In the presence of these lights, he proceeded like a man who
is intoxicated. As he walked thus with haggard eyes, did he
have a distinct perception of what might result to him from his
adventure at D----? Did he understand all those mysterious murmurs
which warn or importune the spirit at certain moments of life?
Did a voice whisper in his ear that he had just passed the solemn
hour of his destiny; that there no longer remained a middle
course for him; that if he were not henceforth the best of men,
he would be the worst; that it behooved him now, so to speak,
to mount higher than the Bishop, or fall lower than the convict;
that if he wished to become good be must become an angel; that if he
wished to remain evil, he must become a monster?

Here, again, some questions must be put, which we have already put
to ourselves elsewhere: did he catch some shadow of all this in
his thought, in a confused way? Misfortune certainly, as we have said,
does form the education of the intelligence; nevertheless, it is
doubtful whether Jean Valjean was in a condition to disentangle
all that we have here indicated. If these ideas occurred to him,
he but caught glimpses of, rather than saw them, and they only
succeeded in throwing him into an unutterable and almost painful
state of emotion. On emerging from that black and deformed
thing which is called the galleys, the Bishop had hurt his soul,
as too vivid a light would have hurt his eyes on emerging from
the dark. The future life, the possible life which offered itself
to him henceforth, all pure and radiant, filled him with tremors
and anxiety. He no longer knew where he really was. Like an owl,
who should suddenly see the sun rise, the convict had been dazzled
and blinded, as it were, by virtue.