“Pardine! There are little girls indeed! And they would bawl around you! And they would rush off! To be a man here is to have the plague. You see how they fasten a bell to my paw as though I were a wild beast.”

Jean Valjean fell into more and more profound thought.⁠—“This convent would be our salvation,” he murmured.

Then he raised his voice:⁠—

“Yes, the difficulty is to remain here.”

“No,” said Fauchelevent, “the difficulty is to get out.”

Jean Valjean felt the blood rush back to his heart.

“To get out!”

“Yes, Monsieur Madeleine. In order to return here it is first necessary to get out.”

And after waiting until another stroke of the knell had sounded, Fauchelevent went on:⁠—