Page 2281 - les-miserables

lips the cold brow of Eponine; Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Jean
Prouvaire, Combeferre, Bossuet, Grantaire, all his friends
rose erect before him, then dispersed into thin air. Were all
those dear, sorrowful, valiant, charming or tragic beings
merely dreams? had they actually existed? The revolt had
enveloped everything in its smoke. These great fevers cre-
ate great dreams. He questioned himself; he felt himself; all
these vanished realities made him dizzy. Where were they
all then? was it really true that all were dead? A fall into the
shadows had carried off all except himself. It all seemed to
him to have disappeared as though behind the curtain of a
theatre. There are curtains like this which drop in life. God
passes on to the following act.
And he himself—was he actually the same man? He, the
poor man, was rich; he, the abandoned, had a family; he, the
despairing, was to marry Cosette. It seemed to him that he
had traversed a tomb, and that he had entered into it black
and had emerged from it white, and in that tomb the others
had remained. At certain moments, all these beings of the
past, returned and present, formed a circle around him, and
overshadowed him; then he thought of Cosette, and recov-
ered his serenity; but nothing less than this felicity could
have sufficed to efface that catastrophe.
M. Fauchelevent almost occupied a place among these
vanished beings. Marius hesitated to believe that the Fau-
chelevent of the barricade was the same as this Fauchelevent
in flesh and blood, sitting so gravely beside Cosette. The
first was, probably, one of those nightmares occasioned and
brought back by his hours of delirium. However, the na-

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