Page 2172 - les-miserables

draws you a little lower, which has the air of punishing you
for your resistance by a redoubled grasp, which forces a man
to return slowly to earth, while leaving him time to sur-
vey the horizon, the trees, the verdant country, the smoke
of the villages on the plain, the sails of the ships on the sea,
the birds which fly and sing, the sun and the sky. This en-
gulfment is the sepulchre which assumes a tide, and which
mounts from the depths of the earth towards a living man.
Each minute is an inexorable layer-out of the dead. The
wretched man tries to sit down, to lie down, to climb; every
movement that he makes buries him deeper; he straightens
himself up, he sinks; he feels that he is being swallowed up;
he shrieks, implores, cries to the clouds, wrings his hands,
grows desperate. Behold him in the sand up to his belly, the
sand reaches to his breast, he is only a bust now. He uplifts
his hands, utters furious groans, clenches his nails on the
beach, tries to cling fast to that ashes, supports himself on
his elbows in order to raise himself from that soft sheath,
and sobs frantically; the sand mounts higher. The sand has
reached his shoulders, the sand reaches to his throat; only
his face is visible now. His mouth cries aloud, the sand fills
it; silence. His eyes still gaze forth, the sand closes them,
night. Then his brow decreases, a little hair quivers above
the sand; a hand projects, pierces the surface of the beach,
waves and disappears. Sinister obliteration of a man.
Sometimes a rider is engulfed with his horse; sometimes
the carter is swallowed up with his cart; all founders in that
strand. It is shipwreck elsewhere than in the water. It is
the earth drowning a man. The earth, permeated with the

2172 Les Miserables