e in this incident? What will the end be? What is to be done?"

This was the torment in which he found himself. His brain had lost its
power of retaining ideas; they passed like waves, and he clutched his
brow in both hands to arrest them.

Nothing but anguish extricated itself from this tumult which overwhelmed
his will and his reason, and from which he sought to draw proof and
resolution.

His head was burning. He went to the window and threw it wide open.
There were no stars in the sky. He returned and seated himself at the
table.

The first hour passed in this manner.

Gradually, however, vague outlines began to take form and to fix
themselves in his meditation, and he was able to catch a glimpse with
precision of the reality,--not the whole situation, but some of
the details. He began by recognizing the fact that, critical and
extraordinary as was this situation, he was completely master of it.

This only caused an increase of his stupor.

Independently of the severe and religious aim which he had assigned to
his actions, all that he had made up to that day had been nothing but a
hole in which to bury his name. That which he had always feared most of
all in his hours of self-communion, during his sleepless nights, was to
ever hear that name pronounced; he had said to himself, that that would
be the end of all things for him; that on the day when that name made
its reappearance it would cause his new life to vanish from about
him, and--who knows?--perhaps even his new soul within him, also. He
shuddered at the very thought that this was possible. Assuredly, if any
one had said to him at such moments that the hour would come when that
name would ring in his ears, when the hideous words, Jean Valjean, would
suddenly emerge from the darkness and rise in front of him, when that
formidable light, capable of dissipating the mystery in which he had
enveloped himself, would suddenly blaze forth above his head, and that
that name would not menace him, that that light would but produce
an obscurity more dense, that this rent veil would but increase the
mystery, that this earthquake would solidify his edifice, that this
prodigious incident would have no other result, so far as he was
concerned, if so it seemed good to him, than that of rendering his
existence at once clearer and more impenetrable, and that, out of his
confrontation with the phantom of Jean Valjean, the good and worthy
citizen Monsieur Madeleine would e