Then frightful ideas rushed upon his mind. He saw down clear into his soul, and shuddered. He thought of that unfor- tunate girl who had destroyed him and whom he had destroyed. He cast a haggard eye over the two winding paths, along which Fate had driven their separate destinies, to that point of intersection at which she had pitilessly shattered them against each other. He thought of the folly of everlasting vows — the empti- ness of chastity, science, religion, virtue — the inutility of God. He took his fill of these bad thoughts, and while plunging deeper into them, he felt as if the fiend were laughing within him. And while thus diving into his soul, when he saw how large a space nature had assigned in it to the passions, he smiled more bitterly still.
“Fever”,“The Hunchback of Notre-Dame”,Victor Hugo (1831).
