“The terrible shock of his sentence had in some way broken that wall which separates us from the mystery of things beyond and which we call life.”

“Though we chisel away as best we can at the mysterious block from which our life is made, the black vein of destiny continually reappears.”

“Monsieur Bienvenu was simply a man who accepted these mysterious questions...and who had in his soul a deep respect for the mystery which enveloped them.”

“Carve as we will the mysterious block of which our life is made, the black vein of destiny constantly reappears in it.”

“In vain we chisel, as best we can, the mysterious block of which our life is made, the black vein of destiny reappears continuously.”

“The Revolution came; events succeeded each other with precipitation; the parliamentary families, decimated, pursued, hunted down, were dispersed. M. Charles Myriel emigrated to Italy at the very beginning of the Revolution. There his wife died of a malady of the chest, from which she had long suffered. He had no children. What took place next in the fate of M. Myriel? The ruin of the French society of the olden days, the fall of his own family, the tragic spectacles of '93, which were, perhaps, even more alarming to the emigrants who viewed them from a distance, with the magnifying powers of terror,—did these cause the ideas of renunciation and solitude to germinate in him? Was he, in the midst of these distractions, these affections which absorbed his life, suddenly smitten with one of those mysterious and terrible blows which sometimes overwhelm, by striking to his heart, a man whom public catastrophes would not shake, by striking at his existence and his fortune? No one could have told: all that was known was, that when he returned from Italy he was a priest.”

“As for the bishop, the sight of the guillotine was a great shock to him, from which he recovered only slowly.”