THE WILD-BEAST MAN IN HIS LAIR.
Cities, like forests, have their dens, in which everything that is
most wicked and formidable conceals itself. The only difference is,
that what hides itself thus in cities is ferocious, unclean, and
little, that is to say, ugly; what conceals itself in the forests is
ferocious, savage, and grand, that is to say, beautiful. Den for den,
those of the beasts are preferable to those of men; and caverns are
better than hiding-places. What Marius saw was a low den. Marius was
poor, and his room was indigent; but in the same way as his poverty
was noble his room was clean. The garret into which he was now looking
was abject, dirty, fetid, infectious, dark, and sordid. The furniture
only consisted of a straw-bottomed chair, a rickety table, some old
broken glass, and in the corners two indescribable beds. The only light
came through a sky-light with four panes of glass and festooned with
spider-webs. Through this came just sufficient light for the face of a
man to seem the face of a spectre. The walls had a leprous look, and
were covered with gashes and scars, like a face disfigured by some
horrible disease, and a dim moisture oozed from them. Obscene designs,
clumsily drawn in charcoal, could be distinguished on them.
The room which Marius occupied had a broken-brick flooring, but in
this one people walked on the old plaster of the hovel, grown black
under the feet. Upon this uneven flooring, in which the dust was, so to
speak, incrusted, and which bad but one virginity, that of the broom,
were capriciously grouped constellations of old shoes, boots, and
frightful rags; this room, however, had a chimney, and for this reason
was let at forty francs a year. There was something of everything in
this fire-place,--a chafing-dish, a pot, some broken planks, rags
hanging from nails, a bird-cage, ashes, and even a little fire,
for two logs were smoking there sadly. A thing which augmented the
horror of this garret was the fact of its being large; it had angles,
nooks, black holes under the roof, bays, and promontories. Hence
came frightful inscrutable corners, in which it seemed as if spiders
large as a fist, woodlice as large as a foot, and possibly some human
monsters, must lurk.
One of the beds was near the door, the other near the window, but
the ends of both ran down to the mantel-piece, and faced Marius. In
a corner near the hole through which Marius was peeping, a colored
engraving in a black wood frame, under which was written in large
letters, THE DREAM, hung against the wall. It represented a sleeping
woman and a sleeping child, the child lying on the woman's knees, an
eagle in the clouds with a crown in its beak, and the woman removing
the crown from the child's head, without awaking it, however; in
the background Napoleon, surrounded by a glory, was leaning against
a dark blue column with a yellow capital, that bore the following
inscription:--
MARINGO
AUSTERLITS
IENA
WAGRAMME
ELOT
Below this frame a sort of wooden panel, longer than it was wide, was
placed on the ground and leaning against the wall. It looked like a
picture turned from the spectator, or some sign-board detached from a
wall and forgotten there while waiting to be hung again. At the table,
on which Marius noticed pen, ink, and paper, a man was seated of about
sixty years of age, short, thin, livid, haggard, with a sharp, cruel,
and listless look,--a hideous scamp. If Lavater had examined this face
he would have found in it the vulture blended with the attorney's
clerk; the bird of prey and the man of trickery rendering each other
more ugly and more perfect,--the man of trickery rendering the bird
of prey ignoble, and the bird of prey rendering the man of trickery
horrible. This man had a long gray beard, and wore a woman's chemise,
which allowed his hairy chest, and naked arms bristling with gray
hairs, to be seen. Under this chemise might be noticed muddy trousers,
and boots out of which his toes stuck. He had a pipe in his mouth, and
Was smoking; there was no bread in the garret, but there was still
tobacco. He was writing, probably some letter like those which Marius
had read. On one corner of the table could be seen an old broken-backed
volume, the form of which, the old 12mo of circulating libraries,
indicated a romance; on the cover figured the following title, printed
in large capitals,--GOD, THE KING, HONOR, AND THE LADIES. BY DUCRAY
DUMINIL, 1814. While writing, the man was talking aloud, and Marius
heard his words:--
"Only to think that there is no equality, even when a man is dead!
Just look at Père Lachaise! The great ones, those who are rich, are up
above, in the Acacia Avenue which is paved, and reach it in a coach.
The little folk, the poor people, the wretched,--they are put down at
the bottom where there is mud up to your knees, in holes and damp, and
they are placed there that they may rot all the sooner. You can't go to
see them without sinking into the ground."
Here he stopped, smote the table with his fist, and added, while be
gnashed his teeth,--
"Oh! I could eat the world!"
A stout woman, who might be forty or one hundred, was crouched up near
the chimney-piece on her naked heels. She too was only dressed in a
chemise and a cotton petticoat, pieced with patches of old cloth, and
an apron of coarse canvas concealed one half of the petticoat. Though
this woman was sitting all of a heap, you could see that she was
very tall, and a species of giantess by her husband's side. She had
frightful hair, of a reddish auburn, beginning to turn gray, which she
thrust back every now and then with the enormous strong hands with
flat nails. By her side, on the ground, was lying an open volume, of
the same form as the other, probably part of the same romance. On one
of the beds Marius caught a glimpse of a long, ghastly young girl,
sitting up almost naked, and with hanging feet, who did not seem to
hear, see, or live; she was, doubtless, the younger sister of the one
who had come to him. She appeared to be eleven or twelve years of age,
but on examining her attentively it could be seen that she was at least
fourteen; it was the girl who said on the boulevard the previous night,
"I bolted, bolted, bolted." She was of that sickly class who keep down
for a long time and then shoot up quickly and suddenly. It is indigence
which produces these human plants, and these creatures have neither
infancy nor adolescence. At fifteen they seem twelve, and at sixteen
they appear twenty: to-day it is a little girl, to-morrow a woman; we
might almost say that they stride through life in order to reach the
end more rapidly; at this moment, however, she had the look of a child.
In this lodging there was not the slightest sign of work; not a loom,
a spinning-wheel, or a single tool, but in one corner were some iron
implements of dubious appearance. It was that dull indolence which
follows despair and precedes death. Marius gazed for some time at
this mournful interior, which was more terrifying than the interior
of a tomb, for the human soul could be seen stirring in it and life
palpitating. The garret, the cellar, the hole in which some indigent
people crawl in the lowest part of the social edifice, is not exactly
the sepulchre, but it is the antechamber to it; but like those rich
men who display their greatest magnificence at the entrance to their
palace, it seems that death, which is close at hand, places all its
greatest wretchedness in this vestibule. The man was silent, the woman
did not speak, and the girl did not seem to breathe; the pen could be
heard moving across the paper. The man growled, without ceasing to
write, "Scoundrels, scoundrels, all are scoundrels!"
The variation upon Solomon's exclamation drew a sigh from the wife.
"Calm yourself, my love," she said, "do not hurt yourself, darling. You
are too good to write to all those people, dear husband."
In misery bodies draw more closely together, as in cold weather, but
hearts are estranged. This woman, to all appearance, must have loved
this man with the amount of love within her, but probably this had
been extinguished in the daily and mutual reproaches of the frightful
distress that pressed upon the whole family, and she now had only
the ashes of affection for her husband within her. Still, caressing
appellations, as frequently happens, had survived: she called him
_darling, pet, husband_, with her lips, but her heart was silent. The
man continued to write.