Page 402 - les-miserables

The torment from which he had escaped with so much
difficulty was unchained afresh within him. His ideas be-
gan to grow confused once more; they assumed a kind of
stupefied and mechanical quality which is peculiar to de-
spair. The name of Romainville recurred incessantly to his
mind, with the two verses of a song which he had heard in
the past. He thought that Romainville was a little grove near
Paris, where young lovers go to pluck lilacs in the month of
April.
He wavered outwardly as well as inwardly. He walked
like a little child who is permitted to toddle alone.
At intervals, as he combated his lassitude, he made an
effort to recover the mastery of his mind. He tried to put to
himself, for the last time, and definitely, the problem over
which he had, in a manner, fallen prostrate with fatigue:
Ought he to denounce himself? Ought he to hold his peace?
He could not manage to see anything distinctly. The vague
aspects of all the courses of reasoning which had been
sketched out by his meditations quivered and vanished, one
after the other, into smoke. He only felt that, to whatever
course of action he made up his mind, something in him
must die, and that of necessity, and without his being able to
escape the fact; that he was entering a sepulchre on the right
hand as much as on the left; that he was passing through a
death agony,— the agony of his happiness, or the agony of
his virtue.
Alas! all his resolution had again taken possession of
him. He was no further advanced than at the beginning.
Thus did this unhappy soul struggle in its anguish.

402 Les Miserables