those of its members who were the least well endowed in the division
of goods made by chance, and consequently the most deserving
of consideration.

These questions put and answered, he judged society and condemned it.

He condemned it to his hatred.

He made it responsible for the fate which he was suffering, and he said
to himself that it might be that one day he should not hesitate to call
it to account. He declared to himself that there was no equilibrium
between the harm which he had caused and the harm which was being
done to him; he finally arrived at the conclusion that his punishment
was not, in truth, unjust, but that it most assuredly was iniquitous.

Anger may be both foolish and absurd; one can be irritated wrongfully;
one is exasperated only when there is some show of right on one's
side at bottom. Jean Valjean felt himself exasperated.

And besides, human society had done him nothing but harm; he had never
seen anything of it save that angry face which it calls Justice,
and which it shows to those whom it strikes. Men had only touched
him to bruise him. Every contact with them had been a blow.
Never, since his infancy, since the days of his mother, of his sister,
had he ever encountered a friendly word and a kindly glance.
From suffering to suffering, he had gradually arrived at the conviction
that life is a war; and that in this war he was the conquered.
He had no other weapon than his hate. He resolved to whet it
in the galleys and to bear it away with him when he departed.