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Les Misérables: VI The Wild Man in His Lair

Les Misérables
VI The Wild Man in His Lair
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table of contents
  1. Titlepage
  2. Imprint
  3. Preface
  4. Les Misérables
    1. Volume I: Fantine
      1. Book I: A Just Man
        1. I: M. Myriel
        2. II: M. Myriel Becomes M. Welcome
        3. III: A Hard Bishopric for a Good Bishop
        4. IV: Works Corresponding to Words
        5. V: Monseigneur Bienvenu Made His Cassocks Last Too Long
        6. VI: Who Guarded His House for Him
        7. VII: Cravatte
        8. VIII: Philosophy After Drinking
        9. IX: The Brother as Depicted by the Sister
        10. X: The Bishop in the Presence of an Unknown Light
        11. XI: A Restriction
        12. XII: The Solitude of Monseigneur Welcome
        13. XIII: What He Believed
        14. XIV: What He Thought
      2. Book II: The Fall
        1. I: The Evening of a Day of Walking
        2. II: Prudence Counselled to Wisdom.
        3. III: The Heroism of Passive Obedience.
        4. IV: Details Concerning the Cheese-Dairies of Pontarlier.
        5. V: Tranquillity
        6. VI: Jean Valjean
        7. VII: The Interior of Despair
        8. VIII: Billows and Shadows
        9. IX: New Troubles
        10. X: The Man Aroused
        11. XI: What He Does
        12. XII: The Bishop Works
        13. XIII: Little Gervais
      3. Book III: In the Year 1817
        1. I: The Year 1817
        2. II: A Double Quartette
        3. III: Four and Four
        4. IV: Tholomyès Is So Merry That He Sings a Spanish Ditty
        5. V: At Bombarda’s
        6. VI: A Chapter in Which They Adore Each Other
        7. VII: The Wisdom of Tholomyès
        8. VIII: The Death of a Horse
        9. IX: A Merry End to Mirth
      4. Book IV: To Confide Is Sometimes to Deliver Into a Person’s Power
        1. I: One Mother Meets Another Mother
        2. II: First Sketch of Two Unprepossessing Figures
        3. III: The Lark
      5. Book V: The Descent
        1. I: The History of a Progress in Black Glass Trinkets
        2. II: Madeleine
        3. III: Sums Deposited with Laffitte
        4. IV: M. Madeleine in Mourning
        5. V: Vague Flashes on the Horizon
        6. VI: Father Fauchelevent
        7. VII: Fauchelevent Becomes a Gardener in Paris
        8. VIII: Madame Victurnien Expends Thirty Francs on Morality
        9. IX: Madame Victurnien’s Success
        10. X: Result of the Success
        11. XI: Christus Nos Liberavit
        12. XII: M. Bamatabois’s Inactivity
        13. XIII: The Solution of Some Questions Connected with the Municipal Police
      6. Book VI: Javert
        1. I: The Beginning of Repose
        2. II: How Jean May Become Champ
      7. Book VII: The Champmathieu Affair
        1. I: Sister Simplice
        2. II: The Perspicacity of Master Scaufflaire
        3. III: A Tempest in a Skull
        4. IV: Forms Assumed by Suffering During Sleep
        5. V: Hindrances
        6. VI: Sister Simplice Put to the Proof
        7. VII: The Traveller on His Arrival Takes Precautions for Departure
        8. VIII: An Entrance by Favor
        9. IX: A Place Where Convictions Are in Process of Formation
        10. X: The System of Denials
        11. XI: Champmathieu More and More Astonished
      8. Book VIII: A Counterblow
        1. I: In What Mirror M. Madeleine Contemplates His Hair
        2. II: Fantine Happy
        3. III: Javert Satisfied
        4. IV: Authority Reasserts Its Rights
        5. V: A Suitable Tomb
    2. Volume II: Cosette
      1. Book I: Waterloo
        1. I: What Is Met with on the Way from Nivelles
        2. II: Hougomont
        3. III: The Eighteenth of June, 1815
        4. IV: A
        5. V: The Quid Obscurum of Battles
        6. VI: Four O’Clock in the Afternoon
        7. VII: Napoleon in a Good Humor
