บทที่ บทที่ 207 · 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 bird-cage, 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, wood-lice 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

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 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. To-day a little girl, to-morrow 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.