Page 1270 - les-miserables

suspended to a nail on the wall, and at its bottom, in large
letters, was the inscription: THE DREAM. This represented
a sleeping woman, and a child, also asleep, the child on the
woman’s lap, an eagle in a cloud, with a crown in his beak,
and the woman thrusting the crown away from the child’s
head, without awaking the latter; in the background, Napo-
leon in a glory, leaning on a very blue column with a yellow
capital ornamented with this inscription:

MARINGO
AUSTERLITS
IENA
WAGRAMME
ELOT

Beneath this frame, a sort of wooden panel, which was
no longer than it was broad, stood on the ground and rested
in a sloping attitude against the wall. It had the appearance
of a picture with its face turned to the wall, of a frame prob-
ably showing a daub on the other side, of some pier-glass
detached from a wall and lying forgotten there while wait-
ing to be rehung.
Near the table, upon which Marius descried a pen, ink,
and paper, sat a man about sixty years of age, small, thin,
livid, haggard, with a cunning, cruel, and uneasy air; a hid-
eous scoundrel.
If Lavater had studied this visage, he would have found
the vulture mingled with the attorney there, the bird of prey
and the pettifogger rendering each other mutually hideous

1270 Les Miserables