n gazing at Cosette.
The reflection of that sweet face lighted up his pale visage.
The doctor felt of his pulse.
"Ah! it was you that he wanted!" he murmured, looking at Cosette and Marius.
And bending down to Marius'' ear, he added in a very low voice:
"Too late."
Jean Valjean surveyed the doctor and Marius serenely, almost without ceasing to gaze at Cosette.
These barely articulate words were heard to issue from his mouth:
"It is nothing to die; it is dreadful not to live."
All at once he rose to his feet.
These accesses of strength are sometimes the sign of the death agony.
He walked with a firm step to the wall, thrusting aside Marius and the doctor who tried to help him, detached from the wall a little copper crucifix which was suspended there, and returned to his seat with all the freedom of movement of perfect health, and said in a loud voice, as he laid the crucifix on the table:
"Behold the great martyr."
Then his chest sank in, his head wavered, as though the intoxication of the tomb were seizing hold upon him.
His hands, which rested on his knees, began to press their nails into the stuff of his trousers.
Cosette supported his shoulders, and sobbed, and tried to speak to him, but could not.
Among the words mingled with that mournful saliva which accompanies tears, they distinguished words like the following: