Page 197 - les-miserables

himself,—in stealing the money from that child, he had
done a thing of which he was no longer capable.
However that may be, this last evil action had a deci-
sive effect on him; it abruptly traversed that chaos which he
bore in his mind, and dispersed it, placed on one side the
thick obscurity, and on the other the light, and acted on his
soul, in the state in which it then was, as certain chemical
reagents act upon a troubled mixture by precipitating one
element and clarifying the other.
First of all, even before examining himself and reflect-
ing, all bewildered, like one who seeks to save himself, he
tried to find the child in order to return his money to him;
then, when he recognized the fact that this was impossible,
he halted in despair. At the moment when he exclaimed ‘I
am a wretch!’ he had just perceived what he was, and he
was already separated from himself to such a degree, that
he seemed to himself to be no longer anything more than
a phantom, and as if he had, there before him, in flesh and
blood, the hideous galley-convict, Jean Valjean, cudgel in
hand, his blouse on his hips, his knapsack filled with stolen
objects on his back, with his resolute and gloomy visage,
with his thoughts filled with abominable projects.
Excess of unhappiness had, as we have remarked, made
him in some sort a visionary. This, then, was in the nature
of a vision. He actually saw that Jean Valjean, that sinister
face, before him. He had almost reached the point of asking
himself who that man was, and he was horrified by him.
His brain was going through one of those violent and yet
perfectly calm moments in which revery is so profound that

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