It is probable that he, also, was disentangling from amid the vague
ideas of a poor man, ignorant of everything, something excessive.
While the bolt of his iron collar was being riveted behind his head
with heavy blows from the hammer, he wept, his tears stifled him,
they impeded his speech; he only managed to say from time to time,
"I was a tree-pruner at Faverolles." Then still sobbing, he raised
his right hand and lowered it gradually seven times, as though
he were touching in succession seven heads of unequal heights,
and from this gesture it was divined that the thing which he had done,
whatever it was, he had done for the sake of clothing and nourishing
seven little children.

He set out for Toulon. He arrived there, after a journey of
twenty-seven days, on a cart, with a chain on his neck. At Toulon
he was clothed in the red cassock. All that had constituted
his life, even to his name, was effaced; he was no longer even
Jean Valjean; he was number 24,601. What became of his sister?
What became of the seven children? Who troubled himself about that?
What becomes of the handful of leaves from the young tree which
is sawed off at the root?

It is always the same story. These poor living beings,
these creatures of God, henceforth without support, without guide,
without refuge, wandered away at random,--who even knows?--
each in his own direction perhaps, and little by little buried
themselves in that cold mist which engulfs solitary destinies;
gloomy shades, into which disappear in succession so many unlucky heads,
in the sombre march of the human race. They quitted the country.
The clock-tower of what had been their village forgot them; the boundary
line of what had been their field forgot them; after a few years'