Page 1718 - les-miserables

CHAPTER V

THINGS OF THE NIGHT

After the departure of the ruffians, the Rue Plumet re-
sumed its tranquil, nocturnal aspect. That which had just
taken place in this street would not have astonished a for-
est. The lofty trees, the copses, the heaths, the branches
rudely interlaced, the tall grass, exist in a sombre man-
ner; the savage swarming there catches glimpses of sudden
apparitions of the invisible; that which is below man distin-
guishes, through the mists, that which is beyond man; and
the things of which we living beings are ignorant there meet
face to face in the night. Nature, bristling and wild, takes
alarm at certain approaches in which she fancies that she
feels the supernatural. The forces of the gloom know each
other, and are strangely balanced by each other. Teeth and
claws fear what they cannot grasp. Blood-drinking bestial-
ity, voracious appetites, hunger in search of prey, the armed
instincts of nails and jaws which have for source and aim
the belly, glare and smell out uneasily the impassive spec-
tral forms straying beneath a shroud, erect in its vague
and shuddering robe, and which seem to them to live with
a dead and terrible life. These brutalities, which are only

1718 Les Miserables