He entered the galleys in Toulon in 1796 and left in 1815. He encounters the bishop Monsieur Myriel, the Bishop of Digne who turns his life around by showing him mercy and encouraging him to become a changed man. While sitting and pondering on what Monsieur Myriel had said, he accidentally puts his foot on a forty-sous piece dropped by a young chimney-sweep named Petit Gervais. Valjean threatens him with his stick when he attempts to rouse Valjean from his reverie and retrieve his piece. He tells a passing priest his name, and the name of the young chimney-sweep, and this allows the police to charge him with armed robbery...a sentence that, if he were caught again, would return him to prison with a death-sentence.