Page 2441 - les-miserables

His hands, which rested on his knees, began to press
their nails into the stuff of his trousers.
Cosette supported his shoulders, and sobbed, and tried
to speak to him, but could not.
Among the words mingled with that mournful saliva
which accompanies tears, they distinguished words like the
following:
‘Father, do not leave us. Is it possible that we have found
you only to lose you again?’
It might be said that agony writhes. It goes, comes, ad-
vances towards the sepulchre, and returns towards life.
There is groping in the action of dying.
Jean Valjean rallied after this semi-swoon, shook his
brow as though to make the shadows fall away from it and
became almost perfectly lucid once more.
He took a fold of Cosette’s sleeve and kissed it.
‘He is coming back! doctor, he is coming back,’ cried
Marius.
‘You are good, both of you,’ said Jean Valjean. ‘I am going
to tell you what has caused me pain. What has pained me,
Monsieur Pontmercy, is that you have not been willing to
touch that money. That money really belongs to your wife.
I will explain to you, my children, and for that reason, also,
I am glad to see you. Black jet comes from England, white
jet comes from Norway. All this is in this paper, which you
will read. For bracelets, I invented a way of substituting for
slides of soldered sheet iron, slides of iron laid together. It
is prettier, better and less costly. You will understand how
much money can be made in that way. So Cosette’s fortune

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