390 Les Miserables
ity of which we were recently speaking, in the midst of the
darkness and the lights, a goddess and a giant contending.
He was filled with terror; but it seemed to him that the
good thought was getting the upper hand.
He felt that he was on the brink of the second decisive
crisis of his conscience and of his destiny; that the Bishop
had marked the first phase of his new life, and that Champ-
mathieu marked the second. After the grand crisis, the
grand test.
But the fever, allayed for an instant, gradually resumed
possession of him. A thousand thoughts traversed his mind,
but they continued to fortify him in his resolution.
One moment he said to himself that he was, perhaps,
taking the matter too keenly; that, after all, this Champ-
mathieu was not interesting, and that he had actually been
guilty of theft.
He answered himself: ‘If this man has, indeed, stolen a
few apples, that means a month in prison. It is a long way
from that to the galleys. And who knows? Did he steal? Has
it been proved? The name of Jean Valjean overwhelms him,
and seems to dispense with proofs. Do not the attorneys for
the Crown always proceed in this manner? He is supposed
to be a thief because he is known to be a convict.’
In another instant the thought had occurred to him that,
when he denounced himself, the heroism of his deed might,
perhaps, be taken into consideration, and his honest life for
the last seven years, and what he had done for the district,
and that they would have mercy on him.
But this supposition vanished very quickly, and he smiled