Page 450 - les-miserables

there was disengaged an austere and august impression, for
one there felt that grand human thing which is called the
law, and that grand divine thing which is called justice.
No one in all that throng paid any attention to him;
all glances were directed towards a single point, a wood-
en bench placed against a small door, in the stretch of wall
on the President’s left; on this bench, illuminated by several
candles, sat a man between two gendarmes.
This man was the man.
He did not seek him; he saw him; his eyes went thither
naturally, as though they had known beforehand where that
figure was.
He thought he was looking at himself, grown old; not
absolutely the same in face, of course, but exactly similar in
attitude and aspect, with his bristling hair, with that wild
and uneasy eye, with that blouse, just as it was on the day
when he entered D——, full of hatred, concealing his soul in
that hideous mass of frightful thoughts which he had spent
nineteen years in collecting on the floor of the prison.
He said to himself with a shudder, ‘Good God! shall I be-
come like that again?’
This creature seemed to be at least sixty; there was some-
thing indescribably coarse, stupid, and frightened about
him.
At the sound made by the opening door, people had
drawn aside to make way for him; the President had turned
his head, and, understanding that the personage who had
just entered was the mayor of M. sur M., he had bowed to
him; the attorney-general, who had seen M. Madeleine at

450 Les Miserables