Page 101 - les-miserables

gloomy openings stand yawning there, but something tells
you, you, a passer-by in life, that you must not enter. Woe to
him who penetrates thither!
Geniuses in the impenetrable depths of abstraction and
pure speculation, situated, so to speak, above all dogmas,
propose their ideas to God. Their prayer audaciously offers
discussion. Their adoration interrogates. This is direct reli-
gion, which is full of anxiety and responsibility for him who
attempts its steep cliffs.
Human meditation has no limits. At his own risk and
peril, it analyzes and digs deep into its own bedazzlement.
One might almost say, that by a sort of splendid reaction,
it with it dazzles nature; the mysterious world which sur-
rounds us renders back what it has received; it is probable
that the contemplators are contemplated. However that may
be, there are on earth men who—are they men?— perceive
distinctly at the verge of the horizons of revery the heights
of the absolute, and who have the terrible vision of the in-
finite mountain. Monseigneur Welcome was one of these
men; Monseigneur Welcome was not a genius. He would
have feared those sublimities whence some very great men
even, like Swedenborg and Pascal, have slipped into in-
sanity. Certainly, these powerful reveries have their moral
utility, and by these arduous paths one approaches to ideal
perfection. As for him, he took the path which shortens,—
the Gospel’s.
He did not attempt to impart to his chasuble the folds of
Elijah’s mantle; he projected no ray of future upon the dark
groundswell of events; he did not see to condense in flame

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