2212 Les Miserables
such as you see in pictures. I talked in a deep voice, and I
frightened him with my cane, but he knew very well that it
was only to make him laugh. In the morning, when he en-
tered my room, I grumbled, but he was like the sunlight to
me, all the same. One cannot defend oneself against those
brats. They take hold of you, they hold you fast, they never
let you go again. The truth is, that there never was a cupid
like that child. Now, what can you say for your Lafayettes,
your Benjamin Constants, and your Tirecuir de Corcelles
who have killed him? This cannot be allowed to pass in this
fashion.’
He approached Marius, who still lay livid and motion-
less, and to whom the physician had returned, and began
once more to wring his hands. The old man’s pallid lips
moved as though mechanically, and permitted the passage
of words that were barely audible, like breaths in the death
agony:
‘Ah! heartless lad! Ah! clubbist! Ah! wretch! Ah! Septem-
brist!’
Reproaches in the low voice of an agonizing man, ad-
dressed to a corpse.
Little by little, as it is always indispensable that internal
eruptions should come to the light, the sequence of words
returned, but the grandfather appeared no longer to have the
strength to utter them, his voice was so weak, and extinct,
that it seemed to come from the other side of an abyss:
‘It is all the same to me, I am going to die too, that I am.
And to think that there is not a hussy in Paris who would
not have been delighted to make this wretch happy! A scamp