Were there no month of April, man would be a great deal more virtuous.  The budding plants are a set of accomplices!  Love is the thief, Spring the receiver.

Gwynplaine was shaken.

There is a kind of smoke of evil, preceding sin, in which the conscience cannot breathe.  The obscure nausea of hell comes over virtue in temptation.  The yawning abyss discharges an exhalation which warns the strong and turns the weak giddy.  Gwynplaine was suffering its mysterious attack.

Dilemmas, transient and at the same time stubborn, were floating before him.  Sin, presenting itself obstinately again and again to his mind, was taking form.  The morrow, midnight?  London Bridge, the page?  Should he go?  “Yes,” cried the flesh; “No,” cried the soul.

Nevertheless, we must remark that, strange as it may appear at first sight, he never once put himself the question, “Should he go?” quite distinctly.  Reprehensible actions are like over-strong brandies—­you cannot swallow them at a draught.  You put down your glass; you will see to it presently; there is a strange taste even about that first drop.  One thing is certain:  he felt something behind him pushing him, forward towards the unknown.  And he trembled.  He could catch a glimpse of a crumbling precipice, and he drew back, stricken by the terror encircling him.  He closed his eyes.  He tried hard to deny to himself that the adventure had ever occurred, and to persuade himself into doubting his reason.  This was evidently his best plan; the wisest thing he could do was to believe himself mad.

Fatal fever!  Every man, surprised by the unexpected, has at times felt the throb of such tragic pulsations.  The observer ever listens with anxiety to the echoes resounding from the dull strokes of the battering-ram of destiny striking against a conscience.

Alas!  Gwynplaine put himself questions.  Where duty is clear, to put oneself questions is to suffer defeat.

There are invasions which the mind may have to suffer.  There are the Vandals of the soul—­evil thoughts coming to devastate our virtue.  A thousand contrary ideas rushed into Gwynplaine’s brain, now following each other singly, now crowding together.  Then silence reigned again, and he would lean his head on his hands, in a kind of mournful attention, as of one who contemplates a landscape by night.

Suddenly he felt that he was no longer thinking.  His reverie had reached that point of utter darkness in which all things disappear.

He remembered, too, that he had not entered the inn.  It might be about two o’clock in the morning.

He placed the letter which the page had brought him in his side-pocket; but perceiving that it was next his heart, he drew it out again, crumpled it up, and placed it in a pocket of his hose.  He then directed his steps towards the inn, which he entered stealthily, and without awaking little Govicum, who, while waiting up for him, had fallen asleep on the table, with his arms for a pillow.  He closed the door, lighted a candle at the lamp, fastened the bolt, turned the key in the lock, taking, mechanically, all the precautions usual to a man returning home late, ascended the staircase of the Green Box, slipped into the old hovel which he used as a bedroom, looked at Ursus who was asleep, blew out his candle, and did not go to bed.