r, pressing himself close to the cat that he might suffer less from cold.
At seven o''clock the school opened, and he entered.
That is what was told to Jean Valjean.
They talked to him about it for one day; it was a moment, a flash, as though a window had suddenly been opened upon the destiny of those things whom he had loved; then all closed again.
He heard nothing more forever.
Nothing from them ever reached him again; he never beheld them; he never met them again; and in the continuation of this mournful history they will not be met with any more.
Towards the end of this fourth year Jean Valjean''s turn to escape arrived.
His comrades assisted him, as is the custom in that sad place. He escaped.
He wandered for two days in the fields at liberty, if being at liberty is to be hunted, to turn the head every instant, to quake at the slightest noise, to be afraid of everything,--of a smoking roof, of a passing man, of a barking dog, of a galloping horse, of a striking clock, of the day because one can see, of the night because one cannot see, of the highway, of the path, of a bush, of sleep.
On the evening of the second day he was captured. He had neither eaten nor slept for thirty-six hours.
The maritime tribunal condemned him, for this crime, to a prolongation of his term for three years, which made eight years.