        8. VIII: The Emperor Puts a Question to the Guide Lacoste
        9. IX: The Unexpected
        10. X: The Plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean
        11. XI: A Bad Guide to Napoleon; A Good Guide to Bülow
        12. XII: The Guard
        13. XIII: The Catastrophe
        14. XIV: The Last Square
        15. XV: Cambronne
        16. XVI: Quot Libras in Duce?
        17. XVII: Is Waterloo to Be Considered Good?
        18. XVIII: A Recrudescence of Divine Right
        19. XIX: The Battlefield at Night
      2. Book II: The Ship Orion
        1. I: Number 24,601 Becomes Number 9,430
        2. II: In Which the Reader Will Peruse Two Verses, Which Are of the Devil’s Composition, Possibly
        3. III: The Ankle-Chain Must Have Undergone a Certain Preparatory Manipulation to Be Thus Broken with a Blow from a Hammer
      3. Book III: Accomplishment of the Promise Made to the Dead Woman
        1. I: The Water Question at Montfermeil
        2. II: Two Complete Portraits
        3. III: Men Must Have Wine, and Horses Must Have Water
        4. IV: Entrance on the Scene of a Doll
        5. V: The Little One All Alone
        6. VI: Which Possibly Proves Boulatruelle’s Intelligence
        7. VII: Cosette Side by Side with the Stranger in the Dark
        8. VIII: The Unpleasantness of Receiving Into One’s House a Poor Man Who May Be a Rich Man
        9. IX: Thénardier and His Manouvres
        10. X: He Who Seeks to Better Himself May Render His Situation Worse
        11. XI: Number 9,430 Reappears, and Cosette Wins It in the Lottery
      4. Book IV: The Gorbeau Hovel
        1. I: Master Gorbeau
        2. II: A Nest for Owl and a Warbler
        3. III: Two Misfortunes Make One Piece of Good Fortune
        4. IV: The Remarks of the Principal Tenant
        5. V: A Five-Franc Piece Falls on the Ground and Produces a Tumult
      5. Book V: For a Black Hunt, a Mute Pack
        1. I: The Zigzags of Strategy
        2. II: It Is Lucky That the Pont d’Austerlitz Bears Carriages
        3. III: To Wit, the Plan of Paris in 1727
        4. IV: The Gropings of Flight
        5. V: Which Would Be Impossible with Gas Lanterns
        6. VI: The Beginning of an Enigma
        7. VII: Continuation of the Enigma
        8. VIII: The Enigma Becomes Doubly Mysterious
        9. IX: The Man with the Bell
        10. X: Which Explains How Javert Got on the Scent
      6. Book VI: Le Petit-Picpus
        1. I: Number 62 Rue Petit-Picpus
        2. II: The Obedience of Martin Verga
        3. III: Austerities
        4. IV: Gayeties
        5. V: Distractions
        6. VI: The Little Convent
        7. VII: Some Silhouettes of This Darkness
        8. VIII: Post Corda Lapides
        9. IX: A Century Under a Guimpe
        10. X: Origin of the Perpetual Adoration
        11. XI: End of the Petit-Picpus
      7. Book VII: Parenthesis
        1. I: The Convent as an Abstract Idea
        2. II: The Convent as an Historical Fact
        3. III: On What Conditions One Can Respect the Past
        4. IV: The Convent from the Point of View of Principles
        5. V: Prayer
        6. VI: The Absolute Goodness of Prayer
        7. VII: Precautions to Be Observed in Blame
        8. VIII: Faith, Law
      8. Book VIII: Cemeteries Take That Which Is Committed Them
        1. I: Which Treats of the Manner of Entering a Convent
        2. II: Fauchelevent in the Presence of a Difficulty
        3. III: Mother Innocente
        4. IV: In Which Jean Valjean Has Quite the Air of Having Read Austin Castillejo
        5. V: It Is Not Necessary to Be Drunk in Order to Be Immortal
        6. VI: Between Four Planks
        7. VII: In Which Will Be Found the Origin of the Saying: Don’t Lose the Card
        8. VIII: A Successful Interrogatory
        9. IX: Cloistered
    3. Volume III: Marius
      1. Book I: Paris Studied in Its Atom
        1. I: Parvulus
        2. II: Some of His Particular Characteristics
        3. III: He Is Agreeable
