Page 106 - les-miserables

iron-shod shoes on his stockingless feet; a shaved head and
a long beard.
The sweat, the heat, the journey on foot, the dust, added I
know not what sordid quality to this dilapidated whole. His
hair was closely cut, yet bristling, for it had begun to grow a
little, and did not seem to have been cut for some time.
No one knew him. He was evidently only a chance pass-
er-by. Whence came he? From the south; from the seashore,
perhaps, for he made his entrance into D—— by the same
street which, seven months previously, had witnessed the
passage of the Emperor Napoleon on his way from Cannes
to Paris. This man must have been walking all day. He
seemed very much fatigued. Some women of the ancient
market town which is situated below the city had seen him
pause beneath the trees of the boulevard Gassendi, and
drink at the fountain which stands at the end of the prom-
enade. He must have been very thirsty: for the children who
followed him saw him stop again for a drink, two hundred
paces further on, at the fountain in the market-place.
On arriving at the corner of the Rue Poichevert, he
turned to the left, and directed his steps toward the town-
hall. He entered, then came out a quarter of an hour later.
A gendarme was seated near the door, on the stone bench
which General Drouot had mounted on the 4th of March to
read to the frightened throng of the inhabitants of D——
the proclamation of the Gulf Juan. The man pulled off his
cap and humbly saluted the gendarme.
The gendarme, without replying to his salute, stared at-
tentively at him, followed him for a while with his eyes, and

106 Les Miserables