Les Misérables, v. 2/5: Cosette

by Victor Hugo

  CHAPTER I.

  THE CONVENT AS AN ABSTRACT IDEA.

  This book is a drama in which the hero is the Infinite. The secondcharacter is Man.

  Under these circumstances, as a convent happens to lie on our road, weought to enter it. Why? Because the convent, which belongs as much tothe East as to the West, to antiquity as to modern times, to Paganism,to Buddhism, to Mahometanism, as to Christianity, is one of the lenseswhich man brings to bear on the Infinite.

  This is no place to develop unrestrictedly certain ideas; still, whilewe maintain absolutely our reservations, our restrictions, and evenour indignation, we ought to acknowledge, that whenever we find in manthe sense of the Infinite, well or ill conceived, we are seized with afeeling of respect. In the synagogue, in the mosque, in the pagoda, inthe wigwam, there is a repulsive side which we detest, and a sublimeside which we reverence. What a subject for meditation for the spirit,and what a boundless revery is the reverberation of God on the humanwall!