The candlesticks

Jean Valjean is released after nineteen years in prison in France, first jailed for stealing bread for his sister’s hungry children and kept longer for trying to escape. Everyone shuns him except the kind Bishop of Digne, who gives him a meal and a bed.

That night Valjean steals the bishop’s silver. When police drag him back, the bishop says it was a gift and hands him two silver candlesticks too, asking him to become an honest man. Deeply shaken, Valjean resolves to change.