Chapter 1 Jean Valjean

It is the year 1796, and the people of France are hungry. Not the rich people, of course. They have food, they have warm clothes, they have beautiful houses. No, it is the poor people of France …
Jean Valjean is one of these poor people. He is a young man, big, strong, and a good worker – but he has no work, he cannot find work, and he is hungry. He lives with his sister in the village of Brie. Her husband is dead, and she has seven children. It is a cold hard winter, and there is no food in the house. No bread, nothing – and seven children!
Jean Valjean is a good man, he is not a thief. But how can a man just sit there, when his sister’s children cry all night because they are hungry? What can a man do?

He leaves his house at night, and goes down the village street. He puts his hand through the window of the bakery – crash! – he takes a loaf of bread, and he runs. He runs fast, but other people run faster.
France is not kind to poor people. France sends Jean Valjean to prison for five years. After four years he escapes. They find him, and bring him back. They give him six more years. Once again, he escapes, and two days later, they find him. And they give him another eight years. Nineteen years in prison – for a loaf of bread!
In 1815, when he leaves prison. Jean Valjean is a different man. Prison changes people. Years of misery, years of back-breaking work, years of cruel prison guards. These things change a man. Once there was love in Jean Valjean’s heart. Now, there is only hate.

One evening in October, in the year 1815, there was a knock on the door of the Bishop of Digne’s house.
‘Come in,’ said the bishop. The bishop was a kind man; everyone in the town of Digne knew that. Poor people, hungry people, miserable people – they all came to the door of the bishop’s house.
The bishop’s sister looked at the man at the door that night, and she was afraid.
‘Look at him!’ she whispered to the bishop. ‘He is a big man, and a dangerous one. He carries a yellow card, so he was once a prisoner – a bad man.’
But the bishop did not listen. ‘Come in, my friend,’ he said to the man at the door. ‘Come in. You must eat dinner with us, and sleep in a warm bed tonight.’
The man stared at the bishop. ‘My name is Jean Valjean,’ he said. ‘I was a prisoner in Toulon for nineteen years. Here is my yellow card, see? People everywhere shut their doors in my face – but not you. Why not?’

‘Not the silver plates!’ whispered the bishop’s sister. Her eyes went quickly to Jean Valjean, then back to the bishop’s face.
‘Yes, the silver plates,’ said the bishop. ‘And the silver candlesticks too. The church has these beautiful things, but they are for our visitors. And our visitor tonight must have only the best.’
And so Jean Valjean sat down with the bishop and his sister and ate from silver plates. He ate hungrily – it was his first good meal for weeks.
‘You’re a good man,’ he said to the bishop. ‘Perhaps the only good man in France.’
But Valjean could not take his eyes away from the silver plates. After the meal, the bishop’s sister put the silver plates away, and Valjean’s eyes watched. He saw the place, and he remembered it.
In the night, in his warm bed in the bishop’s house, he thought about the plates. They were big, heavy – so much silver in them! ‘I can sell those plates,’ he thought. ‘For just one of them, I can eat well for months!’

Nineteen years in prison is a long time, and nineteen hard years change a man.

By morning Valjean was a long way from the bishop’s house. But how do you carry big silver plates? How do you hide them? People in Digne began to whisper …
‘Did you see him? That big man, carrying six silver plates? Where did he get them from, eh?’
‘Those plates came from the church. A man like that doesn’t have silver plates!’
‘No! And he carries a yellow card, did you see? So he was a prisoner once. He’s a thief – he stole those plates!’
The police heard the whispers. They went after Jean Valjean, found him, and took him back to the bishop’s house in the afternoon. But there, they had a surprise.

‘My dear friend!’ the bishop said to Jean Valjean. ‘I’m so pleased to see you. You forgot the candlesticks! I gave you the silver plates and the candlesticks, you remember? But you forgot to take the candlesticks when you left.’
‘But this man is a thief!’ said one of the policemen.
‘No, no, of course not,’ said the bishop, smiling. ‘I gave the silver to Monsieur Valjean.’
‘You mean he can go? He is free?’ said the policeman.
‘Of course,’ the bishop said.
All this time Jean Valjean stared at the bishop, and said not one word. The policemen went away, and the Bishop of Digne went into his house and came out again with the two silver candlesticks. They were tall and heavy and beautiful. The bishop put the candlesticks into Jean Valjean’s hands.

‘Jean Valjean, my brother,’ he said. ‘You must leave your bad life behind you. This is God’s silver, and I am giving it to you. With it, you can begin a new, good life. I am buying your soul for God.’

Jean Valjean left the town of Digne, with his silver plates and his silver candlesticks. Suddenly, he was a rich man, but he did not understand why.
‘What’s happening to me?’ he thought. ‘Everything is changing. How can I hate people when this bishop is so good to me? What shall I do? How shall I live?’
Prisoner Valjean did not understand anything. He sat down by the road, with his head in his hands, and cried. He cried for the first time in nineteen years.
How long did he sit there, crying? What did he do next, and where did he go? Nobody knows, but when the sun came up on a new day, he was a changed man.