Page 1273 - les-miserables

of age they appear to be twelve, at sixteen they seem twenty.
To-day a little girl, to-morrow a woman. One might say that
they stride through life, in order to get through with it the
more speedily.
At this moment, this being had the air of a child.
Moreover, no trace of work was revealed in that dwell-
ing; no handicraft, no spinning-wheel, not a tool. In one
corner lay some ironmongery of dubious aspect. It was the
dull listlessness which follows despair and precedes the
death agony.
Marius gazed for a while at this gloomy interior, more
terrifying than the interior of a tomb, for the human soul
could be felt fluttering there, and life was palpitating there.
The garret, the cellar, the lowly ditch where certain indigent
wretches crawl at the very bottom of the social edifice, is not
exactly the sepulchre, but only its antechamber; but, as the
wealthy display their greatest magnificence at the entrance
of their palaces, it seems that death, which stands directly
side by side with them, places its greatest miseries in that
vestibule.
The man held his peace, the woman spoke no word, the
young girl did not even seem to breathe. The scratching of
the pen on the paper was audible.
The man grumbled, without pausing in his writing. ‘Ca-
naille! canaille! everybody is canaille!’
This variation to Solomon’s exclamation elicited a sigh
from the woman.
‘Calm yourself, my little friend,’ she said. ‘Don’t hurt
yourself, my dear. You are too good to write to all those

1273