Les Misérables, стр. 552

tree over which climbs the wild convolvulus, amid dandelions and mosses, there lies a stone. That stone is no more exempt than others from the leprosy of time, of dampness, of the lichens and from the defilement of the birds. The water turns it green, the air blackens it. It is not near any path, and people are not fond of walking in that direction, because the grass is high and their feet are immediately wet. When there is a little sunshine, the lizards come thither. All around there is a quivering of weeds. In the spring, linnets warble in the trees.

This stone is perfectly plain. In cutting it the only thought was the requirements of the tomb, and no other care was taken than to make the stone long enough and narrow enough to cover a man.

No name is to be read there.

Only, many years ago, a hand wrote upon it in pencil these four lines, which have become gradually illegible beneath the rain and the dust, and which are, today, probably effaced:

Il dort. Quoique le sort fût pour lui bien étrange,
Il vivait. Il mourut quand il n’eut plus son ange.
La chose simplement d’elle-même arriva,
Comme la nuit se fait lorsque le jour s’en va. 115

Endnotes

  1. Matters were getting embroiled with Rome. ↩

  2. Welcome. ↩

  3. Votre Grandeur. ↩

  4. