This is what she read:
O love! Adorations! Light of two minds which comprehend each other, of two hearts which are interchanged, of two glances which interpenetrate! You will come to me, will you not, happiness? Walks together in the solitudes! Days blessed and radiant!
God can add nothing to the happiness of those who love one another but to give them unending duration. After a life of love, an eternity of love is an augmentation indeed, but to increase in its intensity the ineffable felicity which love gives to the soul in this world is impossible, even with God. God is the plenitude of heaven; love is the plenitude of man.
"Does she still come to the Luxembourg?" "No, monsieur." "She hears mass in this church, does she not?" "She comes here no more." "Does she still live in this house?" "She has moved away!" " Whither has she gone to live?" "She did not say!"
What a gloomy thing, not to know the address of one's soul!
You who suffer because you love, love still more. To die of love is to live by it.
What a grand thing, to be loved! What a grander thing still, to love! The heart becomes heroic through passion. It is no longer composed of anything but what is pure; it no longer rests upon anything but what is elevated and great. An unworthy thought can no more spring up in it than a nettle upon a glacier. The soul, lofty and serene, inaccessible to common passions and common emotions, rising above the clouds and the shadows of this world, its follies, its falsehoods, its hates, its vanities, its miseries, inhabits the blue of the skies, and only feels more the deep and subterranean commotions of destiny, as the summit of the mountains feels the quaking of the earth.
Were there not someone who loved, the sun would be extinguished.
[. . .]
"Oh yes!" said she. "How I recognize all this! This is what I had already read in his eyes!"
...and this is why I love Les Miserables.
Inspiration indeed for me to start.
ReplyDeleteWow.