A brigadier of gendarmes, who seemed to be in command of the group, was standing near the door.
He entered and advanced to the Bishop, making a military salute.
"Monseigneur--" said he.
At this word, Jean Valjean, who was dejected and seemed overwhelmed, raised his head with an air of stupefaction.
"Monseigneur!" he murmured.
"So he is not the cure?"
"Silence!" said the gendarme.
"He is Monseigneur the Bishop."
In the meantime, Monseigneur Bienvenu had advanced as quickly as his great age permitted.
"Ah! here you are!" he exclaimed, looking at Jean Valjean. "I am glad to see you.
Well, but how is this?
I gave you the candlesticks too, which are of silver like the rest, and for which you can certainly get two hundred francs. Why did you not carry them away with your forks and spoons?"
Jean Valjean opened his eyes wide, and stared at the venerable Bishop with an expression which no human tongue can render any account of.
"Monseigneur," said the brigadier of gendarmes, "so what this man said is true, then?
We came across him.
He was walking like a man who is running away.
We stopped him to look into the matter. He had this silver--"
"And he told you," interposed the Bishop with a smile, "that it had been given to him by a kind old fellow of a priest with whom he had passed the night?