Page 1830 - les-miserables

Hucheloup growl.’ He had been a fencing-master. All of a
sudden, he would burst out laughing. A big voice, a good
fellow. He had a comic foundation under a tragic exterior,
he asked nothing better than to frighten you, very much
like those snuff-boxes which are in the shape of a pistol. The
detonation makes one sneeze.
Mother Hucheloup, his wife, was a bearded and a very
homely creature.
About 1830, Father Hucheloup died. With him disap-
peared the secret of stuffed carps. His inconsolable widow
continued to keep the wine-shop. But the cooking deterio-
rated, and became execrable; the wine, which had always
been bad, became fearfully bad. Nevertheless, Courfeyrac
and his friends continued to go to Corinthe,— out of pity,
as Bossuet said.
The Widow Hucheloup was breathless and misshapen
and given to rustic recollections. She deprived them of their
flatness by her pronunciation. She had a way of her own of
saying things, which spiced her reminiscences of the vil-
lage and of her springtime. It had formerly been her delight,
so she affirmed, to hear the loups-de-gorge (rouges-gorges)
chanter dans les ogrepines (aubepines)—to hear the red-
breasts sing in the hawthorn-trees.
The hall on the first floor, where ‘the restaurant’ was sit-
uated, was a large and long apartment encumbered with
stools, chairs, benches, and tables, and with a crippled,
lame, old billiard-table. It was reached by a spiral staircase
which terminated in the corner of the room at a square hole
like the hatchway of a ship.

1830 Les Miserables