“ It is the property of grief to cause the childish side of man to reappear. ”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862). copy citation
| Author | Victor Hugo |
|---|---|
| Source | Les Misérables |
| Topic | grief property |
| Date | 1862 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | Translation by Isabel F. Hapgood in 1887 |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/135/135-h/135-h.htm |
Context
“CHAPTER VIII—THE CHAIN-GANG
Jean Valjean was the more unhappy of the two. Youth, even in its sorrows, always possesses its own peculiar radiance.
At times, Jean Valjean suffered so greatly that he became puerile. It is the property of grief to cause the childish side of man to reappear. He had an unconquerable conviction that Cosette was escaping from him. He would have liked to resist, to retain her, to arouse her enthusiasm by some external and brilliant matter. These ideas, puerile, as we have just said, and at the same time senile, conveyed to him, by their very childishness, a tolerably just notion of the influence of gold lace on the imaginations of young girls.”
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