Les Misérables, v. 5/5: Jean Valjean

  CHAPTER V.

  DEPOSIT YOUR MONEY IN A FOREST RATHER THAN WITH A NOTARY.

  Of course our readers have understood, and no lengthened explanationwill be required, that Jean Valjean after the Champmathieu affair wasenabled by his escape for a few days to come to Paris, and withdrawin time from Laffitte's the sum he had gained under the name of M.Madeleine at M.-sur-M.; and that, afraid of being recaptured, which infact happened to him shortly after, he buried this sum in the forestof Montfermeil, at the spot called the Blaru bottom. This sum, sixhundred and thirty thousand francs, all in bank-notes, occupied butlittle space, and was contained in a box; but in order to protectthe box from damp he placed it in an oak coffer filled with chips ofchestnut-wood. In the same coffer he placed his other treasure, theBishop's candlesticks. It will be remembered that he carried off thesecandlesticks in his escape from M.-sur-M. The man seen on one previousevening by Boulatruelle was Jean Valjean, and afterwards, whenever JeanValjean required money, he fetched it from the Blaru clearing, andhence his absences to which we have referred. He had a pick concealedsomewhere in the shrubs, in a hiding-place known to himself alone.When he found Marius to be convalescent, feeling that the hour wasat hand when this money might be useful, he went to fetch it; and itwas also he whom Boulatruelle saw in the wood, but this time in themorning, and not at night. Boulatruelle inherited the pick.

  The real sum was five hundred and eighty-four thousand five hundredfrancs, but Jean Valjean kept back the five hundred francs forhimself. "We will see afterwards," he thought. The difference betweenthis sum and the six hundred and thirty thousand francs withdrawnfrom Laffitte's represented the expenditure of ten years from 1823to 1833. The five years' residence in the convent had cost only fivethousand francs. Jean Valjean placed the two silver candlesticks onthe mantel-piece, where they glistened, to the great admiration ofToussaint. Moreover, Jean Valjean knew himself freed from Javert;it had been stated in his presence, and he verified the fact in the_Moniteur_ which had published it, that an Inspector of Police of thename of Javert had been found drowned under a washer-woman's boatbetween the Pont-au-change and the Pont-Neuf, and that a letter left bythis man, hitherto irreproachable and highly esteemed by his chiefs,led to the belief in an attack of dementia and suicide. "In truth,"thought Jean Valjean, "since he let me go when he had hold of me, hemust have been mad at that time."