“I’m asking you questions, but you’re perfectly right not to answer. It’s an apprenticeship against that cursed quarter of an hour before the examining magistrate. And then, when you don’t talk at all, you run no risk of talking too loud. That’s no matter, as I can’t see your face and as I don’t know your name, you are wrong in supposing that I don’t know who you are and what you want. I twig. You’ve broken up that gentleman a bit; now you want to tuck him away somewhere. The river, that great hider of folly, is what you want. I’ll get you out of your scrape. Helping a good fellow in a pinch is what suits me to a hair.”

While expressing his approval of Jean Valjean’s silence, he endeavored to force him to talk. He jostled his shoulder in an attempt to catch a sight of his profile, and he exclaimed, without, however, raising his tone:

“Apropos of that quagmire, you’re a hearty animal. Why didn’t you toss the man in there?”

Jean Valjean preserved silence.