Page 1025 - les-miserables

He would have been greatly irritated and thrown off his bal-
ance, had any one told him that the elixir of gold is nothing
but the perchloride of iron. M. Gillenormand adored the
Bourbons, and had a horror of 1789; he was forever narrat-
ing in what manner he had saved himself during the Terror,
and how he had been obliged to display a vast deal of gayety
and cleverness in order to escape having his head cut off.
If any young man ventured to pronounce an eulogium on
the Republic in his presence, he turned purple and grew so
angry that he was on the point of swooning. He sometimes
alluded to his ninety years, and said, ‘I hope that I shall not
see ninety-three twice.’ On these occasions, he hinted to
people that he meant to live to be a hundred.

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