Page 449 - les-miserables
P. 449
CHAPTER IX
A PLACE WHERE
CONVICTIONS ARE IN
PROCESS OF FORMATION
He advanced a pace, closed the door mechanically behind
him, and remained standing, contemplating what he saw.
It was a vast and badly lighted apartment, now full of
uproar, now full of silence, where all the apparatus of a
criminal case, with its petty and mournful gravity in the
midst of the throng, was in process of development.
At the one end of the hall, the one where he was, were
judges, with abstracted air, in threadbare robes, who were
gnawing their nails or closing their eyelids; at the other end,
a ragged crowd; lawyers in all sorts of attitudes; soldiers
with hard but honest faces; ancient, spotted woodwork, a
dirty ceiling, tables covered with serge that was yellow rath-
er than green; doors blackened by handmarks; tap-room
lamps which emitted more smoke than light, suspended
from nails in the wainscot; on the tables candles in brass
candlesticks; darkness, ugliness, sadness; and from all this
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