[Kagari does not pose it as a question, a why, yet Jean Valjean answers as if he has.]
It is because we are brothers.
[A mystifying answer, perhaps, to one who has known only scorn, to one who has grown hard of heart in defense. He remembers how powerfully shaken he himself had been when the bishop called him brother, having been so long treated like dirt that he had forgotten how it felt to be treated as an equal.]
What reason have I to withhold kindness, especially from one who has been kind to me in the past?
[He does not, at least for the moment, comment on Kagari's claims that he is not a good person. He has no wish to pry the boy open and uproot everything, only to nudge some seeds into the soil of his thoughts.]
no subject
It is because we are brothers.
[A mystifying answer, perhaps, to one who has known only scorn, to one who has grown hard of heart in defense. He remembers how powerfully shaken he himself had been when the bishop called him brother, having been so long treated like dirt that he had forgotten how it felt to be treated as an equal.]
What reason have I to withhold kindness, especially from one who has been kind to me in the past?
[He does not, at least for the moment, comment on Kagari's claims that he is not a good person. He has no wish to pry the boy open and uproot everything, only to nudge some seeds into the soil of his thoughts.]