Besides, Laigle de Meaux, that bald-head, offends my sight.
It humiliates me to think that I am of the same age as that baldy.
However, I criticise, but I do not insult.
The universe is what it is.
I speak here without evil intent and to ease my conscience.
Receive, Eternal Father, the assurance of my distinguished consideration.
Ah! by all the saints of Olympus and by all the gods of paradise, I was not intended to be a Parisian, that is to say, to rebound forever, like a shuttlecock between two battledores, from the group of the loungers to the group of the roysterers.
I was made to be a Turk, watching 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 surrounded 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 retract.
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 religion which is ornamented with a hen-roost!
Now, I insist on a drink.
The earth is a great piece of stupidity.
And it appears 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 swallowing 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.
“A propos of revolution,” said Joly, “it is decidedly abberent that Barius is in lub.”
“Does any one know with whom?” demanded Laigle.
“Do.”
“No?”
“Do! I tell you.”
“Marius’ love affairs!” exclaimed Grantaire. “I can imagine it.
Marius is a fog, and he must have found a vapor.
Marius is of the race of poets.
He who says poet, says fool, madman, Tymbr?us Apollo.
Marius and his Marie, or his Marion, or his Maria, or his Mariette. They must make a queer pair of lovers.
I know just what it is like.
Ecstasies in which they forget to kiss.
Pure on earth, but joined in heaven.
They are souls possessed of senses.
They lie among the stars.”
Grantaire was attacking his second bottle and, possibly, his second harangue, when a new personage emerged from the square aperture of the stairs.
It was a boy less than ten years of age, ragged, very small, yellow, with an odd phiz, a vivacious eye, an enormous amount of hair drenched with rain, and wearing a contented air.
The child unhesitatingly making his choice among the three, addressed himself to Laigle de Meaux.
“Are you Monsieur Bossuet?”
“That is my nickname,” replied Laigle.
“What do you want with me?”
“This.
A tall blonde fellow on the boulevard said to me:
‘Do you know Mother Hucheloup?’
I said: ‘Yes, Rue Chanvrerie, the old man’s widow;’ he said to me:
‘Go there.
There you will find M. Bossuet. Tell him from me: