He escaped impetuously, like the wolf who finds his cage open.
Instinct said to him, "Flee!" Reason would have said, "Remain!"
But in the presence of so violent a temptation, reason vanished;
nothing remained but instinct. The beast alone acted. When he
was recaptured, the fresh severities inflicted on him only served
to render him still more wild.

One detail, which we must not omit, is that he possessed a physical
strength which was not approached by a single one of the denizens of
the galleys. At work, at paying out a cable or winding up a capstan,
Jean Valjean was worth four men. He sometimes lifted and sustained
enormous weights on his back; and when the occasion demanded it,
he replaced that implement which is called a jack-screw, and was
formerly called orgueil [pride], whence, we may remark in passing,
is derived the name of the Rue Montorgueil, near the Halles [Fishmarket]
in Paris. His comrades had nicknamed him Jean the Jack-screw. Once,
when they were repairing the balcony of the town-hall at Toulon,
one of those admirable caryatids of Puget, which support the balcony,
became loosened, and was on the point of falling. Jean Valjean,
who was present, supported the caryatid with his shoulder, and gave
the workmen time to arrive.

His suppleness even exceeded his strength. Certain convicts
who were forever dreaming of escape, ended by making a veritable
science of force and skill combined. It is the science of muscles.
An entire system of mysterious statics is daily practised
by prisoners, men who are forever envious of the flies and birds.
To climb a vertical surface, and to find points of support
where hardly a projection was visible, was play to Jean Valjean.
An angle of the wall being given, with the tension of his back