2.M.8.6. THE WILD MAN IN HIS LAIR
CITIES, like forests, have their caverns in which all the most
wicked and formidable creatures which they contain conceal
themselves. Only, in cities, that which thus conceals itself is
ferocious, unclean, and petty, that is to say, ugly; in forests,
that which conceals itself is ferocious, savage, and grand, that
is to say, beautiful. Taking one lair with another, the beast's
is preferable to the man's. Caverns are better than hovels.
What Marius now beheld was a hovel.
Marius was poor, and his chamber was poverty-stricken, but
as his poverty was noble, his garret was neat. The den upon
which his eye now rested was abject, dirty, fetid, pestiferous,
mean, sordid. The only furniture consisted of a straw chair, an
infirm table, some old bits of crockery, and in two of the
corners,
two indescribable pallets; all the light was furnishd by
a dormer window of four panes, draped with spiders' webs.
Through this aperture there penetrated just enough light to
make the face of a man appear like the face of a phantom.
The walls had a leprous aspect, and were covered with seams
and scars, like a visage disfigured by some horrible malady; a
repulsive moisture exuded from them. Obscene sketches
roughly sketched with charcoal could be distinguished upon
them.
The chamber which Marius occupied had a dilapidated brick
pavement; this one was neither tiled nor planked; its inhabitants
stepped directly on the antique plaster of the hovel,
which had grown black under the long-continued pressure of
feet. Upon this uneven floor, where the dirt seemed to be
fairly incrusted, and which possessed but one virginity, that of
the broom, were capriciously grouped constellations of old
shoes, socks, and repulsive rags; however, this room had a
fireplace,
so it was let for forty francs a year. There was every
sort of thing in that fireplace, a brazier, a pot, broken boards,
rags suspended from nails, a bird-cage, ashes, and even a
little fire. Two brands were smouldering there in a melancholy
way.
One thing which added still more to the horrors of this
garret
was, that it was large. It had projections and angles and
black holes, the lower sides of roofs, bays, and promontories.
Hence horrible, unfathomable nooks where it seemed as though
spiders as big as one's fist, wood-lice as large as one's foot,
and
perhaps even — who knows? — some monstrous human beings,
must be hiding.
One of the pallets was near the door, the other near the
window.
One end of each touched the fireplace and faced Marius.
In a corner near the aperture through which Marius was gazing,
a colored engraving in a black frame was 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, Napoleon in a glory, leaning
on a very blue column with a yellow capital ornamented with
this inscription:
MARINGO
AUSTERLITS
IENA
WAGRAMME
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 probably
showing a daub on the other side, of some pier-glass detached
from a wall and lying forgotten there while waiting 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 hideous
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 and
complementing each other; the pettifogger making the bird of
prey ignoble, the bird of prey making the pettifogger horrible.
This man had a long gray beard. He was clad in a woman's
chemise, which allowed his hairy breast and his bare arms,
bristling with gray hair, to be seen. Beneath this chemise,
muddy trousers and boots through which his toes projected
were visible.
He had a pipe in his mouth and was smoking. There was
no bread in the hovel, but there was still tobacco.
He was writing probably some more letters like those which
Marius had read.
On the corner of the table lay an ancient, dilapidated,
reddish
volume, and the size, which was the antique 12mo of reading-rooms,
betrayed a romance. On the cover sprawled the following
title, printed in large capitals: GOD; THE KING;
HONOR AND THE LADIES; BY DUCRAY DUMINIL,
1814.
As the man wrote, he talked aloud, and Marius heard his
words: —
"The idea that there is no equality, even when you are
dead!
Just look at Pere Lachaise! The great, those who are rich, are
up above, in the acacia alley, which is paved. They can reach
it in a carriage. The little people, the poor, the unhappy,
well,
what of them? they are put down below, where the mud is up
to your knees, in the damp places. They are put there so that
they will decay the sooner! You cannot go to see them without
sinking into the earth."
He paused, smote the table with his fist, and added, as he
ground his teeth: —
"Oh! I could eat the whole world!"
A big woman, who might be forty years of age, or a
hundred,
was crouching near the fireplace on her bare heels.
She, too, was clad only in a chemise and a knitted
petticoat
patched with bits of old cloth. A coarse linen apron concealed
the half of her petticoat. Although this woman was doubled
up and bent together, it could be seen that she was of very
lofty stature. She was a sort of giant, beside her husband.
She had hideous hair, of a reddish blond which was turning
gray, and which she thrust back from time to time, with her
enormous shining hands, with their flat nails.
Beside her, on the floor, wide open, lay a book of the
same
form as the other, and probably a volume of the same romance.
On one of the pallets, Marius caught a glimpse of a sort
of
tall pale young girl, who sat there half naked and with pendant
feet, and who did not seem to be listening or seeing or living.
No doubt the younger sister of the one who had come to his
room.
She seemed to be eleven or twelve years of age. On closer
scrutiny it was evident that she really was fourteen. She was
the child who had said, on the boulevard the evening before:
"I bolted, bolted, bolted!"
She was of that puny sort which remains backward for a
long time, then suddenly starts up rapidly. It is indigence
which produces these melancholy human plants. These creatures
have neither childhood nor youth. At fifteen years of
age they appear to be twelve, at sixteen they seem twenty.
To-day a little girl, to-morrow a woman. One might say that
they stride through life, in order to get through with it the
more speedily.
At this moment, this being had the air of a child.
Moreover, no trace of work was revealed in that dwelling;
no handicraft, no spinning-wheel, not a tool. In one corner
lay some ironmongery of dubious aspect. It was the dull
listlessness which follows despair and precedes the death
agony.
Marius gazed for a while at this gloomy interior, more
terrifying than the interior of a tomb, for the human soul
could be felt fluttering there, and life was palpitating there.
The garret, the cellar, the lowly ditch where certain indigent
wretches crawl at the very bottom of the social edifice, is not
exactly the sepulchre, but only its antechamber; but, as the
wealthy display their greatest magnificence at the entrance
of their palaces, it seems that death, which stands directly
side by side with them, places its greatest miseries in that
vestibule.
The man held his peace, the woman spoke no word, the
young girl did not even seem to breathe. The scratching of
the pen on the paper was audible.
The man grumbled, without pausing in his writing.
"Canaille!
canaille! everybody is canaille!"
This variation to Solomon's exclamation elicited a sigh
from the woman.
"Calm yourself, my little friend," she said. "Don't hurt
yourself, my dear. You are too good to write to all those
people, husband."
Bodies press close to each other in misery, as in cold,
but
hearts draw apart. This woman must have loved this man,
to all appearance, judging from the amount of love within
her; but probably, in the daily and reciprocal reproaches of
the horrible distress which weighed on the whole group, this
had become extinct. There no longer existed in her anything
more than the ashes of affection for her husband. Nevertheless,
caressing appellations had survived, as is often the case.
She called him: My dear, my little friend, my good man,
etc.,
with her mouth while her heart was silent.
The man resumed his writing.