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Updated: June 24, 2025
Jean Valjean remained inert beneath Javert's grasp, like a lion submitting to the claws of a lynx. "Inspector Javert," said he, "you have me in your power. Moreover, I have regarded myself as your prisoner ever since this morning. I did not give you my address with any intention of escaping from you. Take me. Only grant me one favor." Javert did not appear to hear him.
He found himself most opportunely armed, as he had Javert's pistols with him. The young man of whom he thought that he had caught a glimpse, had vanished from his sight in the street. Marius, who had emerged from the Rue Plumet by the boulevard, traversed the Esplanade and the bridge of the Invalides, the Champs Elysees, the Place Louis XV., and reached the Rue de Rivoli.
She no longer wept, her voice was caressing; she placed Javert's coarse hand on her delicate, white throat and looked smilingly at him.
The door opened. "It is well," said Javert. "Go up stairs." He added with a strange expression, and as though he were exerting an effort in speaking in this manner: "I will wait for you here." Jean Valjean looked at Javert. This mode of procedure was but little in accord with Javert's habits.
Thenardier took the pistol and aimed at Javert. Javert, who was only three paces from him, stared intently at him and contented himself with saying: "Come now, don't fire. You'll miss fire." Thenardier pulled the trigger. The pistol missed fire. "Didn't I tell you so!" ejaculated Javert. Bigrenaille flung his bludgeon at Javert's feet. "You're the emperor of the fiends! I surrender." "And you?"
Jean Valjean, who had suddenly grown grand, emerged from his cloud. Marius could not repress a cry of joy. "Well, then this unhappy wretch is an admirable man! the whole of that fortune really belonged to him! he is Madeleine, the providence of a whole countryside! he is Jean Valjean, Javert's savior! he is a hero! he is a saint!" "He's not a saint, and he's not a hero!" said Thenardier.
It was not the act of his own conscience, but the act of Providence. He breathed again. He breathed freely and to the full extent of his lungs for the first time since Javert's visit. It seemed to him that the hand of iron which had held his heart in its grasp for the last twenty hours had just released him. It seemed to him that God was for him now, and was manifesting Himself.
"What a grenadier!" ejaculated Javert; "you've got a beard like a man, mother, but I have claws like a woman." And he continued to advance. The Thenardier, dishevelled and terrible, set her feet far apart, threw herself backwards, and hurled the paving-stone at Javert's head.
An electric quiver shot through the whole barricade, and the sound of hands seeking their guns became audible. "Would you like my carbine?" said Enjolras to the lad. "I want a big gun," replied Gavroche. And he seized Javert's gun. Two sentinels had fallen back, and had come in almost at the same moment as Gavroche.
Jean Valjean requested to be allowed to blow out Javert's brains himself, and permission was given. Holding a pistol in his hand, Jean Valjean led Javert, who was still bound, to a lane out of sight of the barricade, and there with his knife cut the ropes from the wrists and feet of his prisoner. "You are free," he said.
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