His sister worked also but what could she do with seven little children? It was a sad group enveloped in misery, which was being gradually annihilated. In pruning season he earned eighteen sous a day then he hired out as a hay-maker, as laborer, as neat-herd on a farm, as a drudge. Jean Valjean gruffly and grumblingly paid Marie-Claude for the pint of milk behind their mother’s back, and the children were not punished.

If their mother had known of this marauding, she would have punished the delinquents severely. There was at Faverolles, not far from the Valjean thatched cottage, on the other side of the lane, a farmer’s wife named Marie-Claude the Valjean children, habitually famished, sometimes went to borrow from Marie-Claude a pint of milk, in their mother’s name, which they drank behind a hedge or in some alley corner, snatching the jug from each other so hastily that the little girls spilled it on their aprons and down their necks. As he went on eating, with his head bent over the table and almost into his soup, his long hair falling about his bowl and concealing his eyes, he had the air of perceiving nothing and allowing it. His sister, mother Jeanne, often took the best part of his repast from his bowl while he was eating,-a bit of meat, a slice of bacon, the heart of the cabbage,-to give to one of her children. He returned at night weary, and ate his broth without uttering a word. He had never known a “kind woman friend” in his native parts. Thus his youth had been spent in rude and ill-paid toil. This was done simply as a duty and even a little churlishly on the part of Jean Valjean. He took the father’s place, and, in his turn, supported the sister who had brought him up. Jean Valjean had just attained his twenty-fifth year. The eldest of the seven children was eight years old. This sister had brought up Jean Valjean, and so long as she had a husband she lodged and fed her young brother. All that remained to Jean Valjean was a sister older than himself,-a widow with seven children, boys and girls. His father, a tree-pruner, like himself, had been killed by a fall from a tree. His mother had died of a milk fever, which had not been properly attended to. He had lost his father and mother at a very early age. On the whole, however, there was something decidedly sluggish and insignificant about Jean Valjean in appearance, at least. Jean Valjean was of that thoughtful but not gloomy disposition which constitutes the peculiarity of affectionate natures. His mother was named Jeanne Mathieu his father was called Jean Valjean or Vlajean, probably a sobriquet, and a contraction of voilà Jean, “here’s Jean.” When he reached man’s estate, he became a tree-pruner at Faverolles. He had not learned to read in his childhood. Jean Valjean came from a poor peasant family of Brie.

Towards the middle of the night Jean Valjean woke. Previous Chapter Next Chapter Chapter VI - Jean Valjean

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo