"You do understand." He seizes her free hand tightly for a moment, on impulse, struck by how much she's right. "You understand exactly, enough to say it more clearly." He presses her hand again, partly in apology, and lets go.

He goes on more quietly. "It's different for you, of course it is, with your own daughter coming here! Your own flesh and blood still living in the world, and to her you're to her as you would be in our own France--a parent living in a quiet out-of-the-way retreat, at least half the people of Paris can claim that. Some of the rest of our own group, they've found ways to make a real life here. But me--" he shakes his head. "I I find nothing this time, still the effort is worth the effort; there has been very little here that is.- I will not say nothing has been. There are too many people I love here for that. And some of them are happy, and that has been worth seeing. And we have had our own chances to reach back to our world, here and there--and it comes here."

He frowns a moment, then smiles a little at Francois pulling at the edges of Fantine's sleeve. "And I would not have you think your countrymen are abandoning you, here."