Page 1659 - les-miserables

having some bad action to perform, disguises itself. There it
clothes itself in word-masks, in metaphor-rags. In this guise
it becomes horrible.
One finds it difficult to recognize. Is it really the French
tongue, the great human tongue? Behold it ready to step
upon the stage and to retort upon crime, and prepared for all
the employments of the repertory of evil. It no longer walks,
it hobbles; it limps on the crutch of the Court of Miracles, a
crutch metamorphosable into a club; it is called vagrancy;
every sort of spectre, its dressers, have painted its face, it
crawls and rears, the double gait of the reptile. Henceforth,
it is apt at all roles, it is made suspicious by the counterfeiter,
covered with verdigris by the forger, blacked by the soot of
the incendiary; and the murderer applies its rouge.
When one listens, by the side of honest men, at the por-
tals of society, one overhears the dialogues of those who are
on the outside. One distinguishes questions and replies.
One perceives, without understanding it, a hideous mur-
mur, sounding almost like human accents, but more nearly
resembling a howl than an articulate word. It is slang. The
words are misshapen and stamped with an indescribable
and fantastic bestiality. One thinks one hears hydras talk-
ing.
It is unintelligible in the dark. It gnashes and whispers,
completing the gloom with mystery. It is black in mis-
fortune, it is blacker still in crime; these two blacknesses
amalgamated, compose slang. Obscurity in the atmosphere,
obscurity in acts, obscurity in voices. Terrible, toad-like
tongue which goes and comes, leaps, crawls, slobbers, and

1659