        4. IV: He May Be of Use
        5. V: His Frontiers
        6. VI: A Bit of History
        7. VII: The Gamin Should Have His Place in the Classifications of India
        8. VIII: In Which the Reader Will Find a Charming Saying of the Last King
        9. IX: The Old Soul of Gaul
        10. X: Ecce Paris, Ecce Homo
        11. XI: To Scoff, to Reign
        12. XII: The Future Latent in the People
        13. XIII: Little Gavroche
      2. Book II: The Great Bourgeois
        1. I: Ninety Years and Thirty-Two Teeth
        2. II: Like Master, Like House
        3. III: Luc-Esprit
        4. IV: A Centenarian Aspirant
        5. V: Basque and Nicolette
        6. VI: In Which Magnon and Her Two Children Are Seen
        7. VII: Rule: Receive No One Except in the Evening
        8. VIII: Two Do Not Make a Pair
      3. Book III: The Grandfather and the Grandson
        1. I: An Ancient Salon
        2. II: One of the Red Spectres of That Epoch
        3. III: Requiescant
        4. IV: End of the Brigand
        5. V: The Utility of Going to Mass, in Order to Become a Revolutionist
        6. VI: The Consequences of Having Met a Warden
        7. VII: Some Petticoat
        8. VIII: Marble Against Granite
      4. Book IV: The Friends of the ABC
        1. I: A Group Which Barely Missed Becoming Historic
        2. II: Blondeau’s Funeral Oration by Bossuet
        3. III: Marius’ Astonishments
        4. IV: The Back Room of the Café Musain
        5. V: Enlargement of Horizon
        6. VI: Res Angusta
      5. Book V: The Excellence of Misfortune
        1. I: Marius Indigent
        2. II: Marius Poor
        3. III: Marius Grown Up
        4. IV: M. Mabeuf
        5. V: Poverty a Good Neighbor for Misery
        6. VI: The Substitute
      6. Book VI: The Conjunction of Two Stars
        1. I: The Sobriquet: Mode of Formation of Family Names
        2. II: Lux Facta Est
        3. III: Effect of the Spring
        4. IV: Beginning of a Great Malady
        5. V: Divers Claps of Thunder Fall on Ma’Am Bougon
        6. VI: Taken Prisoner
        7. VII: Adventures of the Letter U Delivered Over to Conjectures
        8. VIII: The Veterans Themselves Can Be Happy
        9. IX: Eclipse
      7. Book VII: Patron Minette
        1. I: Mines and Miners
        2. II: The Lowest Depths
        3. III: Babet, Gueulemer, Claquesous, and Montparnasse
        4. IV: Composition of the Troupe
      8. Book VIII: The Wicked Poor Man
        1. I: Marius, While Seeking a Girl in a Bonnet, Encounters a Man in a Cap
        2. II: Treasure Trove
        3. III: Quadrifrons
        4. IV: A Rose in Misery
        5. V: A Providential Peephole
        6. VI: The Wild Man in His Lair
        7. VII: Strategy and Tactics
        8. VIII: The Ray of Light in the Hovel
        9. IX: Jondrette Comes Near Weeping
        10. X: Tariff of Licensed Cabs: Two Francs an Hour
        11. XI: Offers of Service from Misery to Wretchedness
        12. XII: The Use Made of M. Leblanc’s Five-Franc Piece
        13. XIII: Solus Cum Solo, in Loco Remoto, Non Cogitabuntur Orare Pater Noster
        14. XIV: In Which a Police Agent Bestows Two Fistfuls on a Lawyer
        15. XV: Jondrette Makes His Purchases
        16. XVI: In Which Will Be Found the Words to an English Air Which Was in Fashion in 1832
        17. XVII: The Use Made of Marius’ Five-Franc Piece
        18. XVIII: Marius’ Two Chairs Form a Vis-A-Vis
        19. XIX: Occupying One’s Self with Obscure Depths
        20. XX: The Trap
        21. XXI: One Should Always Begin by Arresting the Victims
        22. XXII: The Little One Who Was Crying in Volume Two
    4. Volume IV: The Idyl in the Rue Plumet and the Epic in the Rue Saint-Denis
      1. Book I: A Few Pages of History
        1. I: Well Cut
        2. II: Badly Sewed
        3. III: Louis Philippe
        4. IV: Cracks Beneath the Foundation
        5. V: Facts Whence History Springs and Which History Ignores
