Page 1068 - les-miserables

and fell prostrate on the floor of the antechamber. He had
just expired.
The doctor had been summoned, and the cure. The doc-
tor had arrived too late. The son had also arrived too late.
By the dim light of the candle, a large tear could be dis-
tinguished on the pale and prostrate colonel’s cheek, where
it had trickled from his dead eye. The eye was extinguished,
but the tear was not yet dry. That tear was his son’s delay.
Marius gazed upon that man whom he beheld for the first
time, on that venerable and manly face, on those open eyes
which saw not, on those white locks, those robust limbs, on
which, here and there, brown lines, marking sword-thrusts,
and a sort of red stars, which indicated bullet-holes, were
visible. He contemplated that gigantic sear which stamped
heroism on that countenance upon which God had imprint-
ed goodness. He reflected that this man was his father, and
that this man was dead, and a chill ran over him.
The sorrow which he felt was the sorrow which he would
have felt in the presence of any other man whom he had
chanced to behold stretched out in death.
Anguish, poignant anguish, was in that chamber. The
servant-woman was lamenting in a corner, the cure was
praying, and his sobs were audible, the doctor was wiping
his eyes; the corpse itself was weeping.
The doctor, the priest, and the woman gazed at Marius in
the midst of their affliction without uttering a word; he was
the stranger there. Marius, who was far too little affected,
felt ashamed and embarrassed at his own attitude; he held
his hat in his hand; and he dropped it on the floor, in order

1068 Les Miserables