There came a knock at the door. It was two gendarmes, who pushed before them Jean Valjean. The bishop stood near the chimney. "Monseigneur," said one of the gendarmes, "we have arrested this man. It seemed to us that he was a thief. We seized him, and we found this silver upon him." The bishop raised his eyes to heaven. "Ah," said he, "so it was that silver?" Then, turning toward Jean Valjean: "Ah, it is you! I am glad to see you. But what! I gave you the candlesticks as well, which are of silver like the rest; why did you not carry away the candlesticks?" Jean Valjean remained motionless. He had been seized at daybreak on the road out of Digne, and for an hour he had not ceased to make violent efforts to free himself from those hands of iron. In spite of his efforts, he remained immobile and as though thunderstruck. One felt in him that sort of inward combat that froze him. The gendarmes resumed: "This man asserted that the silver had been given to him." "Then he told the truth," said the bishop. "Monseigneur, the man lied." "You are mistaken," said the bishop. Then, with a tone of gentle gravity that silenced everyone: "Messieurs, I thank you." The gendarmes released Jean Valjean, who drew back. "Do you let me go?" he asked in an almost inarticulate voice, as though speaking in a dream. "Yes, you are free," the bishop told him. The gendarmes departed. Then the bishop drew near to Jean Valjean and said to him in a low voice: "Do not forget, never forget this, that you have promised me to use it to become an honest man." There had been no promise made by Jean Valjean; but Monseigneur had thrown himself into the spirit of his guest as into a fortress. He continued, in a voice grave yet so gentle: "Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to me, but to God. I buy your soul for God." Jean Valjean fled the town precipitately. He had been running thus for a long while, still bewildered, when he noticed that his sack was heavy. In it he found the two silver candlesticks. All that morning he walked through the mountains, while night was falling. He began to think of the bishop. He thought of that hospitable house, of the warmth of the fire, of the meal, of the bed. He thought of that man who, without complaining of the stolen silver, without reproach, without a word of blame, had given him the silver candlesticks. He thought of that priest who was so good, so charitable, whose conduct toward him, Jean Valjean, had not altered, and who had left him, not punished, but rewarded. And he thought of what he himself was. And here is what lay within that night. What Jean Valjean was meditating in the depths of that thought through the whole night, was the first time in his life that he considered what is good and eternal in man. He was in a duel with his whole destiny, at fifty years of age, carrying his last gold coin in the bishop's candlesticks. He was now fighting against evil, against instinct, against all that is ferocious in man: the man who strikes down society and makes himself a convict calls himself an abandoned soul. There are two justices within us: one forged by law, the other that speaks in conscience. Jean Valjean had just passed through one of those hours in which one takes leave of oneself, in which one feels a tearing apart, in which the soul stands face to face with the light. For the first time in nineteen years, he shed tears. Jean Valjean wept, and he was another man. He felt that something within him had changed. The convict had just caught sight of the bishop one day, and he knew himself called. What do we say? There is something greater than indulgence: it is mercy. The bishop had done more than pardon: he had raised up. And Jean Valjean, in that night, made a resolution that he was never again to break: he would be an honest man. There was in his face, in his gestures, in his words, in his actions, something transformed. He had his face turned toward the light.