Page 604 - les-miserables

on with a fluted wicker hood, harnessed to a famished nag
which was cropping the grass across its bit as it halted, hid-
den, as it were, behind the hovel which adjoins the highway
to Nivelles, at the angle of the road from Mont-Saint-Jean to
Braine l’Alleud; and in the wagon, a sort of woman seated
on coffers and packages. Perhaps there was some connec-
tion between that wagon and that prowler.
The darkness was serene. Not a cloud in the zenith. What
matters it if the earth be red! the moon remains white; these
are the indifferences of the sky. In the fields, branches of
trees broken by grape-shot, but not fallen, upheld by their
bark, swayed gently in the breeze of night. A breath, almost
a respiration, moved the shrubbery. Quivers which resem-
bled the departure of souls ran through the grass.
In the distance the coming and going of patrols and the
general rounds of the English camp were audible.
Hougomont and La Haie-Sainte continued to burn,
forming, one in the west, the other in the east, two great
flames which were joined by the cordon of bivouac fires of
the English, like a necklace of rubies with two carbuncles at
the extremities, as they extended in an immense semicircle
over the hills along the horizon.
We have described the catastrophe of the road of Ohain.
The heart is terrified at the thought of what that death must
have been to so many brave men.
If there is anything terrible, if there exists a reality which
surpasses dreams, it is this: to live, to see the sun; to be in
full possession of virile force; to possess health and joy;
to laugh valiantly; to rush towards a glory which one sees

604 Les Miserables