In whatever circle of ideas Marius revolved, he always returned to a certain horror for Jean Valjean.
A sacred horror, perhaps, for, as we have just pointed out, he felt a quid divinum in that man. But do what he would, and seek what extenuation he would, he was certainly forced to fall back upon this:
the man was a convict; that is to say, a being who has not even a place in the social ladder, since he is lower than the very lowest rung.
After the very last of men comes the convict.
The convict is no longer, so to speak, in the semblance of the living.
The law has deprived him of the entire quantity of humanity of which it can deprive a man.
Marius, on penal questions, still held to the inexorable system, though he was a democrat and he entertained all the ideas of the law on the subject of those whom the law strikes.
He had not yet accomplished all progress, we admit.
He had not yet come to distinguish between that which is written by man and that which is written by God, between law and right.
He had not examined and weighed the right which man takes to dispose of the irrevocable and the irreparable. He was not shocked by the word vindicte.
He found it quite simple that certain breaches of the written law should be followed by eternal suffering, and he accepted, as the process of civilization, social damnation.