Characteristically, Jean Valjean decides to speak the bitter truth about himself and conceal the sweet. Although he considers this being honest with Marius, it is not really honesty, but he has no choice. An ex-convict cannot say "I am a good man" and be believed; he has lost his credibility.
His confession clears the air temporarily, but it does not really solve anything. Some readers feel that the continuing struggle over Cosette is unworthy of Jean Valjean, that a proper hero ought simply to have gone away, but to think so is to misunderstand Jean Valjean and Hugo's vision of him. In the first place, as Hugo has been saying all along, to do right is never easy; and in the second place, when Valjean thinks of disappearing, it is not going away he has in mind; it is death. Cosette is the only thing he loves in this world, and if he gives her up, he will die. And Jean Valjean, as we have seen, has a very powerful instinct for survival. He remains to the last no incredible saint, but a thoroughly human figure.
His final renunciation is a defeat, but thanks to Thénardier, it is also a victory. Through the maze of lies this man has woven about himself and everyone who comes in contact with him, the truth accidentally emerges—as it always does if a lie goes on long enough. Thénardier, evil though he is, must eventually also contribute to the apotheosis of the good; this is the law of life as God has planned it.
And so Jean Valjean, having sacrificed his last happiness, has it returned to him a hundred-fold; the lonely man, the outcast, dies surrounded by the happiness he has created, and the solitary celibate has been the progenitor, through Marius and Cosette's children, of a fruitful and contented posterity. No man can ask for a happier ending.
One knot, however, Hugo has left without untangling: no one has adopted the two little lost boys Gavroche left unprotected. An oversight, perhaps; or perhaps it was intentional. Perhaps he wanted his readers to remember, every night as they tumbled into bed, that somewhere out in the cold and darkness there were still two little lost boys, and many more like them, hungry and unprotected. And that, his unspoken conclusion seems to say, is your business.
