Page 1941 - les-miserables

Cosette to Marius on the preceding evening.
It was simple and withering.
Jean Valjean stepped up to the mirror. He read the four
lines again, but he did not believe them. They produced on
him the effect of appearing in a flash of lightning. It was a
hallucination, it was impossible. It was not so.
Little by little, his perceptions became more precise; he
looked at Cosette’s blotting-book, and the consciousness of
the reality returned to him. He caught up the blotter and
said: ‘It comes from there.’ He feverishly examined the four
lines imprinted on the blotter, the reversal of the letters con-
verted into an odd scrawl, and he saw no sense in it. Then he
said to himself: ‘But this signifies nothing; there is nothing
written here.’ And he drew a long breath with inexpressible
relief. Who has not experienced those foolish joys in hor-
rible instants? The soul does not surrender to despair until
it has exhausted all illusions.
He held the blotter in his hand and contemplated it in
stupid delight, almost ready to laugh at the hallucination of
which he had been the dupe. All at once his eyes fell upon
the mirror again, and again he beheld the vision. There were
the four lines outlined with inexorable clearness. This time
it was no mirage. The recurrence of a vision is a reality; it
was palpable, it was the writing restored in the mirror. He
understood.
Jean Valjean tottered, dropped the blotter, and fell into
the old arm-chair beside the buffet, with drooping head,
and glassy eyes, in utter bewilderment. He told himself that
it was plain, that the light of the world had been eclipsed

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