Page 163 - les-miserables

feel the whole weight of this human society, so formidable
for him who is without, so frightful for him who is beneath,
resting upon their heads.
In this situation Jean Valjean meditated; and what could
be the nature of his meditation?
If the grain of millet beneath the millstone had thoughts,
it would, doubtless, think that same thing which Jean
Valjean thought.
All these things, realities full of spectres, phantasmago-
ries full of realities, had eventually created for him a sort of
interior state which is almost indescribable.
At times, amid his convict toil, he paused. He fell to
thinking. His reason, at one and the same time riper and
more troubled than of yore, rose in revolt. Everything which
had happened to him seemed to him absurd; everything
that surrounded him seemed to him impossible. He said
to himself, ‘It is a dream.’ He gazed at the galley-sergeant
standing a few paces from him; the galley-sergeant seemed
a phantom to him. All of a sudden the phantom dealt him a
blow with his cudgel.
Visible nature hardly existed for him. It would almost
be true to say that there existed for Jean Valjean neither
sun, nor fine summer days, nor radiant sky, nor fresh April
dawns. I know not what vent-hole daylight habitually illu-
mined his soul.
To sum up, in conclusion, that which can be summed up
and translated into positive results in all that we have just
pointed out, we will confine ourselves to the statement that,
in the course of nineteen years, Jean Valjean, the inoffensive

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