Two strongholds of slavery; but in the first, deliverance possible, a legal limit always in sight, and then, escape. In the second, perpetuity; the sole hope, at the distant extremity of the future, that faint light of liberty which men call death.
In the first, men are bound only with chains; in the other, chained by faith.
What flowed from the first? An immense curse, the gnashing of teeth, hatred, desperate viciousness, a cry of rage against human society, a sarcasm against heaven.
What results flowed from the second? Blessings and love.
And in these two places, so similar yet so unlike, these two species of beings who were so very unlike, were undergoing the same work, expiation.
Jean Valjean understood thoroughly the expiation of the former; that personal expiation, the expiation for one’s self. But he did not understand that of these last, that of creatures without reproach and