Page 422 - les-miserables

The carter was a German and did not understand him.
He returned to the stable and remained near the horse.
An hour later he had quitted Saint-Pol and was direct-
ing his course towards Tinques, which is only five leagues
from Arras.
What did he do during this journey? Of what was he
thinking? As in the morning, he watched the trees, the
thatched roofs, the tilled fields pass by, and the way in which
the landscape, broken at every turn of the road, vanished;
this is a sort of contemplation which sometimes suffices to
the soul, and almost relieves it from thought. What is more
melancholy and more profound than to see a thousand ob-
jects for the first and the last time? To travel is to be born
and to die at every instant; perhaps, in the vaguest region
of his mind, he did make comparisons between the shift-
ing horizon and our human existence: all the things of life
are perpetually fleeing before us; the dark and bright inter-
vals are intermingled; after a dazzling moment, an eclipse;
we look, we hasten, we stretch out our hands to grasp what
is passing; each event is a turn in the road, and, all at once,
we are old; we feel a shock; all is black; we distinguish an
obscure door; the gloomy horse of life, which has been
drawing us halts, and we see a veiled and unknown person
unharnessing amid the shadows.
Twilight was falling when the children who were coming
out of school beheld this traveller enter Tinques; it is true
that the days were still short; he did not halt at Tinques; as
he emerged from the village, a laborer, who was mending
the road with stones, raised his head and said to him:—

422 Les Miserables