Page 2005 - les-miserables

man race will be delivered, raised up, consoled! We affirm
it on this barrier. Whence should proceed that cry of love,
if not from the heights of sacrifice? Oh my brothers, this is
the point of junction, of those who think and of those who
suffer; this barricade is not made of paving-stones, nor of
joists, nor of bits of iron; it is made of two heaps, a heap of
ideas, and a heap of woes. Here misery meets the ideal. The
day embraces the night, and says to it: ‘I am about to die,
and thou shalt be born again with me.’ From the embrace
of all desolations faith leaps forth. Sufferings bring hither
their agony and ideas their immortality. This agony and
this immortality are about to join and constitute our death.
Brothers, he who dies here dies in the radiance of the future,
and we are entering a tomb all flooded with the dawn.’
Enjolras paused rather than became silent; his lips
continued to move silently, as though he were talking to
himself, which caused them all to gaze attentively at him,
in the endeavor to hear more. There was no applause; but
they whispered together for a long time. Speech being a
breath, the rustling of intelligences resembles the rustling
of leaves.

2005