And he remembered that he had dared to complain. He often rose in the middle of the night to listen to the grateful song of these innocent creatures, weighed down by severity; and his blood ran cold when he thought that men who were justly chastised only raised their voices to heaven to blaspheme, and that he, wretch as he was, had threatened God. It was a striking thing, which made him reflect deeply, and imagine it a warning of Providence, that all the things he had done to escape from the other place of expiation,—such as climbing walls, difficulties, dangerous adventures, and risks of death,—he had gone through again, in entering the present place. Was it a symbol of his destiny?
This house was a prison too, and bore a mournful likeness to the other abode from which he had fled, and yet he had never had such an idea here. He saw again the bars, bolts, and iron bars, to guard whom? Angels. The lofty walls which he had seen around tigers he saw again around lambs.
It was a place of expiation, and not of punishment, and yet it was even more austere, gloomy, and pitiless than the other. These virgins were more harshly bowed than the galley slaves. A rough cold wind, the wind which had chilled his youth, blew through the barred and padlocked cage of the vultures; but a sharper and more painful wind passed through the cotes of these doves.
Why was this?
When he thought of these things, all within him bowed down before this mystery of sublimity. In these meditations pride vanished: he felt himself insignificant, and wept many times: all that had entered his life during the past six months, led him back to the Bishop's holy injunctions,—Cosette by love, the convent by humility.
At times, in those hours of the night when the garden was deserted, he might have been seen kneeling in front of that window through which he had gazed on the night of his arrival, turned toward the spot where he knew that the sister who was making reparation was prostrated in prayer. He prayed thus, kneeling before this sister,—it seemed as if he dared not kneel directly to God.
All that surrounded him—this peaceful garden, these fragrant flowers, these children uttering merry cries, these grave and simple women, these silent cloisters;—slowly penetrated him and gradually his soul was composed of silence like this cloister, of perfume like these flowers, of peace like this garden, of simplicity like these women, and of joy like these children. And then he thought how two houses of God had in turn received him at the two critical moments of his life,—the first when all doors were closed and human society repulsed him, the second at the moment when human society was beginning to hunt him down again, and the hulks were yawning for him; and that, had it not been for the former, he would have fallen back into crime; and but for the latter, into punishment. All his heart melted into gratitude, and he loved more and more.
Several years passed thus, and Cosette grew.