Marius’ silence answered for him.
Jean Valjean continued:
“You see that I am right in not holding my peace. Be happy, be in heaven, be the angel of an angel, exist in the sun, be content therewith, and do not trouble yourself about the means which a poor damned wretch takes to open his breast and force his duty to come forth; you have before you, sir, a wretched man.”
Marius slowly crossed the room, and, when he was quite close to Jean Valjean, he offered the latter his hand.
But Marius was obliged to step up and take that hand which was not offered, Jean Valjean let him have his own way, and it seemed to Marius that he pressed a hand of marble.
“My grandfather has friends,” said Marius; “I will procure your pardon.”
“It is useless,” replied Jean Valjean. “I am believed to be dead, and that suffices. The dead are not subjected to surveillance. They are supposed to rot in peace. Death is the same thing as pardon.”
And, disengaging the hand which Marius held, he added, with a sort of inexorable dignity:
“Moreover, the friend to whom I have recourse is the doing of my duty; and I need but one pardon, that of my conscience.”
At that moment, a door at the other end of the drawing-room opened gently half way, and in the opening Cosette’s head appeared. They saw only her sweet face, her hair was in charming disorder, her eyelids were still swollen with sleep. She made the movement of a bird, which thrusts its head out of its nest, glanced first at her husband, then at Jean Valjean, and cried to them with a smile, so that they seemed to behold a smile at the heart of a rose: