Page 2211 - les-miserables

‘I thank you, sir. I am composed, I am a man, I witnessed
the death of Louis XVI., I know how to bear events. One
thing is terrible and that is to think that it is your news-
papers which do all the mischief. You will have scribblers,
chatterers, lawyers, orators, tribunes, discussions, progress,
enlightenment, the rights of man, the liberty of the press,
and this is the way that your children will be brought home
to you. Ah! Marius! It is abominable! Killed! Dead before
me! A barricade! Ah, the scamp! Doctor, you live in this
quarter, I believe? Oh! I know you well. I see your cabriolet
pass my window. I am going to tell you. You are wrong to
think that I am angry. One does not fly into a rage against
a dead man. That would be stupid. This is a child whom
I have reared. I was already old while he was very young.
He played in the Tuileries garden with his little shovel and
his little chair, and in order that the inspectors might not
grumble, I stopped up the holes that he made in the earth
with his shovel, with my cane. One day he exclaimed: Down
with Louis XVIII.! and off he went. It was no fault of mine.
He was all rosy and blond. His mother is dead. Have you
ever noticed that all little children are blond? Why is it so?
He is the son of one of those brigands of the Loire, but chil-
dren are innocent of their fathers’ crimes. I remember when
he was no higher than that. He could not manage to pro-
nounce his Ds. He had a way of talking that was so sweet
and indistinct that you would have thought it was a bird
chirping. I remember that once, in front of the Hercules
Farnese, people formed a circle to admire him and marvel
at him, he was so handsome, was that child! He had a head

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