Page 98 - les-miserables

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