1840 Les Miserables
ing oriental houris all day long, executing those exquisite
Egyptian dances, as sensuous as the dream of a chaste man,
or a Beauceron peasant, or a Venetian gentleman surround-
ed by gentlewoman, or a petty German prince, furnishing
the half of a foot-soldier to the Germanic confederation,
and occupying his leisure with drying his breeches on his
hedge, that is to say, his frontier. Those are the positions for
which I was born! Yes, I have said a Turk, and I will not re-
tract. I do not understand how people can habitually take
Turks in bad part; Mohammed had his good points; respect
for the inventor of seraglios with houris and paradises with
odalisques! Let us not insult Mohammedanism, the only re-
ligion which is ornamented with a hen-roost! Now, I insist
on a drink. The earth is a great piece of stupidity. And it ap-
pears that they are going to fight, all those imbeciles, and
to break each other’s profiles and to massacre each other in
the heart of summer, in the month of June, when they might
go off with a creature on their arm, to breathe the immense
heaps of new-mown hay in the meadows! Really, people do
commit altogether too many follies. An old broken lantern
which I have just seen at a bric-a-brac merchant’s suggests
a reflection to my mind; it is time to enlighten the human
race. Yes, behold me sad again. That’s what comes of swal-
lowing an oyster and a revolution the wrong way! I am
growing melancholy once more. Oh! frightful old world.
People strive, turn each other out, prostitute themselves,
kill each other, and get used to it!’
And Grantaire, after this fit of eloquence, had a fit of
coughing, which was well earned.