Nothing forced him to this.

Nothing forced him to this. 　　If any one learned who he was, it was through himself. In this avowal there was something more than acceptance of humiliation, there was acceptance of peril. 　　For a condemned man, a mask is not a mask, it is a shelter. 　　A false name is security, and he had rejected that false name. 　　He, the galley-slave, might have hidden himself forever in an honest family; he had withstood this temptation. And with what motive? 　　Through a conscientious scruple. He himself explained this with the irresistible accents of truth. In short, whatever this Jean Valjean might be, he was, undoubtedly, a conscience which was awakening. 　　There existed some mysterious re-habilitation which had begun; and, to all appearances, scruples had for a long time already controlled this man. 　　Such fits of justice and goodness are not characteristic of vulgar natures. An awakening of conscience is grandeur of soul. 　　Jean Valjean was sincere. 　　This sincerity, visible, palpable, irrefragable, evident from the very grief that it caused him, rendered inquiries useless, and conferred authority on all that that man had said. 　　Here, for Marius, there was a strange reversal of situations. What breathed from M. Fauchelevent? distrust. 　　What did Jean Valjean inspire? confidence. 　　In the mysterious balance of this Jean Valjean which the pensive Marius struck, he admitted the active principle, he admitted the passive principle, and he tried to reach a balance. 　　But all this went on as in a storm. 　　Marius, while endeavoring to form a clear idea of this man, and while pursuing Jean Valjean, so to speak, in the depths of his thought, lost him and found him again in a fatal mist. 　　The deposit honestly restored, the probity of the confession-- these were good. 　　This produced a lightening of the cloud, then the cloud became black once more. 　　Troubled as were Marius' memories, a shadow of them returned to him. 　　After all, what was that adventure in the Jondrette attic? Why had that man taken to flight on the arrival of the police, instead of entering a complaint? 　　Here Marius found the answer. 　　Because that man was a fugitive from justice, who had broken his ban. 　　Another question: 　　Why had that man come to the barricade? 　　For Marius now once more distinctly beheld that recollection which had re-appeared in his emotions like sympathetic ink at the application of heat. 　　This man had been in the barricade. He had not fought there. 　　What had he come there for? 　　In the presence of this question a spectre sprang up and replied: 　　"Javert."