Page 195 - les-miserables

he should be obliged to renounce that hatred with which the
actions of other men had filled his soul through so many
years, and which pleased him; that this time it was neces-
sary to conquer or to be conquered; and that a struggle, a
colossal and final struggle, had been begun between his vi-
ciousness and the goodness of that man.
In the presence of these lights, he proceeded like a man
who is intoxicated. As he walked thus with haggard eyes,
did he have a distinct perception of what might result to
him from his adventure at D——? Did he understand all
those mysterious murmurs which warn or importune the
spirit at certain moments of life? Did a voice whisper in his
ear that he had just passed the solemn hour of his desti-
ny; that there no longer remained a middle course for him;
that if he were not henceforth the best of men, he would be
the worst; that it behooved him now, so to speak, to mount
higher than the Bishop, or fall lower than the convict; that if
he wished to become good be must become an angel; that if
he wished to remain evil, he must become a monster?
Here, again, some questions must be put, which we have
already put to ourselves elsewhere: did he catch some shad-
ow of all this in his thought, in a confused way? Misfortune
certainly, as we have said, does form the education of the in-
telligence; nevertheless, it is doubtful whether Jean Valjean
was in a condition to disentangle all that we have here indi-
cated. If these ideas occurred to him, he but caught glimpses
of, rather than saw them, and they only succeeded in throw-
ing him into an unutterable and almost painful state of
emotion. On emerging from that black and deformed thing

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