In violent emotions, one does not read, one flings to the earth, so to speak, the paper which one holds, one clutches it like a victim, one crushes it, one digs into it the nails of one''s wrath, or of one''s joy; one hastens to the end, one leaps to the beginning; attention is at fever heat; it takes up in the gross, as it were, the essential points; it seizes on one point, and the rest disappears. In Marius'' note to Cosette, Jean Valjean saw only these words:--
"I die.
When thou readest this, my soul will be near thee."
In the presence of these two lines, he was horribly dazzled; he remained for a moment, crushed, as it were, by the change of emotion which was taking place within him, he stared at Marius'' note with a sort of intoxicated amazement, he had before his eyes that splendor, the death of a hated individual.
He uttered a frightful cry of inward joy.
So it was all over. The catastrophe had arrived sooner than he had dared to hope. The being who obstructed his destiny was disappearing.
That man had taken himself off of his own accord, freely, willingly.
This man was going to his death, and he, Jean Valjean, had had no hand in the matter, and it was through no fault of his.
Perhaps, even, he is already dead.
Here his fever entered into calculations. No, he is not dead yet.