Jean Valjean had killed Javert.

Marius recalled perfectly now that funereal sight of Jean Valjean dragging the pinioned Javert out of the barricade, and he still heard behind the corner of the little Rue Mondetour that frightful pistol shot. 　　Obviously, there was hatred between that police spy and the galley-slave. The one was in the other's way. 　　Jean Valjean had gone to the barricade for the purpose of revenging himself. He had arrived late. 　　He probably knew that Javert was a prisoner there. The Corsican vendetta has penetrated to certain lower strata and has become the law there; it is so simple that it does not astonish souls which are but half turned towards good; and those hearts are so constituted that a criminal, who is in the path of repentance, may be scrupulous in the matter of theft and unscrupulous in the matter of vengeance. 　　Jean Valjean had killed Javert. 　　At least, that seemed to be evident. 　　This was the final question, to be sure; but to this there was no reply. 　　This question Marius felt like pincers. 　　How had it come to pass that Jean Valjean's existence had elbowed that of Cosette for so long a period? 　　What melancholy sport of Providence was that which had placed that child in contact with that man? 　　Are there then chains for two which are forged on high? and does God take pleasure in coupling the angel with the demon? 　　So a crime and an innocence can be room-mates in the mysterious galleys of wretchedness? In that defiling of condemned persons which is called human destiny, can two brows pass side by side, the one ingenuous, the other formidable, the one all bathed in the divine whiteness of dawn, the other forever blemished by the flash of an eternal lightning? Who could have arranged that inexplicable pairing off? 　　In what manner, in consequence of what prodigy, had any community of life been established between this celestial little creature and that old criminal? 　　Who could have bound the lamb to the wolf, and, what was still more incomprehensible, have attached the wolf to the lamb? For the wolf loved the lamb, for the fierce creature adored the feeble one, for, during the space of nine years, the angel had had the monster as her point of support. 　　Cosette's childhood and girlhood, her advent in the daylight, her virginal growth towards life and light, had been sheltered by that hideous devotion. Here questions exfoliated, so to speak, into innumerable enigmas, abysses yawned at the bottoms of abysses, and Marius could no longer bend over Jean Valjean without becoming dizzy. 　　What was this man-precipice? 　　The old symbols of Genesis are eternal; in human society, such as it now exists, and until a broader day shall effect a change in it, there will always be two men, the one superior, the other subterranean; the one which is according to good is Abel; the other which is according to evil is Cain. 　　What was this tender Cain? 　　What was this ruffian religiously absorbed in the adoration of a virgin, watching over her, rearing her, guarding her, dignifying her, and enveloping her, impure as he was himself, with purity? 　　What was that cess-pool which had venerated that innocence to such a point as not to leave upon it a single spot? 　　What was this Jean Valjean educating Cosette? 　　What was this figure of the shadows which had for its only object the preservation of the rising of a star from every shadow and from every cloud? 　　That was Jean Valjean's secret; that was also God's secret.