Page 1353 - les-miserables

dolls! you old ninny! Ah! so you don’t recognize me! No, it
wasn’t you who came to Montfermeil, to my inn, eight years
ago, on Christmas eve, 1823! It wasn’t you who carried off
that Fantine’s child from me! The Lark! It wasn’t you who
had a yellow great-coat! No! Nor a package of duds in your
hand, as you had this morning here! Say, wife, it seems to be
his mania to carry packets of woollen stockings into houses!
Old charity monger, get out with you! Are you a hosier, Mis-
ter millionnaire? You give away your stock in trade to the
poor, holy man! What bosh! merry Andrew! Ah! and you
don’t recognize me? Well, I recognize you, that I do! I recog-
nized you the very moment you poked your snout in here.
Ah! you’ll find out presently, that it isn’t all roses to thrust
yourself in that fashion into people’s houses, under the pre-
text that they are taverns, in wretched clothes, with the air
of a poor man, to whom one would give a sou, to deceive
persons, to play the generous, to take away their means of
livelihood, and to make threats in the woods, and you can’t
call things quits because afterwards, when people are ru-
ined, you bring a coat that is too large, and two miserable
hospital blankets, you old blackguard, you child-stealer!’
He paused, and seemed to be talking to himself for a mo-
ment. One would have said that his wrath had fallen into
some hole, like the Rhone; then, as though he were conclud-
ing aloud the things which he had been saying to himself in
a whisper, he smote the table with his fist, and shouted:—
‘And with his goody-goody air!’
And, apostrophizing M. Leblanc:—
‘Parbleu! You made game of me in the past! You are the

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