Page 953 - les-miserables

almost as much so. Fauchelevent became like stone, pale,
haggard, overwhelmed by all these excesses of emotion, not
knowing whether he had to do with a living man or a dead
one, and staring at Jean Valjean, who was gazing at him.
‘I fell asleep,’ said Jean Valjean.
And he raised himself to a sitting posture.
Fauchelevent fell on his knees.
‘Just, good Virgin! How you frightened me!’
Then he sprang to his feet and cried:—
‘Thanks, Father Madeleine!’
Jean Valjean had merely fainted. The fresh air had re-
vived him.
Joy is the ebb of terror. Fauchelevent found almost as
much difficulty in recovering himself as Jean Valjean had.
‘So you are not dead! Oh! How wise you are! I called you
so much that you came back. When I saw your eyes shut, I
said: ‘Good! there he is, stifled,’ I should have gone raving
mad, mad enough for a strait jacket. They would have put
me in Bicetre. What do you suppose I should have done if
you had been dead? And your little girl? There’s that fruit-
seller,—she would never have understood it! The child is
thrust into your arms, and then— the grandfather is dead!
What a story! good saints of paradise, what a tale! Ah! you
are alive, that’s the best of it!’
‘I am cold,’ said Jean Valjean.
This remark recalled Fauchelevent thoroughly to reality,
and there was pressing need of it. The souls of these two
men were troubled even when they had recovered them-
selves, although they did not realize it, and there was about

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