Page 2280 - les-miserables

of education, which Marius wished to have free and obliga-
tory, multiplied under all forms lavished on every one, like
the air and the sun in a word, respirable for the entire popu-
lation, they were in unison, and they almost conversed. M.
Fauchelevent talked well, and even with a certain loftiness
of language—still he lacked something indescribable. M.
Fauchelevent possessed something less and also something
more, than a man of the world.
Marius, inwardly, and in the depths of his thought,
surrounded with all sorts of mute questions this M. Fau-
chelevent, who was to him simply benevolent and cold.
There were moments when doubts as to his own recollec-
tions occurred to him. There was a void in his memory, a
black spot, an abyss excavated by four months of agony.—
Many things had been lost therein. He had come to the
point of asking himself whether it were really a fact that he
had seen M. Fauchelevent, so serious and so calm a man, in
the barricade.
This was not, however, the only stupor which the appa-
ritions and the disappearances of the past had left in his
mind. It must not be supposed that he was delivered from
all those obsessions of the memory which force us, even
when happy, even when satisfied, to glance sadly behind
us. The head which does not turn backwards towards hori-
zons that have vanished contains neither thought nor love.
At times, Marius clasped his face between his hands, and
the vague and tumultuous past traversed the twilight which
reigned in his brain. Again he beheld Mabeuf fall, he heard
Gavroche singing amid the grape-shot, he felt beneath his

2280 Les Miserables