Page 1540 - les-miserables

mass of human filth. An old woman in the crowd pointed
them out to her little boy five years old, and said to him:
‘Rascal, let that be a warning to you!’
As the songs and blasphemies increased, the man who
appeared to be the captain of the escort cracked his whip,
and at that signal a fearful dull and blind flogging, which
produced the sound of hail, fell upon the seven dray-loads;
many roared and foamed at the mouth; which redoubled
the delight of the street urchins who had hastened up, a
swarm of flies on these wounds.
Jean Valjean’s eyes had assumed a frightful expres-
sion. They were no longer eyes; they were those deep and
glassy objects which replace the glance in the case of certain
wretched men, which seem unconscious of reality, and in
which flames the reflection of terrors and of catastrophes.
He was not looking at a spectacle, he was seeing a vision. He
tried to rise, to flee, to make his escape; he could not move
his feet. Sometimes, the things that you see seize upon you
and hold you fast. He remained nailed to the spot, petrified,
stupid, asking himself, athwart confused and inexpress-
ible anguish, what this sepulchral persecution signified,
and whence had come that pandemonium which was pur-
suing him. All at once, he raised his hand to his brow, a
gesture habitual to those whose memory suddenly returns;
he remembered that this was, in fact, the usual itinerary,
that it was customary to make this detour in order to avoid
all possibility of encountering royalty on the road to Fon-
tainebleau, and that, five and thirty years before, he had
himself passed through that barrier.

1540 Les Miserables