Page 377 - les-miserables

Penetrate, at certain hours, past the livid face of a human
being who is engaged in reflection, and look behind, gaze
into that soul, gaze into that obscurity. There, beneath that
external silence, battles of giants, like those recorded in
Homer, are in progress; skirmishes of dragons and hydras
and swarms of phantoms, as in Milton; visionary circles, as
in Dante. What a solemn thing is this infinity which every
man bears within him, and which he measures with despair
against the caprices of his brain and the actions of his life!
Alighieri one day met with a sinister-looking door, be-
fore which he hesitated. Here is one before us, upon whose
threshold we hesitate. Let us enter, nevertheless.
We have but little to add to what the reader already
knows of what had happened to Jean Valjean after the ad-
venture with Little Gervais. From that moment forth he
was, as we have seen, a totally different man. What the Bish-
op had wished to make of him, that he carried out. It was
more than a transformation; it was a transfiguration.
He succeeded in disappearing, sold the Bishop’s silver,
reserving only the candlesticks as a souvenir, crept from
town to town, traversed France, came to M. sur M., con-
ceived the idea which we have mentioned, accomplished
what we have related, succeeded in rendering himself safe
from seizure and inaccessible, and, thenceforth, established
at M. sur M., happy in feeling his conscience saddened by
the past and the first half of his existence belied by the last,
he lived in peace, reassured and hopeful, having henceforth
only two thoughts,—to conceal his name and to sanctify his
life; to escape men and to return to God.

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