Les Miserables

1270 Les Miserables

suspended to a nail on the wall, and at its bottom, in large

letters, was the inscription: THE DREAM. This represented

a sleeping woman, and a child, also asleep, the child on the

woman’s lap, an eagle in a cloud, with a crown in his beak,

and the woman thrusting the crown away from the child’s

head, without awaking the latter; in the background, Napo-

leon in a glory, leaning on a very blue column with a yellow

capital ornamented with this inscription:

MARINGO

AUSTERLITS

IENA

WAG R A M M E

ELOT

Beneath this frame, a sort of wooden panel, which was

no longer than it was broad, stood on the ground and rested

in a sloping attitude against the wall. It had the appearance

of a picture with its face turned to the wall, of a frame prob-

ably showing a daub on the other side, of some pier-glass

detached from a wall and lying forgotten there while wait-

ing to be rehung.

Near the table, upon which Marius descried a pen, ink,

and paper, sat a man about sixty years of age, small, thin,

livid, haggard, with a cunning, cruel, and uneasy air; a hid-

eous scoundrel.

If Lavater had studied this visage, he would have found

the vulture mingled with the attorney there, the bird of prey

and the pettifogger rendering each other mutually hideous