Page 1994 - les-miserables

harder it is, the more meritorious. You say: ‘I have a gun,
I am at the barricade; so much the worse, I shall remain
there.’ So much the worse is easily said. My friends, there is
a morrow; you will not be here to-morrow, but your fami-
lies will; and what sufferings! See, here is a pretty, healthy
child, with cheeks like an apple, who babbles, prattles, chat-
ters, who laughs, who smells sweet beneath your kiss,—and
do you know what becomes of him when he is abandoned?
I have seen one, a very small creature, no taller than that.
His father was dead. Poor people had taken him in out of
charity, but they had bread only for themselves. The child
was always hungry. It was winter. He did not cry. You could
see him approach the stove, in which there was never any
fire, and whose pipe, you know, was of mastic and yellow
clay. His breathing was hoarse, his face livid, his limbs flac-
cid, his belly prominent. He said nothing. If you spoke to
him, he did not answer. He is dead. He was taken to the
Necker Hospital, where I saw him. I was house-surgeon
in that hospital. Now, if there are any fathers among you,
fathers whose happiness it is to stroll on Sundays holding
their child’s tiny hand in their robust hand, let each one of
those fathers imagine that this child is his own. That poor
brat, I remember, and I seem to see him now, when he lay
nude on the dissecting table, how his ribs stood out on his
skin like the graves beneath the grass in a cemetery. A sort
of mud was found in his stomach. There were ashes in his
teeth. Come, let us examine ourselves conscientiously and
take counsel with our heart. Statistics show that the mortal-
ity among abandoned children is fifty-five per cent. I repeat,

1994 Les Miserables