139 0 Les Miserables
‘Nasty brat!’ she grumbled. ‘If I hadn’t been bending over,
I know well where I would have planted my foot on you.’
The boy was already far away.
‘Kisss! kisss!’ he cried. ‘After that, I don’t think I was mis-
taken!’
The old woman, choking with indignation, now rose
completely upright, and the red gleam of the lantern fully
lighted up her livid face, all hollowed into angles and wrin-
kles, with crow’s-feet meeting the corners of her mouth.
Her body was lost in the darkness, and only her head was
visible. One would have pronounced her a mask of Decrepi-
tude carved out by a light from the night.
The boy surveyed her.
‘Madame,’ said he, ‘does not possess that style of beauty
which pleases me.’
He then pursued his road, and resumed his song:—“Le roi Coupdesabot
S’en allait a la chasse,
A la chasse aux corbeaux—‘At the end of these three lines he paused. He had arrived
in front of No. 50-52, and finding the door fastened, he be-
gan to assault it with resounding and heroic kicks, which
betrayed rather the man’s shoes that he was wearing than
the child’s feet which he owned.
In the meanwhile, the very old woman whom he had
encountered at the corner of the Rue du Petit-Banquier
hastened up behind him, uttering clamorous cries and in-