Important Quotations Explained
1. [Valjean]
strained his eyes in the distance and called out . . . “Petit Gervais!
. . .” His cries died away into the mist, without even awaking an
echo. . . . [H]is knees suddenly bent under him, as if an invisible
power suddenly overwhelmed him with the weight of his bad conscience;
he fell exhausted . . . and cried out, “I'm such a miserable man!”
2. [T]he
poor little despairing thing could not help crying: “Oh my God!
Oh God!”
At that moment she suddenly felt
that the weight of the bucket was gone. A hand, which seemed enormous
to her, had just caught the handle, and was carrying it easily.
. . .
. . . The child was not afraid.
3. “Here,
I am going to write something to show you.”
.
. . [S]he wrote on a sheet of blank paper . . . “The cops are here.”
4. To
owe life to a malefactor . . . to be, in spite of himself, on a level
with a fugitive from justice . . . to betray society in order to
be true to his own conscience; that all these absurdities . . .
should accumulate on himself—this is what prostrated him.
5. [Valjean]
had fallen back, the light from the candlesticks fell across him;
his white face looked up toward heaven, he let Cosette and Marius
cover his hands with kisses; he was dead.
