Page 1186 - les-miserables

I have seen chaos, I now see a mess. Students deliberating
on the National Guard,— such a thing could not be seen
among the Ogibewas nor the Cadodaches! Savages who go
naked, with their noddles dressed like a shuttlecock, with
a club in their paws, are less of brutes than those bache-
lors of arts! The four-penny monkeys! And they set up for
judges! Those creatures deliberate and ratiocinate! The end
of the world is come! This is plainly the end of this miser-
able terraqueous globe! A final hiccough was required, and
France has emitted it. Deliberate, my rascals! Such things
will happen so long as they go and read the newspapers un-
der the arcades of the Odeon. That costs them a sou, and
their good sense, and their intelligence, and their heart and
their soul, and their wits. They emerge thence, and decamp
from their families. All newspapers are pests; all, even the
Drapeau Blanc! At bottom, Martainville was a Jacobin. Ah!
just Heaven! you may boast of having driven your grandfa-
ther to despair, that you may!’
‘That is evident,’ said Theodule.
And profiting by the fact that M. Gillenormand was
taking breath, the lancer added in a magisterial manner:—
‘There should be no other newspaper than the Moniteur,
and no other book than the Annuaire Militaire.’
M. Gillenormand continued:—
‘It is like their Sieyes! A regicide ending in a senator; for
that is the way they always end. They give themselves a scar
with the address of thou as citizens, in order to get them-
selves called, eventually, Monsieur le Comte. Monsieur le
Comte as big as my arm, assassins of September. The phi-

1186 Les Miserables