“Just, good Virgin! How you frightened me!”

Then he sprang to his feet and cried:⁠—

“Thanks, Father Madeleine!”

Jean Valjean had merely fainted. The fresh air had revived him.

Joy is the ebb of terror. Fauchelevent found almost as much difficulty in recovering himself as Jean Valjean had.

“So you are not dead! Oh! How wise you are! I called you so much that you came back. When I saw your eyes shut, I said: ‘Good! there he is, stifled,’ I should have gone raving mad, mad enough for a strait jacket. They would have put me in Bicêtre. What do you suppose I should have done if you had been dead? And your little girl? There’s that fruit-seller⁠—she would never have understood it! The child is thrust into your arms, and then⁠—the grandfather is dead! What a story! good saints of paradise, what a tale! Ah! you are alive, that’s the best of it!”