That which was certain, that which he did not doubt, was that he
was no longer the same man, that everything about him was changed,
that it was no longer in his power to make it as though the Bishop
had not spoken to him and had not touched him.

In this state of mind he had encountered little Gervais, and had robbed
him of his forty sous. Why? He certainly could not have explained it;
was this the last effect and the supreme effort, as it were,
of the evil thoughts which he had brought away from the galleys,--
a remnant of impulse, a result of what is called in statics,
acquired force? It was that, and it was also, perhaps, even less
than that. Let us say it simply, it was not he who stole;
it was not the man; it was the beast, who, by habit and instinct,
had simply placed his foot upon that money, while the intelligence
was struggling amid so many novel and hitherto unheard-of thoughts
besetting it.

When intelligence re-awakened and beheld that action of the brute,
Jean Valjean recoiled with anguish and uttered a cry of terror.

It was because,--strange phenomenon, and one which was possible only
in the situation in which he found himself,--in stealing the money
from that child, he had done a thing of which he was no longer capable.

However that may be, this last evil action had a decisive effect
on him; it abruptly traversed that chaos which he bore in his mind,
and dispersed it, placed on one side the thick obscurity, and on
the other the light, and acted on his soul, in the state in which it
then was, as certain chemical reagents act upon a troubled mixture