Les Misérables, page 215
CHAPTER VI--THE WILD MAN IN HIS LAIR
Cities, like forests, have their caverns in which all the most wickedand formidable creatures which they contain conceal themselves. Only,in cities, that which thus conceals itself is ferocious, unclean, andpetty, that is to say, ugly; in forests, that which conceals itself isferocious, savage, and grand, that is to say, beautiful. Taking one lairwith another, the beast's is preferable to the man's. Caverns are betterthan hovels.
What Marius now beheld was a hovel.
Marius was poor, and his chamber was poverty-stricken, but as hispoverty was noble, his garret was neat. The den upon which his eye nowrested was abject, dirty, fetid, pestiferous, mean, sordid. The onlyfurniture consisted of a straw chair, an infirm table, some old bits ofcrockery, and in two of the corners, two indescribable pallets; allthe light was furnished by a dormer window of four panes, draped withspiders' webs. Through this aperture there penetrated just enough lightto make the face of a man appear like the face of a phantom. The wallshad a leprous aspect, and were covered with seams and scars, like avisage disfigured by some horrible malady; a repulsive moisture exudedfrom them. Obscene sketches roughly sketched with charcoal could bedistinguished upon them.
The chamber which Marius occupied had a dilapidated brick pavement; thisone was neither tiled nor planked; its inhabitants stepped directlyon the antique plaster of the hovel, which had grown black under thelong-continued pressure of feet. Upon this uneven floor, where the dirtseemed to be fairly incrusted, and which possessed but one virginity,that of the broom, were capriciously grouped constellations of oldshoes, socks, and repulsive rags; however, this room had a fireplace,so it was let for forty francs a year. There was every sort of thingin that fireplace, a brazier, a pot, broken boards, rags suspendedfrom nails, a bird-cage, ashes, and even a little fire. Two brands weresmouldering there in a melancholy way.
One thing which added still more to the horrors of this garret was, thatit was large. It had projections and angles and black holes, the lowersides of roofs, bays, and promontories. Hence horrible, unfathomablenooks where it seemed as though spiders as big as one's fist, wood-liceas large as one's foot, and perhaps even--who knows?--some monstroushuman beings, must be hiding.
One of the pallets was near the door, the other near the window. Oneend of each touched the fireplace and faced Marius. In a corner near theaperture through which Marius was gazing, a colored engraving in a blackframe was suspended to a nail on the wall, and at its bottom, in largeletters, was the inscription: THE DREAM. This represented a sleepingwoman, and a child, also asleep, the child on the woman's lap, an eaglein a cloud, with a crown in his beak, and the woman thrusting thecrown away from the child's head, without awaking the latter; in thebackground, Napoleon in a glory, leaning on a very blue column with ayellow capital ornamented with this inscription:
MARINGO AUSTERLITS IENA WAGRAMME ELOT
Beneath this frame, a sort of wooden panel, which was no longer than itwas broad, stood on the ground and rested in a sloping attitude againstthe wall. It had the appearance of a picture with its face turned tothe wall, of a frame probably showing a daub on the other side, of somepier-glass detached from a wall and lying forgotten there while waitingto be rehung.
Near the table, upon which Marius descried a pen, ink, and paper, sata man about sixty years of age, small, thin, livid, haggard, with acunning, cruel, and uneasy air; a hideous scoundrel.
If Lavater had studied this visage, he would have found the vulturemingled with the attorney there, the bird of prey and the pettifoggerrendering each other mutually hideous and complementing each other; thepettifogger making the bird of prey ignoble, the bird of prey making thepettifogger horrible.
This man had a long gray beard. He was clad in a woman's chemise, whichallowed his hairy breast and his bare arms, bristling with gray hair,to be seen. Beneath this chemise, muddy trousers and boots through whichhis toes projected were visible.
He had a pipe in his mouth and was smoking. There was no bread in thehovel, but there was still tobacco.
He was writing probably some more letters like those which Marius hadread.
On the corner of the table lay an ancient, dilapidated, reddish volume,and the size, which was the antique 12mo of reading-rooms, betrayed aromance. On the cover sprawled the following title, printed in largecapitals: GOD; THE KING; HONOR AND THE LADIES; BY DUCRAY 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 lookat Pere Lachaise! The great, those who are rich, are up above, in theacacia alley, which is paved. They can reach it in a carriage. Thelittle people, the poor, the unhappy, well, what of them? they are putdown below, where the mud is up to your knees, in the damp places. Theyare put there so that they will decay the sooner! You cannot go to seethem without sinking into the earth."
He paused, smote the table with his fist, and added, as he ground histeeth:--
"Oh! I could eat the whole world!"
A big woman, who might be forty years of age, or a hundred, wascrouching near the fireplace on her bare heels.
She, too, was clad only in a chemise and a knitted petticoat patchedwith bits of old cloth. A coarse linen apron concealed the half of herpetticoat. Although this woman was doubled up and bent together, itcould be seen that she was of very lofty stature. She was a sort ofgiant, beside her husband. She had hideous hair, of a reddish blondwhich 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 theother, and probably a volume of the same romance.
On one of the pallets, Marius caught a glimpse of a sort of tall paleyoung girl, who sat there half naked and with pendant feet, and who didnot 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 itwas evident that she really was fourteen. She was the child who hadsaid, 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 thesemelancholy human plants. These creatures have neither childhood noryouth. At fifteen years of age they appear to be twelve, at sixteen theyseem twenty. To-day a little girl, to-morrow a woman. One might saythat they stride through life, in order to get through with it the morespeedily.
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 ofdubious aspect. It was the dull listlessness which follows despair andprecedes the death agony.
Marius gazed for a while at this gloomy interior, more terrifying thanthe interior of a tomb, for the human soul could be felt flutteringthere, and life was palpitating there. The garret, the cellar, the lowlyditch where certain indigent wretches crawl at the very bottom of thesocial edifice, is not exactly the sepulchre, but only its antechamber;but, as the wealthy display their greatest magnificence at the entranceof their palaces, it seems that death, which stands directly side byside with them, places its greatest miseries in that vestibule.
The man held his peace, the woman spoke no word, the young girl didnot even seem to breathe. The scratching of the pen on the paper wasaudible.
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, mydear. You are too good to write to all those people, husband."
Bodies press close to each other in misery, as in cold, but hearts drawapart. This woman must have loved this man, to all appearance, judgingfrom the amount of love within her; but probably, in the daily andreciprocal reproaches of the horrible distress which weighed on thewhole group, this had become extinct. There no longer existed in heranything more than the ashes of affection for her husband. Nevertheless,caressing appellations had survived, as is often the case. She calledhim: _My dear, my little friend, my good man_, etc., with her mouthwhile her heart was silent.
The man resumed his writing.
