What Have I Done? Lyrics - Les Miserables (1987 Original Broadway Cast) - Alain Boublil

What have I done? 

Sweet Jesus, what have I done? 

Become a thief in the night! 

Become a dog on the run! 

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 is 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 the world. 

This world that 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 had a soul. 

How does he know? 

What spirit comes 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 whirlpool 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!