What Have I Done (Valjean's Soliloquy) Lyrics

Valjean
     What have I done?
     Sweet Jesus, what have I done?
     Become a thief in the night
     Become a dog on the run
     And have I fallen so far
     And is the hour so late
     That nothing remains but the cry of my hate,
     The cries in the dark that nobody hears,
     Here where I stand at the turning of the years?
     If there's another way to go
     I missed it twenty long years ago
     My life was a war that could never be won
     They gave me a number and murdered Valjean
     When they chained me and left me for dead
     Just for stealing a mouthful of bread

     Yet why did I allow that man
     To touch my soul and teach me love?
     He treated me like any other
     He gave me his trust
     He called me brother
     My life he claims for God above
     Can such things be?
     For I had come to hate this world
     This world which had always hated me
     Take an eye for an eye!
     Turn your heart into stone!
     This is all I have lived for!
     This is all I have known!
     One word from him and I'd be back
     Beneath the lash, upon the rack
     Instead he offers me my freedom,
     I feel my shame inside me like a knife
     He told me that I have a soul,
     How does he know?
     What spirit came to move my life?
     Is there another way to go?
     I am reaching, but I fall
     And the night is closing in
     And I stare into the void
     To the whirpool of my sin
     I'll escape now from the world
     From the world of Jean Valjean
     Jean Valjean is nothing now
     Another story must begin!

     [He tears up his yellow ticket-of-leave.]