It was daylight. Jean Valjean saw the outlet.
A damned soul, who, in the midst of the furnace, should suddenly perceive the outlet of Gehenna, would experience what Jean Valjean felt. It would fly wildly with the stumps of its burned wings towards that radiant portal.
Jean Valjean was no longer conscious of fatigue, he no longer felt Marius'' weight, he found his legs once more of steel, he ran rather than walked.
As he approached, the outlet became more and more distinctly defined.
It was a pointed arch, lower than the vault, which gradually narrowed, and narrower than the gallery, which closed in as the vault grew lower. The tunnel ended like the interior of a funnel; a faulty construction, imitated from the wickets of penitentiaries, logical in a prison, illogical in a sewer, and which has since been corrected.
Jean Valjean reached the outlet.
There he halted.
It certainly was the outlet, but he could not get out.
The arch was closed by a heavy grating, and the grating, which, to all appearance, rarely swung on its rusty hinges, was clamped to its stone jamb by a thick lock, which, red with rust, seemed like an enormous brick.
The keyhole could be seen, and the robust latch, deeply sunk in the iron staple.
The door was plainly double-locked. It was one of those prison locks which old Paris was so fond of lavishing.