Page 2174 - les-miserables

of that hope under all sorts of forms, of probable passers-
by, of succor possible up to the very last moment,—instead
of all this, deafness, blindness, a black vault, the inside of a
tomb already prepared, death in the mire beneath a cover!
slow suffocation by filth, a stone box where asphyxia opens
its claw in the mire and clutches you by the throat; fetidness
mingled with the death-rattle; slime instead of the strand,
sulfuretted hydrogen in place of the hurricane, dung in
place of the ocean! And to shout, to gnash one’s teeth, and
to writhe, and to struggle, and to agonize, with that enor-
mous city which knows nothing of it all, over one’s head!
Inexpressible is the horror of dying thus! Death some-
times redeems his atrocity by a certain terrible dignity.
On the funeral pile, in shipwreck, one can be great; in the
flames as in the foam, a superb attitude is possible; one there
becomes transfigured as one perishes. But not here. Death
is filthy. It is humiliating to expire. The supreme floating vi-
sions are abject. Mud is synonymous with shame. It is petty,
ugly, infamous. To die in a butt of Malvoisie, like Clarence,
is permissible; in the ditch of a scavenger, like Escoubleau,
is horrible. To struggle therein is hideous; at the same time
that one is going through the death agony, one is flounder-
ing about. There are shadows enough for hell, and mire
enough to render it nothing but a slough, and the dying
man knows not whether he is on the point of becoming a
spectre or a frog.
Everywhere else the sepulchre is sinister; here it is de-
formed.
The depth of the fontis varied, as well as their length

2174 Les Miserables