        6. VI: Enjolras and His Lieutenants
      2. Book II: Éponine
        1. I: The Lark’s Meadow
        2. II: Embryonic Formation of Crimes in the Incubation of Prisons
        3. III: Apparition to Father Mabeuf
        4. IV: An Apparition to Marius
      3. Book III: The House in the Rue Plumet
        1. I: The House with a Secret
        2. II: Jean Valjean as a National Guard
        3. III: Foliis Ac Frondibus
        4. IV: Change of Gate
        5. V: The Rose Perceives That It Is an Engine of War
        6. VI: The Battle Begun
        7. VII: To One Sadness Oppose a Sadness and a Half
        8. VIII: The Chain-Gang
      4. Book IV: Succor from Below May Turn Out to Be Succor from on High
        1. I: A Wound Without, Healing Within
        2. II: Mother Plutarque Finds No Difficulty in Explaining a Phenomenon
      5. Book V: The End of Which Does Not Resemble the Beginning
        1. I: Solitude and the Barracks Combined
        2. II: Cosette’s Apprehensions
        3. III: Enriched with Commentaries by Toussaint
        4. IV: A Heart Beneath a Stone
        5. V: Cosette After the Letter
        6. VI: Old People Are Made to Go Out Opportunely
      6. Book VI: Little Gavroche
        1. I: The Malicious Playfulness of the Wind
        2. II: In Which Little Gavroche Extracts Profit from Napoleon the Great
        3. III: The Vicissitudes of Flight
      7. Book VII: Slang
        1. I: Origin
        2. II: Roots
        3. III: Slang Which Weeps and Slang Which Laughs
        4. IV: The Two Duties: To Watch and to Hope
      8. Book VIII: Enchantments and Desolations
        1. I: Full Light
        2. II: The Bewilderment of Perfect Happiness
        3. III: The Beginning of Shadow
        4. IV: A Cab Runs in English and Barks in Slang
        5. V: Things of the Night
        6. VI: Marius Becomes Practical Once More to the Extent of Giving Cosette His Address
        7. VII: The Old Heart and the Young Heart in the Presence of Each Other
      9. Book IX: Whither Are They Going?
        1. I: Jean Valjean
        2. II: Marius
        3. III: M. Mabeuf
      10. Book X: The 5th of June, 1832
        1. I: The Surface of the Question
        2. II: The Root of the Matter
        3. III: A Burial; An Occasion to Be Born Again
        4. IV: The Ebullitions of Former Days
        5. V: Originality of Paris
      11. Book XI: The Atom Fraternizes with the Hurricane
        1. I: Some Explanations with Regard to the Origin of Gavroche’s Poetry.
        2. II: Gavroche on the March
        3. III: Just Indignation of a Hairdresser
        4. IV: The Child Is Amazed at the Old Man
        5. V: The Old Man
        6. VI: Recruits
      12. Book XII: Corinthe
        1. I: History of Corinthe from Its Foundation
        2. II: Preliminary Gayeties
        3. III: Night Begins to Descend Upon Grantaire
        4. IV: An Attempt to Console the Widow Hucheloup
        5. V: Preparations
        6. VI: Waiting
        7. VII: The Man Recruited in the Rue Des Billettes
        8. VIII: Many Interrogation Points with Regard to a Certain le Cabuc
      13. Book XIII: Marius Enters the Shadow
        1. I: From the Rue Plumet to the Quartier Saint-Denis
        2. II: An Owl’s View of Paris
        3. III: The Extreme Edge
      14. Book XIV: The Grandeurs of Despair
        1. I: The Flag: Act First
        2. II: The Flag: Act Second
        3. III: Gavroche Would Have Done Better to Accept Enjolras’ Carbine
        4. IV: The Barrel of Powder
        5. V: End of the Verses of Jean Prouvaire
        6. VI: The Agony of Death After the Agony of Life
        7. VII: Gavroche as a Profound Calculator of Distances
      15. Book XV: The Rue de L’Homme Armé
        1. I: A Drinker Is a Babbler
        2. II: The Street Urchin an Enemy of Light
        3. III: While Cosette and Toussaint Are Asleep
        4. IV: Gavroche’s Excess of Zeal
    5. Volume V: Jean Valjean
