Page 973 - les-miserables

When he thought on these things, all that was within
him was lost in amazement before this mystery of sublim-
ity.
In these meditations, his pride vanished. He scrutinized
his own heart in all manner of ways; he felt his pettiness,
and many a time he wept. All that had entered into his life
for the last six months had led him back towards the Bish-
op’s holy injunctions; Cosette through love, the convent
through humility.
Sometimes at eventide, in the twilight, at an hour when
the garden was deserted, he could be seen on his knees in
the middle of the walk which skirted the chapel, in front of
the window through which he had gazed on the night of his
arrival, and turned towards the spot where, as he knew, the
sister was making reparation, prostrated in prayer. Thus he
prayed as he knelt before the sister.
It seemed as though he dared not kneel directly before
God.
Everything that surrounded him, that peaceful garden,
those fragrant flowers, those children who uttered joyous
cries, those grave and simple women, that silent cloister,
slowly permeated him, and little by little, his soul became
compounded of silence like the cloister, of perfume like the
flowers, of simplicity like the women, of joy like the chil-
dren. And then he reflected that these had been two houses
of God which had received him in succession at two critical
moments in his life: the first, when all doors were closed and
when human society rejected him; the second, at a moment
when human society had again set out in pursuit of him,

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