It is less pride than selflessness that spurs him to refuse what another might need more than he does. He labors under the belief that there is always another with worse fortune than him, because he has found it to be sadly true. But a glance about tells him that there is none to accept the offer but he.

“I suppose so,” Jean Valjean finally answers. “Would it be best, do you think, to sit side by side or back to back?”

The idea of sitting in another’s lap had not, naturally, occurred to him.