Jean Valjean was quite calm.
"Inspector Javert," he said, "help me to carry this man home; then do with me what you please."
A cab was waiting for the inspector. He ordered the man to drive to the address Jean Valjean gave him. Marius, still unconscious, was taken to his grandfather's house.
"Inspector Javert," said Jean Valjean, "grant me one thing more. Let me go home for a minute; then you may take me where you will."
Javert told the driver to go to Rue de l'Homme-Armé, No. 7.
When they reached the house, Javert said, "Go up; I will wait here for you!"
But before Jean Valjean reached his rooms Javert had gone, and the street was empty.
Javert had not been at ease since his life had been spared. He was now in horrible uncertainty. To owe his life to an ex-convict, to accept this debt, and then to repay him by sending him back to the galleys was impossible. To let a malefactor go free while he, Inspector Javert, took his pay from the government, was equally impossible. It seemed there was something higher and above his code of duty, something he had not come into collision with before. The uncertainty of the right thing to be done destroyed Javert, to whom life had hitherto been perfectly plain. He could not live recognising Jean Valjean as his saviour, and he could not bring himself to arrest Jean Valjean.
Inspector Javert made his last report at the police-station, and then, unable to face the new conditions of life, walked slowly to the river and plunged into the Seine, where the water rolls round and round in an endless whirlpool.
Marius recovered, and married Cosette; and Jean Valjean lived alone. He had told Marius who he was--Jean Valjean, an escaped convict; and Marius and Cosette gradually saw less and less of the old man.