2264 Les Miserables
escape from Montreuil-sur-Mer. The man seen one evening
for the first time by Boulatruelle, was Jean Valjean. Later on,
every time that Jean Valjean needed money, he went to get
it in the Blaru-bottom. Hence the absences which we have
mentioned. He had a pickaxe somewhere in the heather, in a
hiding-place known to himself alone. When he beheld Mar-
ius convalescent, feeling that the hour was at hand, when
that money might prove of service, he had gone to get it; it
was he again, whom Boulatruelle had seen in the woods, but
on this occasion, in the morning instead of in the evening.
Boulatreulle inherited his pickaxe.
The actual sum was five hundred and eighty-four thou-
sand, five hundred francs. Jean Valjean withdrew the five
hundred francs for himself.—‘We shall see hereafter,’ he
thought.
The difference between that sum and the six hundred
and thirty thousand francs withdrawn from Laffitte repre-
sented his expenditure in ten years, from 1823 to 1833. The
five years of his stay in the convent had cost only five thou-
sand francs.
Jean Valjean set the two candlesticks on the chim-
ney-piece, where they glittered to the great admiration of
Toussaint.
Moreover, Jean Valjean knew that he was delivered from
Javert. The story had been told in his presence, and he had
verified the fact in the Moniteur, how a police inspector
named Javert had been found drowned under a boat be-
longing to some laundresses, between the Pont au Change
and the Pont-Neuf, and that a writing left by this man, oth-