Behind the cloud, which casts a shadow over us, there is a star, giving us a ray of light.
We can no more escape from the light than from the shadow.
Gauvain went through an examination.
He was in the presence of some one.
Before a formidable judge.
His own conscience.
Gauvain felt everything wavering within him. His firmest resolutions, his most carefully made promises, his most irrevocable decisions, everything was swaying in the depths of his will.
There are earthquakes in the soul.
The more he reflected on what he had just seen, the more he was disturbed.
Gauvain, a Republican, believed himself to be, and really was just.
A superior justice had just been revealed to him.
Above Revolutionary justice, there is human justice.
What was taking place was not to be evaded; the fact was solemn; Gauvin was a part of this fact; he was in it, and could not get out of it; and, although Cimourdain had said to him, "this no longer concerns you," he felt something as a tree does when it is pulled up by the roots.
Every man has his base; if this base is shaken it causes a profound disturbance; Gauvain felt this disturbance.
He pressed his head between his hands, as if to press out the truth; to get at the exact bearings of such a situation was not an easy matter, nothing could be more difficult; he had formidable figures before him, of which he must get the sum total; to do the addition of destiny, how bewildering! he undertook it; he tried to give an account of himself; he endeavored to collect his ideas, to discipline the struggling forces which he felt within him, and to recapitulate the facts.
He laid them out before his mind.
Who has never taken a similar account of himself, and questioned himself, in extreme circumstances, on the course to pursue, whether to advance or retreat?
Gauvin had just seen a miraculous spectacle.
A celestial battle had taken place at the same time as the terrestrial.
