Page 389 - les-miserables

various acts, into which there entered such grave thought,
would have had no suspicion of what was going on within
him. Only occasionally did his lips move; at other times he
raised his head and fixed his gaze upon some point of the
wall, as though there existed at that point something which
he wished to elucidate or interrogate.
When he had finished the letter to M. Laffitte, he put it
into his pocket, together with the pocket-book, and began
his walk once more.
His revery had not swerved from its course. He con-
tinued to see his duty clearly, written in luminous letters,
which flamed before his eyes and changed its place as he
altered the direction of his glance:—
‘Go! Tell your name! Denounce yourself!’
In the same way he beheld, as though they had passed
before him in visible forms, the two ideas which had, up
to that time, formed the double rule of his soul,—the con-
cealment of his name, the sanctification of his life. For the
first time they appeared to him as absolutely distinct, and
he perceived the distance which separated them. He recog-
nized the fact that one of these ideas was, necessarily, good,
while the other might become bad; that the first was self-
devotion, and that the other was personality; that the one
said, my neighbor, and that the other said, myself; that one
emanated from the light, and the other from darkness.
They were antagonistic. He saw them in conflict. In
proportion as he meditated, they grew before the eyes of
his spirit. They had now attained colossal statures, and it
seemed to him that he beheld within himself, in that infin-

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