Page 969 - les-miserables

der his eyes.
These beings also lived with shorn heads, with down-
cast eyes, with lowered voices, not in disgrace, but amid the
scoffs of the world, not with their backs bruised with the
cudgel, but with their shoulders lacerated with their disci-
pline. Their names, also, had vanished from among men;
they no longer existed except under austere appellations.
They never ate meat and they never drank wine; they often
remained until evening without food; they were attired, not
in a red blouse, but in a black shroud, of woollen, which was
heavy in summer and thin in winter, without the power to
add or subtract anything from it; without having even, ac-
cording to the season, the resource of the linen garment or
the woollen cloak; and for six months in the year they wore
serge chemises which gave them fever. They dwelt, not in
rooms warmed only during rigorous cold, but in cells where
no fire was ever lighted; they slept, not on mattresses two
inches thick, but on straw. And finally, they were not even
allowed their sleep; every night, after a day of toil, they were
obliged, in the weariness of their first slumber, at the mo-
ment when they were falling sound asleep and beginning
to get warm, to rouse themselves, to rise and to go and pray
in an ice-cold and gloomy chapel, with their knees on the
stones.
On certain days each of these beings in turn had to re-
main for twelve successive hours in a kneeling posture,
or prostrate, with face upon the pavement, and arms out-
stretched in the form of a cross.
The others were men; these were women.

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