“Alas! Alas!” returned Mme. Magloire. “It is not on my account or mademoiselle’s; it is all the same to us. But it is on yours, monseigneur. What is monsieur going to eat from now?”
The bishop looked at her in amazement.
“How so! have we no tin plates?”
Just as the brother and sister were rising from their breakfast there was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” said the bishop.
The door opened. A strange, fierce group appeared on the threshold. Three men were holding a fourth by the collar. The three men were gendarmes; the fourth, Jean Valjean.
In the meantime the bishop had approached as quickly as his great age permitted. “Ah, there you are!” said he, looking toward Jean Valjean. “I am glad to see you. But I gave you the candlesticks also, which are silver like the rest, and would bring two hundred francs. Why did you not take them along with your plates?”
Jean Valjean opened his eyes and looked at the bishop with an expression no human tongue could describe.
“Monseigneur,” said the brigadier, “then what this man said was true? We met him. He was going like a man who was running away and we arrested him in order to see. He had this silver.”
“And he told you that it had been given him by a good old priest with whom he had passed the night. I see it all. And you brought him back here? It is all a mistake.”