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‘Monsieur le Cure, have you seen a child pass?’
‘No,’ said the priest.
‘One named Little Gervais?’
‘I have seen no one.’
He drew two five-franc pieces from his money-bag and
handed them to the priest.
‘Monsieur le Cure, this is for your poor people. Monsieur
le Cure, he was a little lad, about ten years old, with a mar-
mot, I think, and a hurdy-gurdy. One of those Savoyards,
you know?’
‘I have not seen him.’
‘Little Gervais? There are no villages here? Can you tell
me?’
‘If he is like what you say, my friend, he is a little stranger.
Such persons pass through these parts. We know nothing
of them.’
Jean Valjean seized two more coins of five francs each
with violence, and gave them to the priest.
‘For your poor,’ he said.
Then he added, wildly:—
‘Monsieur l’Abbe, have me arrested. I am a thief.’
The priest put spurs to his horse and fled in haste, much
alarmed.
Jean Valjean set out on a run, in the direction which he
had first taken.
In this way he traversed a tolerably long distance, gazing,
calling, shouting, but he met no one. Two or three times
he ran across the plain towards something which conveyed
to him the effect of a human being reclining or crouching