Mondetour that frightful pistol shot.
Obviously, there was hatred between that police spy and the galley-slave. The one was in the other''s way.
Jean Valjean had gone to the barricade for the purpose of revenging himself. He had arrived late.
He probably knew that Javert was a prisoner there. The Corsican vendetta has penetrated to certain lower strata and has become the law there; it is so simple that it does not astonish souls which are but half turned towards good; and those hearts are so constituted that a criminal, who is in the path of repentance, may be scrupulous in the matter of theft and unscrupulous in the matter of vengeance.
Jean Valjean had killed Javert.
At least, that seemed to be evident.
This was the final question, to be sure; but to this there was no reply.
This question Marius felt like pincers.
How had it come to pass that Jean Valjean''s existence had elbowed that of Cosette for so long a period?
What melancholy sport of Providence was that which had placed that child in contact with that man?
Are there then chains for two which are forged on high? and does God take pleasure in coupling the angel with the demon?
So a crime and an innocence can be room-mates in the mysterious galleys of wretchedness? In that defiling of condemned persons which is called human destiny, can two brows pass side by side, the one ingenuous, the other formidable, the one all bathed in the divine whiteness of dawn, the other forever blemished by the flash of an eternal lightning? Who could have arranged that inexplicable pairing off?