and the Ens, the soul, nature, liberty, necessity; perpendicular problems,
sinister obscurities, where lean the gigantic archangels of the
human mind; formidable abysses, which Lucretius, Manou, Saint Paul,
Dante, contemplate with eyes flashing lightning, which seems
by its steady gaze on the infinite to cause stars to blaze forth there.

Monseigneur Bienvenu was simply a man who took note of the exterior
of mysterious questions without scrutinizing them, and without
troubling his own mind with them, and who cherished in his own
soul a grave respect for darkness.



BOOK SECOND--THE FALL


CHAPTER I

THE EVENING OF A DAY OF WALKING


Early in the month of October, 1815, about an hour before sunset,
a man who was travelling on foot entered the little town of D----
The few inhabitants who were at their windows or on their thresholds
at the moment stared at this traveller with a sort of uneasiness.
It was difficult to encounter a wayfarer of more wretched appearance.
He was a man of medium stature, thickset and robust, in the prime
of life. He might have been forty-six or forty-eight years old.
A cap with a drooping leather visor partly concealed his face,
burned and tanned by sun and wind, and dripping with perspiration.