Page 1532 - les-miserables

ness are born with love, and the young girl who cherishes
within her breast a trembling and fragile ideal has mercy on
the wing of a butterfly. She wove garlands of poppies, which
she placed on her head, and which, crossed and penetrat-
ed with sunlight, glowing until they flamed, formed for her
rosy face a crown of burning embers.
Even after their life had grown sad, they kept up their
custom of early strolls.
One morning in October, therefore, tempted by the se-
rene perfection of the autumn of 1831, they set out, and
found themselves at break of day near the Barriere du
Maine. It was not dawn, it was daybreak; a delightful and
stern moment. A few constellations here and there in the
deep, pale azure, the earth all black, the heavens all white,
a quiver amid the blades of grass, everywhere the mysteri-
ous chill of twilight. A lark, which seemed mingled with the
stars, was carolling at a prodigious height, and one would
have declared that that hymn of pettiness calmed immen-
sity. In the East, the Valde-Grace projected its dark mass
on the clear horizon with the sharpness of steel; Venus daz-
zlingly brilliant was rising behind that dome and had the
air of a soul making its escape from a gloomy edifice.
All was peace and silence; there was no one on the road;
a few stray laborers, of whom they caught barely a glimpse,
were on their way to their work along the side-paths.
Jean Valjean was sitting in a cross-walk on some planks
deposited at the gate of a timber-yard. His face was turned
towards the highway, his back towards the light; he had for-
gotten the sun which was on the point of rising; he had sunk

1532 Les Miserables