Page 116 - les-miserables

left shoulder, and which a hammer, a red handkerchief, a
powder-horn, and all sorts of objects which were upheld
by the girdle, as in a pocket, caused to bulge out. He car-
ried his head thrown backwards; his shirt, widely opened
and turned back, displayed his bull neck, white and bare.
He had thick eyelashes, enormous black whiskers, promi-
nent eyes, the lower part of his face like a snout; and besides
all this, that air of being on his own ground, which is inde-
scribable.
‘Pardon me, sir,’ said the wayfarer, ‘Could you, in consid-
eration of payment, give me a plate of soup and a corner of
that shed yonder in the garden, in which to sleep? Tell me;
can you? For money?’
‘Who are you?’ demanded the master of the house.
The man replied: ‘I have just come from Puy-Moisson.
I have walked all day long. I have travelled twelve leagues.
Can you?— if I pay?’
‘I would not refuse,’ said the peasant, ‘to lodge any re-
spectable man who would pay me. But why do you not go
to the inn?’
‘There is no room.’
‘Bah! Impossible. This is neither a fair nor a market day.
Have you been to Labarre?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well?’
The traveller replied with embarrassment: ‘I do not know.
He did not receive me.’
‘Have you been to What’s-his-name’s, in the Rue Chaf-
faut?’

116 Les Miserables