      1. Book I: The War Between Four Walls
        1. I: The Charybdis of the Faubourg Saint Antoine and the Scylla
        2. II: What Is to Be Done in the Abyss if One Does Not Converse
        3. III: Light and Shadow
        4. IV: Minus Five, Plus One
        5. V: The Horizon Which One Beholds from the Summit of a Barricade
        6. VI: Marius Haggard, Javert Laconic
        7. VII: The Situation Becomes Aggravated
        8. VIII: The Artillerymen Compel People to Take Them Seriously
        9. IX: Employment of the Old Talents of a Poacher and That Infallible Marksmanship Which Influenced the Condemnation of 1796
        10. X: Dawn
        11. XI: The Shot Which Misses Nothing and Kills No One
        12. XII: Disorder a Partisan of Order
        13. XIII: Passing Gleams
        14. XIV: Wherein Will Appear the Name of Enjolras’ Mistress
        15. XV: Gavroche Outside
        16. XVI: How from a Brother One Becomes a Father
        17. XVII: Mortuus Pater Filium Moriturum Expectat
        18. XVIII: The Vulture Become Prey
        19. XIX: Jean Valjean Takes His Revenge
        20. XX: The Dead Are in the Right and the Living Are Not in the Wrong
        21. XXI: The Heroes
        22. XXII: Foot to Foot
        23. XXIII: Orestes Fasting and Pylades Drunk
        24. XXIV: Prisoner
      2. Book II: The Intestine of the Leviathan
        1. I: The Land Impoverished by the Sea
        2. II: Ancient History of the Sewer
        3. III: Bruneseau
        4. IV
        5. V: Present Progress
        6. VI: Future Progress
      3. Book III: Mud but the Soul
        1. I: The Sewer and Its Surprises
        2. II: Explanation
        3. III: The “Spun” Man
        4. IV: He Also Bears His Cross
        5. V: In the Case of Sand as in That of Woman, There Is a Fineness Which Is Treacherous
        6. VI: The Fontis
        7. VII: One Sometimes Runs Aground When One Fancies That One Is Disembarking
        8. VIII: The Torn Coattail
        9. IX: Marius Produces on Some One Who Is a Judge of the Matter, the Effect of Being Dead
        10. X: Return of the Son Who Was Prodigal of His Life
        11. XI: Concussion in the Absolute
        12. XII: The Grandfather
      4. Book IV: Javert Derailed
        1. I
      5. Book V: Grandson and Grandfather
        1. I: In Which the Tree with the Zinc Plaster Appears Again
        2. II: Marius, Emerging from Civil War, Makes Ready for Domestic War
        3. III: Marius Attacked
        4. IV: Mademoiselle Gillenormand Ends by No Longer Thinking It a Bad Thing That M. Fauchelevent Should Have Entered with Something Under His Arm
        5. V: Deposit Your Money in a Forest Rather Than with a Notary
        6. VI: The Two Old Men Do Everything, Each One After His Own Fashion, to Render Cosette Happy
        7. VII: The Effects of Dreams Mingled with Happiness
        8. VIII: Two Men Impossible to Find
      6. Book VI: The Sleepless Night
        1. I: The 16th of February, 1833
        2. II: Jean Valjean Still Wears His Arm in a Sling
        3. III: The Inseparable
        4. IV: The Immortal Liver
      7. Book VII: The Last Draught from the Cup
        1. I: The Seventh Circle and the Eighth Heaven
        2. II: The Obscurities Which a Revelation Can Contain
      8. Book VIII: Fading Away of the Twilight
        1. I: The Lower Chamber
        2. II: Another Step Backwards
        3. III: They Recall the Garden of the Rue Plumet
        4. IV: Attraction and Extinction
      9. Book IX: Supreme Shadow, Supreme Dawn
        1. I: Pity for the Unhappy, but Indulgence for the Happy
        2. II: Last Flickerings of a Lamp Without Oil
        3. III: A Pen Is Heavy to the Man Who Lifted the Fauchelevent’s Cart
        4. IV: A Bottle of Ink Which Only Succeeded in Whitening
        5. V: A Night Behind Which There Is Day
        6. VI: The Grass Covers and the Rain Effaces
  5. Endnotes
  6. List of Illustrations
  7. Colophon
  8. Uncopyright

