ting a great error; release this man! I am fulfilling a duty; I am that miserable criminal.
I am the only one here who sees the matter clearly, and I am telling you the truth.
God, who is on high, looks down on what I am doing at this moment, and that suffices.
You can take me, for here I am: but I have done my best; I concealed myself under another name; I have become rich; I have become a mayor; I have tried to re-enter the ranks of the honest.
It seems that that is not to be done. In short, there are many things which I cannot tell.
I will not narrate the story of my life to you; you will hear it one of these days. I robbed Monseigneur the Bishop, it is true; it is true that I robbed Little Gervais; they were right in telling you that Jean Valjean was a very vicious wretch.
Perhaps it was not altogether his fault.
Listen, honorable judges! a man who has been so greatly humbled as I have has neither any remonstrances to make to Providence, nor any advice to give to society; but, you see, the infamy from which I have tried to escape is an injurious thing; the galleys make the convict what he is; reflect upon that, if you please. Before going to the galleys, I was a poor peasant, with very little intelligence, a sort of idiot; the galleys wrought a change in me.
I was stupid; I became vicious:
I was a block of wood; I became a firebrand.