Oh, implacable march of human societies! Oh, losses of men and of
souls on the way! Ocean into which falls all that the law lets slip!
Disastrous absence of help! Oh, moral death!

The sea is the inexorable social night into which the penal laws
fling their condemned. The sea is the immensity of wretchedness.

The soul, going down stream in this gulf, may become a corpse.
Who shall resuscitate it?



CHAPTER IX

NEW TROUBLES


When the hour came for him to take his departure from the galleys,
when Jean Valjean heard in his ear the strange words, Thou art free!
the moment seemed improbable and unprecedented; a ray of vivid light,
a ray of the true light of the living, suddenly penetrated within him.
But it was not long before this ray paled. Jean Valjean had been
dazzled by the idea of liberty. He had believed in a new life.
He very speedily perceived what sort of liberty it is to which a yellow
passport is provided.

And this was encompassed with much bitterness. He had calculated
that his earnings, during his sojourn in the galleys, ought to amount
to a hundred and seventy-one francs. It is but just to add that he had