Page 758 - les-miserables

him something of that which he beheld when he was in his
own country, and that all has not vanished. So long as you
go and come in your native land, you imagine that those
streets are a matter of indifference to you; that those win-
dows, those roofs, and those doors are nothing to you; that
those walls are strangers to you; that those trees are merely
the first encountered haphazard; that those houses, which
you do not enter, are useless to you; that the pavements
which you tread are merely stones. Later on, when you are
no longer there, you perceive that the streets are dear to you;
that you miss those roofs, those doors; and that those walls
are necessary to you, those trees are well beloved by you;
that you entered those houses which you never entered, ev-
ery day, and that you have left a part of your heart, of your
blood, of your soul, in those pavements. All those places
which you no longer behold, which you may never behold
again, perchance, and whose memory you have cherished,
take on a melancholy charm, recur to your mind with the
melancholy of an apparition, make the holy land visible to
you, and are, so to speak, the very form of France, and you
love them; and you call them up as they are, as they were,
and you persist in this, and you will submit to no change:
for you are attached to the figure of your fatherland as to the
face of your mother.
May we, then, be permitted to speak of the past in the
present? That said, we beg the reader to take note of it, and
we continue.
Jean Valjean instantly quitted the boulevard and plunged
into the streets, taking the most intricate lines which he

758 Les Miserables