Just then a more violent shock roused him from his reverie. He turned his
eyes upon the carriage and vaguely espied the suffering beings it
contained--Madame Maze motionless, overwhelmed with grief; little Rose
gently moaning in her mother's lap; La Grivotte, whom a hoarse cough was
choking. For a moment Sister Hyacinthe's gay face shone out amidst the
whiteness of her coif and wimple, dominating all the others. The painful
journey was continuing, with a ray of divine hope still and ever shining
yonder. Then everything slowly vanished from Pierre's eyes as a fresh
wave of memory brought the past back from afar; and nothing of the
present remained save the lulling hymn, the indistinct voices of
dreamland, emerging from the invisible.
Henceforth he was at the seminary. The classrooms, the recreation ground
with its trees, rose up clearly before him. But all at once he only
beheld, as in a mirror, the youthful face which had then been his, and he
contemplated it and scrutinised it, as though it had been the face of a
stranger. Tall and slender, he had an elongated visage, with an unusually
developed forehead, lofty and straight like a tower; whilst his jaws
tapered, ending in a small refined chin. He seemed, in fact, to be all
brains; his mouth, rather large, alone retained an expression of
tenderness. Indeed, when his usually serious face relaxed, his mouth and
eyes acquired an exceedingly soft expression, betokening an unsatisfied,
hungry desire to love, devote oneself, and live.
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