or to be used as a mace. By day it would have turned out to be a rock-driller's borer, used at that time for the prison quarrymen to extract the rock from the hills around Toulon. He took this straight pick in his right hand, and, holding his breath and softening his footfalls, proceeded towards the next room, which was, we know, the sleeping apartment of the bishop. This door was ajar; the bishop had not even drawn it to.

Jean listened, but there was no sound.

He shoved the door, but with the finger tip lightly, with the furtive and uneasy gentleness of the cat wanting to go into a room. The door yielded to that pressure, silently widening the gap a little.

Waiting a bit, he pushed the barrier more forcibly and it continued to open noiselessly. The aperture was wide enough for him to slip through. But there was a small table by the doorway so as to bar the entrance in an awkward way.

Valjean ascertained the obstacle and meant to make the entrance good by force. Pushing more stoutly than the previous times, a poorly oiled hinge raised its grating and prolonged squeak.

Jean started; the sound rang in his ear as splitting and formidable as the Last Trump.

In the magnifying fancy of the moment, he imagined that the hinge assumed a terrible life, and barked like a watchdog to warn all hearers and arouse the sleepers.

Shuddering and bewildered, he stopped and sank down on his heel from having been on tiptoe. He heard his temple arteries beating like trip-hammers, and it seemed that his breath was issuing like wind roaring out of a cavern. It appeared impossible that the awful clangor of that irritated hinge should not have shaken the whole house like an earthquake; as the door, urged by him, had taken the alarm and shrieked out, the