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CHAPTER I
NUMBER 24,601 BECOMES
NUMBER 9,430
Jean Valjean had been recaptured.
The reader will be grateful to us if we pass rapidly over
the sad details. We will confine ourselves to transcribing
two paragraphs published by the journals of that day, a few
months after the surprising events which had taken place
at M. sur M.
These articles are rather summary. It must be remem-
bered, that at that epoch the Gazette des Tribunaux was not
yet in existence.
We borrow the first from the Drapeau Blanc. It bears the
date of July 25, 1823.
An arrondissement of the Pas de Calais has just been the
theatre of an event quite out of the ordinary course. A man,
who was a stranger in the Department, and who bore the
name of M. Madeleine, had, thanks to the new methods,
resuscitated some years ago an ancient local industry, the
manufacture of jet and of black glass trinkets. He had made
his fortune in the business, and that of the arrondissement