VI The Wild Man in His Lair

Cities, like forests, have their caverns in which all the most wicked and formidable creatures which they contain conceal themselves. Only, in cities, that which thus conceals itself is ferocious, unclean, and petty, that is to say, ugly; in forests, that which conceals itself is ferocious, savage, and grand, that is to say, beautiful. Taking one lair with another, the beast’s is preferable to the man’s. Caverns are better than hovels.

What Marius now beheld was a hovel.

Marius was poor, and his chamber was poverty-stricken, but as his poverty was noble, his garret was neat. The den upon which his eye now rested was abject, dirty, fetid, pestiferous, mean, sordid. The only furniture consisted of a straw chair, an infirm table, some old bits of crockery, and in two of the corners, two indescribable pallets; all the light was furnished by a dormer window of four panes, draped with spiders’ webs. Through this aperture there penetrated just enough light to make the face of a man appear like the face of a phantom. The walls had a leprous aspect, and were covered with seams and scars, like a visage disfigured by some horrible malady; a repulsive moisture exuded from them. Obscene sketches roughly sketched with charcoal could be distinguished upon them.

The chamber which Marius occupied had a dilapidated brick pavement; this one was neither tiled nor planked; its inhabitants stepped directly on the antique plaster of the hovel, which had grown black under the long-continued pressure of feet. Upon this uneven floor, where the dirt seemed to be fairly incrusted, and which possessed but one virginity, that of the broom, were capriciously grouped constellations of old shoes, socks, and repulsive rags; however, this room had a fireplace, so it was let for forty francs a year. There was every sort of thing in that fireplace, a brazier, a pot, broken boards, rags suspended from nails, a birdcage, ashes, and even a little fire. Two brands were smouldering there in a melancholy way.

One thing which added still more to the horrors of this garret was, that it was large. It had projections and angles and black holes, the lower sides of roofs, bays, and promontories. Hence horrible, unfathomable nooks where it seemed as though spiders as big as one’s fist, woodlice as large as one’s foot, and perhaps even—who knows?—some monstrous human beings, must be hiding.

One of the pallets was near the door, the other near the window. One end of each touched the fireplace and faced Marius. In a corner near the aperture through which Marius was gazing, a colored engraving in a black frame was suspended to a nail on the wall, and at its bottom, in large letters, was the inscription: The Dream. This represented a sleeping woman, and a child, also asleep, the child on the woman’s lap, an eagle in a cloud, with a crown in his beak, and the woman thrusting the crown away from the child’s head, without awaking the latter; in the background, Napoleon in a glory, leaning on a very blue column with a yellow capital ornamented with this inscription:

Maringo
Austerlits
Iena
Wagramme
Elot

Beneath this frame, a sort of wooden panel, which was no longer than it was broad, stood on the ground and rested in a sloping attitude against the wall. It had the appearance of a picture with its face turned to the wall, of a frame probably showing a daub on the other side, of some pier-glass detached from a wall and lying forgotten there while waiting to be rehung.

Near the table, upon which Marius descried a pen, ink, and paper, sat a man about sixty years of age, small, thin, livid, haggard, with a cunning, cruel, and uneasy air; a hideous scoundrel.

If Lavater had studied this visage, he would have found the vulture mingled with the attorney there, the bird of prey and the pettifogger rendering each other mutually hideous and complementing each other; the pettifogger making the bird of prey ignoble, the bird of prey making the pettifogger horrible.

