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 mayor interfered to prevent Javert sending a poor woman, named Fantine, to prison.  Fantine had been dismissed from the factory without the knowledge of M. Madeleine; and her one hope in life was in her little girl, whom she called Cosette.  Now, Cosette was boarded out at the village of Montfermeil, some leagues distance from M——­, with a family grasping and dishonest, and to raise money for Cosette’s keep had brought Fantine to misery and sickness.