For a condemned man, a mask is not a mask, it is a shelter.
A false name is security, and he had rejected that false name.
He, the galley-slave, might have hidden himself forever in an honest family; he had withstood this temptation. And with what motive?
Through a conscientious scruple. He himself explained this with the irresistible accents of truth. In short, whatever this Jean Valjean might be, he was, undoubtedly, a conscience which was awakening.
There existed some mysterious re-habilitation which had begun; and, to all appearances, scruples had for a long time already controlled this man.
Such fits of justice and goodness are not characteristic of vulgar natures. An awakening of conscience is grandeur of soul.
Jean Valjean was sincere.
This sincerity, visible, palpable, irrefragable, evident from the very grief that it caused him, rendered inquiries useless, and conferred authority on all that that man had said.
Here, for Marius, there was a strange reversal of situations. What breathed from M. Fauchelevent? distrust.
What did Jean Valjean inspire? confidence.
In the mysterious balance of this Jean Valjean which the pensive Marius struck, he admitted the active principle, he admitted the passive principle, and he tried to reach a balance.