Page 454 - les-miserables

stand at all? these were questions which divided the crowd,
and seemed to divide the jury; there was something both
terrible and puzzling in this case: the drama was not only
melancholy; it was also obscure.
The counsel for the defence had spoken tolerably well,
in that provincial tongue which has long constituted the el-
oquence of the bar, and which was formerly employed by
all advocates, at Paris as well as at Romorantin or at Mont-
brison, and which to-day, having become classic, is no longer
spoken except by the official orators of magistracy, to whom
it is suited on account of its grave sonorousness and its ma-
jestic stride; a tongue in which a husband is called a consort,
and a woman a spouse; Paris, the centre of art and civili-
zation; the king, the monarch; Monseigneur the Bishop, a
sainted pontiff; the district-attorney, the eloquent interpret-
er of public prosecution; the arguments, the accents which
we have just listened to; the age of Louis XIV., the grand age;
a theatre, the temple of Melpomene; the reigning family, the
august blood of our kings; a concert, a musical solemnity;
the General Commandant of the province, the illustrious
warrior, who, etc.; the pupils in the seminary, these tender
levities; errors imputed to newspapers, the imposture which
distills its venom through the columns of those organs; etc.
The lawyer had, accordingly, begun with an explanation as
to the theft of the apples,—an awkward matter couched in
fine style; but Benigne Bossuet himself was obliged to al-
lude to a chicken in the midst of a funeral oration, and he
extricated himself from the situation in stately fashion. The
lawyer established the fact that the theft of the apples had

454 Les Miserables