Page 661 - les-miserables

A cold wind was blowing from the plain. The forest was
dark, not a leaf was moving; there were none of the vague,
fresh gleams of summertide. Great boughs uplifted them-
selves in frightful wise. Slender and misshapen bushes
whistled in the clearings. The tall grasses undulated like
eels under the north wind. The nettles seemed to twist long
arms furnished with claws in search of prey. Some bits of
dry heather, tossed by the breeze, flew rapidly by, and had
the air of fleeing in terror before something which was com-
ing after. On all sides there were lugubrious stretches.
The darkness was bewildering. Man requires light. Who-
ever buries himself in the opposite of day feels his heart
contract. When the eye sees black, the heart sees trouble. In
an eclipse in the night, in the sooty opacity, there is anxi-
ety even for the stoutest of hearts. No one walks alone in
the forest at night without trembling. Shadows and trees—
two formidable densities. A chimerical reality appears in
the indistinct depths. The inconceivable is outlined a few
paces distant from you with a spectral clearness. One be-
holds floating, either in space or in one’s own brain, one
knows not what vague and intangible thing, like the dreams
of sleeping flowers. There are fierce attitudes on the hori-
zon. One inhales the effluvia of the great black void. One is
afraid to glance behind him, yet desirous of doing so. The
cavities of night, things grown haggard, taciturn profiles
which vanish when one advances, obscure dishevelments,
irritated tufts, livid pools, the lugubrious reflected in the fu-
nereal, the sepulchral immensity of silence, unknown but
possible beings, bendings of mysterious branches, alarming

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