Page 1183 - les-miserables

‘Approve of everything.’
And she withdrew.
The lieutenant, who was but little accustomed to such
venerable encounters, stammered with some timidity:
‘Good day, uncle,’— and made a salute composed of the
involuntary and mechanical outline of the military salute
finished off as a bourgeois salute.
‘Ah! so it’s you; that is well, sit down,’ said the old gentle-
man.
That said, he totally forgot the lancer.
Theodule seated himself, and M. Gillenormand rose.
M. Gillenormand began to pace back and forth, his
hands in his pockets, talking aloud, and twitching, with his
irritated old fingers, at the two watches which he wore in
his two fobs.
‘That pack of brats! they convene on the Place du Pan-
theon! by my life! urchins who were with their nurses but
yesterday! If one were to squeeze their noses, milk would
burst out. And they deliberate to-morrow, at midday. What
are we coming to? What are we coming to? It is clear that
we are making for the abyss. That is what the descamisados
have brought us to! To deliberate on the citizen artillery!
To go and jabber in the open air over the jibes of the Na-
tional Guard! And with whom are they to meet there? Just
see whither Jacobinism leads. I will bet anything you like, a
million against a counter, that there will be no one there but
returned convicts and released galley-slaves. The Republi-
cans and the galley-slaves,—they form but one nose and one
handkerchief. Carnot used to say: ‘Where would you have

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