Page 2274 - les-miserables

beautiful neighbor without a guimpe so that her throat was
only moderately concealed. Oh! the large laughing mouths,
and how gay we were in those days! youth was a bouquet;
every young man terminated in a branch of lilacs or a tuft
of roses; whether he was a shepherd or a warrior; and if, by
chance, one was a captain of dragoons, one found means to
call oneself Florian. People thought much of looking well.
They embroidered and tinted themselves. A bourgeois had
the air of a flower, a Marquis had the air of a precious stone.
People had no straps to their boots, they had no boots. They
were spruce, shining, waved, lustrous, fluttering, dainty, co-
quettish, which did not at all prevent their wearing swords
by their sides. The humming-bird has beak and claws. That
was the day of the Galland Indies. One of the sides of that
century was delicate, the other was magnificent; and by the
green cabbages! people amused themselves. To-day, people
are serious. The bourgeois is avaricious, the bourgeoise is
a prude; your century is unfortunate. People would drive
away the Graces as being too low in the neck. Alas! beauty is
concealed as though it were ugliness. Since the revolution,
everything, including the ballet-dancers, has had its trou-
sers; a mountebank dancer must be grave; your rigadoons
are doctrinarian. It is necessary to be majestic. People would
be greatly annoyed if they did not carry their chins in their
cravats. The ideal of an urchin of twenty when he marries, is
to resemble M. Royer-Collard. And do you know what one
arrives at with that majesty? at being petty. Learn this: joy
is not only joyous; it is great. But be in love gayly then, what
the deuce! marry, when you marry, with fever and giddi-

2274 Les Miserables