2340 Les Miserables
is happiness, that is everything. We shall live as one family.
One family!’
At that word, Jean Valjean became wild. He folded his
arms, glared at the floor beneath his feet as though he would
have excavated an abyss therein, and his voice suddenly rose
in thundering tones:
‘As one family! No. I belong to no family. I do not belong
to yours. I do not belong to any family of men. In hous-
es where people are among themselves, I am superfluous.
There are families, but there is nothing of the sort for me.
I am an unlucky wretch; I am left outside. Did I have a fa-
ther and mother? I almost doubt it. On the day when I gave
that child in marriage, all came to an end. I have seen her
happy, and that she is with a man whom she loves, and that
there exists here a kind old man, a household of two an-
gels, and all joys in that house, and that it was well, I said
to myself: ‘Enter thou not.’ I could have lied, it is true, have
deceived you all, and remained Monsieur Fauchelevent. So
long as it was for her, I could lie; but now it would be for
myself, and I must not. It was sufficient for me to hold my
peace, it is true, and all would go on. You ask me what has
forced me to speak? a very odd thing; my conscience. To
hold my peace was very easy, however. I passed the night
in trying to persuade myself to it; you questioned me, and
what I have just said to you is so extraordinary that you have
the right to do it; well, yes, I have passed the night in alleg-
ing reasons to myself, and I gave myself very good reasons,
I have done what I could. But there are two things in which
I have not succeeded; in breaking the thread that holds me