Page 1673 - les-miserables

trajectory slang mounts from the cavern to the Academy;
and Poulailler saying: ‘I light my camoufle,’ causes Voltaire
to write: ‘Langleviel La Beaumelle deserves a hundred cam-
ouflets.’
[42] Smoke puffed in the face of a person asleep.
Researches in slang mean discoveries at every step. Study
and investigation of this strange idiom lead to the myste-
rious point of intersection of regular society with society
which is accursed.
The thief also has his food for cannon, stealable matter,
you, I, whoever passes by; le pantre. (Pan, everybody.)
Slang is language turned convict.
That the thinking principle of man be thrust down ever
so low, that it can be dragged and pinioned there by obscure
tyrannies of fatality, that it can be bound by no one knows
what fetters in that abyss, is sufficient to create consterna-
tion.
Oh, poor thought of miserable wretches!
Alas! will no one come to the succor of the human soul
in that darkness? Is it her destiny there to await forever the
mind, the liberator, the immense rider of Pegasi and hip-
po-griffs, the combatant of heroes of the dawn who shall
descend from the azure between two wings, the radiant
knight of the future? Will she forever summon in vain to
her assistance the lance of light of the ideal? Is she con-
demned to hear the fearful approach of Evil through the
density of the gulf, and to catch glimpses, nearer and nearer
at hand, beneath the hideous water of that dragon’s head,
that maw streaked with foam, and that writhing undulation

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