When You Are Caressed Through Soul.Excerpt From "les Misérables" by Victor hugo

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STAMATIS SPANOUDAKIS-A Piece Of My Soul

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Excerpt From'Les Misérables"
Victor hugo

Book Fifth:The Descent
Chapter IV.M.Madeleine in Mourning

(It is Hugo’s emotions description of an elderly priest who had been blind for many years before his death, and content to be blind,as his sister was beside him.)

Let us say in passing,to be blind and to be loved,
is,in fact,one of the most strangely exquisite forms
of happiness upon this earth,where nothing is complete.

To have continually at your side a woman,a daughter,
a sister,a charming being,who is there because you
need her,and because she cannot do without you,
to know you are indispensable to someone necessary to you, to be able at all times to measure her affection
by the degree of her presence that she gives you,
and to say to yourself:She dedicates all her time
to me, because I possess her whole love;
to behold her thought in lieu of her face;

To be sure of the fidelity of one being in a total
eclipse of the world;to imagine the rustling of her
dress as the rustling of wings;to hear her moving to
and fro, going out,coming in, talking,singing,and
to think that you are the cause of those steps,those
words,that song,to show your personal attraction at
every moment;

to feel even more powerful as your infirmity increases;
to become in darkness,and by reason of darkness, the star around which this angel gravitates;
few joys can equal that.

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that
we are loved;loved for ourselves—say rather,loved
in spite of ourselves;this conviction the blind have.
To be served in distress is to be caressed.

Does he lack anything?No.
Light is not lost where love enters.
And what a love!A love wholly founded in purity.
There is no blindness where there is certainty.

The soul gropes in search of a soul, and finds it.
And that soul,found and proven,is a woman.
A hand sustains you, it is hers;lips lightly touch
your forehead,they are her lips;you hear breathing
near you, it is she.To have her wholly,from her
devotion to her pity,never to be left alone,

to have that sweet shyness as your aid,to lean on
that unbending reed,to touch Providence with your
hands and be able to grasp it in your arms;
God made palpable,what bliss!The heart,that dark celestial
flower,bursts into a mysterious bloom.

You would not give up that shade for all the light
in the world!The angel soul is there,forever there;
if she goes away,it is only to return;she fades away
in dream and reappears in reality.

You feel an approaching warmth,she is there.
You overflow with serenity,gaiety,and ecstasy;
you are radiant in your darkness.

And the thousand little cares!
The trifles that are enormous in this void.

The most ineffable accents of the womanly voice used to comfort you,and replacing for you the vanished universe! You are caressed through the soul.You see nothing,but you feel yourself adored.It is a paradise of darkness.