Once again we see Jean Valjean fleeing, as he fled from Digne and from Montreuil, but this time something in his silhouette is different—he is carrying a child as he flees. No longer the solitary thief, he takes on the appearance of a St. Christopher, a man defined not by what he is but by what he carries and how he bears his burden. But as Hugo points out, Jean Valjean's burden is in itself its own reward. In taking on Cosette, he expects responsibility, but what he gets is love. Jean Valjean may be an apprentice saint, but as a social human being he is stunted because his criminal past has cut him off from the society of others. Cosette too has been stunted by cruelty and neglect. Together, however, they can form their own society and expand in heart and soul through the experience of loving each other.
Throughout Part Two, Hugo's palette is somber, and in both the episode of Cosette's trip to the well and that of the "night hunt," we have scenes of darkness only fitfully touched by light that resemble the scene in the bishop's bedroom in Part One. However there is a contrast in mood and movement between the two darkness scenes in Part Two. The total darkness at the well is sinister, and Cosette escapes it by moving into the moonlight where she meets Jean Valjean, then into the firelight at the inn where he protects her. In the "night hunt," it is the fitful moments of light that reveal Jean Valjean to his pursuers that are sinister, and the total darkness into which he plunges on the other side of the wall in the Rue Droit Mur spells safety.
