292 Les Miserables
absolutely escaped this contagion, and, whatever Father
Madeleine did, remained his opponent as though a sort of
incorruptible and imperturbable instinct kept him on the
alert and uneasy. It seems, in fact, as though there exist-
ed in certain men a veritable bestial instinct, though pure
and upright, like all instincts, which creates antipathies
and sympathies, which fatally separates one nature from
another nature, which does not hesitate, which feels no dis-
quiet, which does not hold its peace, and which never belies
itself, clear in its obscurity, infallible, imperious, intracta-
ble, stubborn to all counsels of the intelligence and to all
the dissolvents of reason, and which, in whatever manner
destinies are arranged, secretly warns the man-dog of the
presence of the man-cat, and the man-fox of the presence
of the man-lion.
It frequently happened that when M. Madeleine was
passing along a street, calm, affectionate, surrounded by
the blessings of all, a man of lofty stature, clad in an iron-
gray frock-coat, armed with a heavy cane, and wearing a
battered hat, turned round abruptly behind him, and fol-
lowed him with his eyes until he disappeared, with folded
arms and a slow shake of the head, and his upper lip raised
in company with his lower to his nose, a sort of significant
grimace which might be translated by: ‘What is that man,
after all? I certainly have seen him somewhere. In any case,
I am not his dupe.’
This person, grave with a gravity which was almost men-
acing, was one of those men who, even when only seen by a
rapid glimpse, arrest the spectator’s attention.