Page 98 - les-miserables
P. 98

Nevertheless, it was not complete if cold or rainy weather
         prevented his passing an hour or two in his garden before
         going to bed, and after the two women had retired. It seemed
         to be a sort of rite with him, to prepare himself for slumber
         by meditation in the presence of the grand spectacles of the
         nocturnal heavens. Sometimes, if the two old women were
         not asleep, they heard him pacing slowly along the walks at
         a very advanced hour of the night. He was there alone, com-
         muning  with  himself,  peaceful,  adoring,  comparing  the
         serenity of his heart with the serenity of the ether, moved
         amid the darkness by the visible splendor of the constella-
         tions and the invisible splendor of God, opening his heart
         to  the  thoughts  which  fall  from  the  Unknown.  At  such
         moments, while he offered his heart at the hour when noc-
         turnal flowers offer their perfume, illuminated like a lamp
         amid the starry night, as he poured himself out in ecstasy in
         the midst of the universal radiance of creation, he could not
         have told himself, probably, what was passing in his spirit;
         he felt something take its flight from him, and something
         descend into him. Mysterious exchange of the abysses of the
         soul with the abysses of the universe!
            He thought of the grandeur and presence of God; of the
         future eternity, that strange mystery; of the eternity past, a
         mystery still more strange; of all the infinities, which pierced
         their way into all his senses, beneath his eyes; and, with-
         out seeking to comprehend the incomprehensible, he gazed
         upon it. He did not study God; he was dazzled by him. He
         considered those magnificent conjunctions of atoms, which
         communicate aspects to matter, reveal forces by verifying

         98                                    Les Miserables
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