This man had a long gray beard. He was clad in a woman’s chemise, which allowed his hairy breast and his bare arms, bristling with gray hair, to be seen. Beneath this chemise, muddy trousers and boots through which his toes projected were visible.

He had a pipe in his mouth and was smoking. There was no bread in the hovel, but there was still tobacco.

He was writing probably some more letters like those which Marius had read.

On the corner of the table lay an ancient, dilapidated, reddish volume, and the size, which was the antique 12mo of reading-rooms, betrayed a romance. On the cover sprawled the following title, printed in large capitals:

God; The King; Honor and the Ladies;
by
Duchray Duminil
1814.

As the man wrote, he talked aloud, and Marius heard his words:—

“The idea that there is no equality, even when you are dead! Just look at Père-Lachaise! The great, those who are rich, are up above, in the acacia alley, which is paved. They can reach it in a carriage. The little people, the poor, the unhappy, well, what of them? they are put down below, where the mud is up to your knees, in the damp places. They are put there so that they will decay the sooner! You cannot go to see them without sinking into the earth.”

He paused, smote the table with his fist, and added, as he ground his teeth:—

“Oh! I could eat the whole world!”

A big woman, who might be forty years of age, or a hundred, was crouching near the fireplace on her bare heels.

She, too, was clad only in a chemise and a knitted petticoat patched with bits of old cloth. A coarse linen apron concealed the half of her petticoat. Although this woman was doubled up and bent together, it could be seen that she was of very lofty stature. She was a sort of giant, beside her husband. She had hideous hair, of a reddish blond which was turning gray, and which she thrust back from time to time, with her enormous shining hands, with their flat nails.

Beside her, on the floor, wide open, lay a book of the same form as the other, and probably a volume of the same romance.

On one of the pallets, Marius caught a glimpse of a sort of tall pale young girl, who sat there half naked and with pendant feet, and who did not seem to be listening or seeing or living.

No doubt the younger sister of the one who had come to his room.

She seemed to be eleven or twelve years of age. On closer scrutiny it was evident that she really was fourteen. She was the child who had said, on the boulevard the evening before: “I bolted, bolted, bolted!”

She was of that puny sort which remains backward for a long time, then suddenly starts up rapidly. It is indigence which produces these melancholy human plants. These creatures have neither childhood nor youth. At fifteen years of age they appear to be twelve, at sixteen they seem twenty. Today a little girl, tomorrow a woman. One might say that they stride through life, in order to get through with it the more speedily.

At this moment, this being had the air of a child.

Moreover, no trace of work was revealed in that dwelling; no handicraft, no spinning-wheel, not a tool. In one corner lay some ironmongery of dubious aspect. It was the dull listlessness which follows despair and precedes the death agony.

Marius gazed for a while at this gloomy interior, more terrifying than the interior of a tomb, for the human soul could be felt fluttering there, and life was palpitating there. The garret, the cellar, the lowly ditch where certain indigent wretches crawl at the very bottom of the social edifice, is not exactly the sepulchre, but only its antechamber; but, as the wealthy display their greatest magnificence at the entrance of their palaces, it seems that death, which stands directly side by side with them, places its greatest miseries in that vestibule.

The man held his peace, the woman spoke no word, the young girl did not even seem to breathe. The scratching of the pen on the paper was audible.

The man grumbled, without pausing in his writing. “Canaille! canaille! everybody is canaille!”

This variation to Solomon’s exclamation elicited a sigh from the woman.

“Calm yourself, my little friend,” she said. “Don’t hurt yourself, my dear. You are too good to write to all those people, husband.”

Bodies press close to each other in misery, as in cold, but hearts draw apart. This woman must have loved this man, to all appearance, judging from the amount of love within her; but probably, in the daily and reciprocal reproaches of the horrible distress which weighed on the whole group, this had become extinct. There no longer existed in her anything more than the ashes of affection for her husband. Nevertheless, caressing appellations had survived, as is often the case. She called him: “My dear, my little friend, my good man,” etc., with her mouth while her heart was silent.

The man resumed his writing.

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