“…that great and singular movement of a heart that begins to love is a very obscure and a very sweet thing…all that might have been love in the whole course of his life flowed together in a sort of ineffable light.
It was the second white apparition he had encountered. The Bishop had caused the dawn of virtue to rise on his horizon; Cosette caused the dawn of love to rise.
The early days passed in this dazzled state.”—Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
“I’m reading it all again,” he shared. “I wondered if it could be the same: the emotion, the recognition, effect and conviction for Destinies and the presence and appearance of God’s hand in the direction and unfolding of our lives.
I came to a chapter today, and it all happened again: the soul stirrings, recognition of something lived and how a spirit’s changed. I thought, the second time, it couldn’t be the same—but it was.”
“Why did you go back?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he spoke, beginning, “…maybe it was a desire to connect with a friend and his family through moment of soul-change as he passed through life’s last mystery. Maybe that was part of it.”
“Was there anything else?” she questioned further.
“Maybe I was afraid of losing it,” he answered.
“What?”
“That state of spirit, that purity and luminosity of heart. Maybe I was afraid of returning to a way I was before—something less than I became, by believing in the Dream.”
He opened the book to a corner-folded page, passage underlined in straight lined black and prominent ink and read:
“Who knows whether Jean Valjean had not been on the eve of growing discouraged and of falling once more? He loved and grew strong again. Alas! He walked with no less indecision than Cosette. He protected her, and she strengthened him. Thanks to him, she could walk through life; thanks to her, he could continue in virtue…Oh, unfathomable and divine mystery of the balances of destiny!”
“Maybe I was there,” he mused in offered and unguarded words, “another eve of falling.
But God has His means for movements—signs and inspirations that guide us to state and place—that, in hintings we discern, lead us back to better way: a destiny unseen, but still believed, in hope that lays before us.
Maybe that’s why I returned to it again, why story still speaks, and I am still moved.”
He took hold of her hand, and in their touch, she understood more than words would ever share.