Les Miserables: A Quick Note on the Second Great Crisis

For me, Jean Valjean's second great crisis is his least interesting.  He has adopted Fantine's daughter, Cosette, and she becomes the only person he loves.  When she becomes a young woman, he intercepts a letter that reveals she loves a young man, and that he is heading off to the barricades to be killed.  He is mightily tempted to simply allow it to happen so he can have Cosette all to himself.  But he knows that to do so would be wrong, so he goes to the barricades to protect her love (Marius) and, when Marius is wounded, carries him, unconscious for miles through the sewer to safety.  Clearly to do such a thing for a bitter rival who threatens one's own happiness is a noble act, the act of a saint, even.  But it is not a dilemma to test the heart of a saint, or the reader.  The right thing to do is clear and obvious.  The second great dilemma is therefore less interesting and challenging than the other two.  I will therefore confine myself to describing it (as done here) and move on to third great dilemma, the one I believe Valjean decided wrong.