Page 376 - les-miserables

CHAPTER III

A TEMPEST IN A SKULL

The reader has, no doubt, already divined that M. Mad-
eleine is no other than Jean Valjean.
We have already gazed into the depths of this conscience;
the moment has now come when we must take another look
into it. We do so not without emotion and trepidation.
There is nothing more terrible in existence than this sort of
contemplation. The eye of the spirit can nowhere find more
dazzling brilliance and more shadow than in man; it can
fix itself on no other thing which is more formidable, more
complicated, more mysterious, and more infinite. There is
a spectacle more grand than the sea; it is heaven: there is a
spectacle more grand than heaven; it is the inmost recesses
of the soul.
To make the poem of the human conscience, were it only
with reference to a single man, were it only in connection
with the basest of men, would be to blend all epics into one
superior and definitive epic. Conscience is the chaos of chi-
meras, of lusts, and of temptations; the furnace of dreams;
the lair of ideas of which we are ashamed; it is the pande-
monium of sophisms; it is the battlefield of the passions.

376 Les Miserables