Page 667 - les-miserables

de l’Hopital.
This served in lieu of a watch or clock to the poor women
of the quarter who said, ‘It is two o’clock; there he is return-
ing to the Tuileries.’
And some rushed forward, and others drew up in line,
for a passing king always creates a tumult; besides, the ap-
pearance and disappearance of Louis XVIII. produced a
certain effect in the streets of Paris. It was rapid but ma-
jestic. This impotent king had a taste for a fast gallop; as he
was not able to walk, he wished to run: that cripple would
gladly have had himself drawn by the lightning. He passed,
pacific and severe, in the midst of naked swords. His mas-
sive couch, all covered with gilding, with great branches of
lilies painted on the panels, thundered noisily along. There
was hardly time to cast a glance upon it. In the rear angle
on the right there was visible on tufted cushions of white
satin a large, firm, and ruddy face, a brow freshly powdered
a l’oiseau royal, a proud, hard, crafty eye, the smile of an ed-
ucated man, two great epaulets with bullion fringe floating
over a bourgeois coat, the Golden Fleece, the cross of Saint
Louis, the cross of the Legion of Honor, the silver plaque
of the Saint-Esprit, a huge belly, and a wide blue ribbon: it
was the king. Outside of Paris, he held his hat decked with
white ostrich plumes on his knees enwrapped in high Eng-
lish gaiters; when he re-entered the city, he put on his hat
and saluted rarely; he stared coldly at the people, and they
returned it in kind. When he appeared for the first time in
the Saint-Marceau quarter, the whole success which he pro-
duced is contained in this remark of an inhabitant of the

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