and could not find his pulse; his breath
was short and halted at times; he recognized the fact that he was weaker
than he had ever been before. Then, no doubt under the pressure of some
supreme preoccupation, he made an effort, drew himself up into a sitting
posture and dressed himself. He put on his old workingman's clothes. As
he no longer went out, he had returned to them and preferred them. He
was obliged to pause many times while dressing himself; merely putting
his arms through his waistcoat made the perspiration trickle from his
forehead.

Since he had been alone, he had placed his bed in the antechamber, in
order to inhabit that deserted apartment as little as possible.

He opened the valise and drew from it Cosette's outfit.

He spread it out on his bed.

The Bishop's candlesticks were in their place on the chimney-piece. He
took from a drawer two wax candles and put them in the candlesticks.
Then, although it was still broad daylight,--it was summer,--he lighted
them. In the same way candles are to be seen lighted in broad daylight
in chambers where there is a corpse.

Every step that he took in going from one piece of furniture to another
exhausted him, and he was obliged to sit down. It was not ordinary
fatigue which expends the strength only to renew it; it was the remnant
of all movement possible to him, it was life drained which flows away
drop by drop in overwhelming efforts and which will never be renewed.

The chair into which he allowed himself to fall was placed in front of
that mirror, so fatal for him, so providential for Marius, in which
he had read Cosette's reversed writing on the blotting book. He caught
sight of himself in this mirror, and did not recognize himself. He was
eighty years old; before Marius' marriage, he would have hardly been
taken for fifty; that year had counted for thirty. What he bore on his
brow was no longer the wrinkles of age, it was the mysterious mark of
death. The hollowing of that pitiless nail could be felt there. His
cheeks were pendulous; the skin of his face had the color which would
lead one to think that it already had earth upon it; the corners of his
mouth drooped as in the mask which the ancients sculptured on tombs. He
gazed into space with an air of reproach; one would have said that he
was one of those grand tragic beings who have cause to complain of some
one.

He was in that condition, the last phase of dejection, in which sorrow
no longer flow