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_ This book is a drama, whose leading personage is the Infinite.
Man is the second.
Such being the case, and a convent having happened to be on our road,
it has been our duty to enter it. Why? Because the convent,
which is common to the Orient as well as to the Occident,
to antiquity as well as to modern times, to paganism, to Buddhism,
to Mahometanism, as well as to Christianity, is one of the optical
apparatuses applied by man to the Infinite.
This is not the place for enlarging disproportionately on
certain ideas; nevertheless, while absolutely maintaining
our reserves, our restrictions, and even our indignations, we must
say that every time we encounter man in the Infinite, either well
or ill understood, we feel ourselves overpowered with respect.
There is, in the synagogue, in the mosque, in the pagoda,
in the wigwam, a hideous side which we execrate, and a sublime side,
which we adore. What a contemplation for the mind, and what endless
food for thought, is the reverberation of God upon the human wall! _
Read next: VOLUME II - COSETTE: BOOK SEVENTH - PARENTHESIS: HAPTER II. The Convent as an Historical Fact
Read previous: VOLUME II - COSETTE: BOOK SIXTH - LE PETIT-PICPUS: HAPTER XI. End of the Petit-Picpus
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