Page 1538 - les-miserables

Suddenly, the sun made its appearance; the immense
light of the Orient burst forth, and one would have said that
it had set fire to all those ferocious heads. Their tongues
were unloosed; a conflagration of grins, oaths, and songs
exploded. The broad horizontal sheet of light severed the
file in two parts, illuminating heads and bodies, leaving
feet and wheels in the obscurity. Thoughts made their ap-
pearance on these faces; it was a terrible moment; visible
demons with their masks removed, fierce souls laid bare.
Though lighted up, this wild throng remained in gloom.
Some, who were gay, had in their mouths quills through
which they blew vermin over the crowd, picking out the
women; the dawn accentuated these lamentable profiles
with the blackness of its shadows; there was not one of these
creatures who was not deformed by reason of wretchedness;
and the whole was so monstrous that one would have said
that the sun’s brilliancy had been changed into the glare of
the lightning. The wagon-load which headed the line had
struck up a song, and were shouting at the top of their voic-
es with a haggard joviality, a potpourri by Desaugiers, then
famous, called The Vestal; the trees shivered mournfully;
in the cross-lanes, countenances of bourgeois listened in an
idiotic delight to these coarse strains droned by spectres.
All sorts of distress met in this procession as in chaos;
here were to be found the facial angles of every sort of beast,
old men, youths, bald heads, gray beards, cynical mon-
strosities, sour resignation, savage grins, senseless attitudes,
snouts surmounted by caps, heads like those of young girls
with corkscrew curls on the temples, infantile visages, and

1538 Les Miserables