Page 1737 - les-miserables

man of ninety-one! You are entering into life, I am leaving
it; you go to the play, to balls, to the cafe, to the billiard-hall;
you have wit, you please the women, you are a handsome
fellow; as for me, I spit on my brands in the heart of sum-
mer; you are rich with the only riches that are really such,
I possess all the poverty of age; infirmity, isolation! You
have your thirty-two teeth, a good digestion, bright eyes,
strength, appetite, health, gayety, a forest of black hair; I
have no longer even white hair, I have lost my teeth, I am
losing my legs, I am losing my memory; there are three
names of streets that I confound incessantly, the Rue Char-
lot, the Rue du Chaume, and the Rue Saint-Claude, that is
what I have come to; you have before you the whole future,
full of sunshine, and I am beginning to lose my sight, so far
am I advancing into the night; you are in love, that is a mat-
ter of course, I am beloved by no one in all the world; and
you ask pity of me! Parbleu! Moliere forgot that. If that is
the way you jest at the courthouse, Messieurs the lawyers, I
sincerely compliment you. You are droll.’
And the octogenarian went on in a grave and angry
voice:—
‘Come, now, what do you want of me?’
‘Sir,’ said Marius, ‘I know that my presence is displeasing
to you, but I have come merely to ask one thing of you, and
then I shall go away immediately.’
‘You are a fool!’ said the old man. ‘Who said that you
were to go away?’
This was the translation of the tender words which lay at
the bottom of his heart:—

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