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CHAPTER V.
THE BLUE SKY THROUGH THE BLACK CLOUD.
Thus lived these unfortunate creatures together--Dea, relying;
Gwynplaine, accepted. These orphans were all in all to each other, the
feeble and the deformed. The widowed were betrothed. An inexpressible
thanksgiving arose out of their distress. They were grateful. To whom?
To the obscure immensity. Be grateful in your own hearts. That suffices.
Thanksgiving has wings, and flies to its right destination. Your prayer
knows its way better than you can.
How many men have believed that they prayed to Jupiter, when they prayed
to Jehovah! How many believers in amulets are listened to by the
Almighty! How many atheists there are who know not that, in the simple
fact of being good and sad, they pray to God!
Gwynplaine and Dea were grateful. Deformity is expulsion. Blindness is a
precipice. The expelled one had been adopted; the precipice was
habitable.
Gwynplaine had seen a brilliant light descending on him, in an
arrangement of destiny which seemed to put, in the perspective of a
dream, a white cloud of beauty having the form of a woman, a radiant
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