Page 1142 - les-miserables

CHAPTER V

ENLARGEMENT

OF HORIZON

The shocks of youthful minds among themselves have this
admirable property, that one can never foresee the spark,
nor divine the lightning flash. What will dart out presently?
No one knows. The burst of laughter starts from a tender
feeling.
At the moment of jest, the serious makes its entry. Im-
pulses depend on the first chance word. The spirit of each
is sovereign, jest suffices to open the field to the unexpect-
ed. These are conversations with abrupt turns, in which the
perspective changes suddenly. Chance is the stage-manager
of such conversations.
A severe thought, starting oddly from a clash of words,
suddenly traversed the conflict of quips in which Grantaire,
Bahorel, Prouvaire, Bossuet, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac
were confusedly fencing.
How does a phrase crop up in a dialogue? Whence
comes it that it suddenly impresses itself on the attention
of those who hear it? We have just said, that no one knows

1142 Les Miserables