Les Misérables, Victor Hugo [reading rainbow books .txt] 📗

sees very well; the bourgeois gets flurried over an apocryphal scrawl, practice virtue, tutu, pointed hat!]

45 (return)
[Chien, dog, trigger.]

46 (return)
[Here is the morn appearing. When shall we go to the forest, Charlot asked Charlotte. Tou, tou, tou, for Chatou, I have but one God, one King, one half-farthing, and one boot. And these two poor little wolves were as tipsy as sparrows from having drunk dew and thyme very early in the morning. And these two poor little things were as drunk as thrushes in a vineyard; a tiger laughed at them in his cave. The one cursed, the other swore. When shall we go to the forest? Charlot asked Charlotte.]

47 (return)
[There swings the horrible skeleton of a poor lover who hung himself.]

48 (return)
[She astounds at ten paces, she frightens at two, a wart inhabits her hazardous nose; you tremble every instant lest she should blow it at you, and lest, some fine day, her nose should tumble into her mouth.]

49 (return)
[Matelote: a culinary preparation of various fishes. Gibelotte: stewed rabbits.]

50 (return)
[Treat if you can, and eat if you dare.]

51 (return)
[Bipède sans plume: biped without feathers—pen.]

52 (return)
[Municipal officer of Toulouse.]

53 (return)
[Do you remember our sweet life, when we were both so young, and when we had no other desire in our hearts than to be well dressed and in love? When, by adding your age to my age, we could not count forty years between us, and when, in our humble and tiny household, everything was spring to us even in winter. Fair days! Manuel was proud and wise, Paris sat at sacred banquets, Foy launched thunderbolts, and your corsage had a pin on which I pricked myself. Everything gazed upon you. A briefless lawyer, when I took you to the Prado to dine, you were so beautiful that the roses seemed to me to turn round, and I heard them say: Is she not beautiful! How good she smells! What billowing hair! Beneath her mantle she hides a wing. Her charming bonnet is hardly unfolded. I wandered with thee, pressing thy supple arm. The passers-by thought that love bewitched had wedded, in our happy couple, the gentle month of April to the fair month of May. We lived concealed, content, with closed doors, devouring love, that sweet forbidden fruit. My mouth had not uttered a thing when thy heart had already responded. The Sorbonne was the bucolic spot where I adored thee from eve till morn. ’Tis thus that an amorous soul applies the chart of the Tender to the Latin country. O Place Maubert! O Place Dauphine! When in the fresh spring-like hut thou didst draw thy stocking on thy delicate leg, I saw a star in the depths of the garret. I have read a great deal of Plato, but nothing of it remains by me; better than Malebranche and then Lamennais thou didst demonstrate to me celestial goodness with a flower which thou gavest to me, I obeyed thee, thou didst submit to me; oh gilded garret! to lace thee! to behold thee going and coming from dawn in thy chemise, gazing at thy young brow in thine ancient mirror! And who, then, would forego the memory of those days of aurora and the firmament, of flowers, of gauze and of moire, when love stammers a charming slang? Our gardens consisted of a pot of tulips; thou didst mask the window with thy petticoat; I took the earthenware bowl and I gave thee the Japanese cup. And those great misfortunes which made us laugh! Thy cuff scorched, thy boa lost! And that dear portrait of the divine Shakespeare which we sold one evening that we might sup! I was a beggar and thou wert charitable. I kissed thy fresh round arms in haste. A folio Dante served us as a table on which to eat merrily a centime’s worth of chestnuts. The first time that, in my joyous den, I snatched a kiss from thy fiery lip, when thou wentest forth, dishevelled and blushing, I turned deathly pale and I believed in God. Dost thou recall our innumerable joys, and all those fichus changed to rags? Oh! what sighs from our hearts full of gloom fluttered forth to the heavenly depths!]

54 (return)
[My nose is in tears, my friend Bugeaud, lend me thy gendarmes that I may say a word to them. With a blue capote and a chicken in his shako, here’s the banlieue, co-cocorico.]

55 (return)
[Love letters.]

56 (return)
[

“The bird slanders in the elms,
And pretends that yesterday, Atala
Went off with a Russian,
Where fair maids go.
Lon la.

My friend Pierrot, thou pratest, because Mila knocked at her pane the other day and called me. The jades are very charming, their poison which bewitched me would intoxicate Monsieur Orfila. I’m fond of love and its bickerings, I love Agnes, I love Pamela, Lise burned herself in setting me aflame. In former days when I saw the mantillas of Suzette and of Zéila, my soul mingled with their folds. Love, when thou gleamest in the dark thou crownest Lola with roses, I would lose my soul for that. Jeanne, at thy mirror thou deckest thyself! One fine day, my heart flew forth. I think that it is Jeanne who has it. At night, when I come from the quadrilles, I show Stella to the stars, and I say to them: “Behold her.” Where fair maids go, lon la.]

57 (return)
[But some prisons still remain, and I am going to put a stop to this sort of public order. Does any one wish to play at skittles? The whole ancient world fell in ruin, when the big ball rolled. Good old folks, let us smash with our crutches that Louvre where the monarchy displayed itself in furbelows. We have forced its gates. On that day, King Charles X. did not stick well and came unglued.]

58 (return)
[Steps on the Aventine Hill, leading to the Tiber, to which the bodies of executed criminals were dragged by hooks to be thrown into the Tiber.]

59 (return)
[Mustards.]

60 (return)
[From casser, to break: break-necks.]

61 (return)
[“Jeanne was born at Fougère, a true shepherd’s nest; I adore her petticoat, the rogue.” “Love, thou dwellest in her; For ’tis in her eyes that thou placest thy quiver, sly scamp!” “As for me, I sing her, and I love, more than Diana herself, Jeanne and her firm Breton breasts.”]

62 (return)
[In allusion to the expression, coiffer Sainte-Catherine, “to remain unmarried.”]

63 (return)
[“Thus, hemming in the course of thy musings, Alcippus, it is true that thou wilt wed ere long.”]

64 (return)
[Tirer le diable par la queue, “to live from hand to mouth.”]

65 (return)
[“Triton trotted on before, and drew from his conch-shell sounds so ravishing that he delighted everyone!”]

66 (return)
[“A Shrove-Tuesday marriage will have no ungrateful children.”]

67 (return)
[A short mask.]

68 (return)
[In allusion to the story of Prometheus.]

69 (return)
[Un fafiot sérieux. Fafiot is the slang term for a bank-bill, derived from its rustling noise.]

70 (return)
[He sleeps. Although his fate was very strange, he lived. He died when he had no longer his angel. The thing came to pass simply, of itself, as the night comes when day is gone.]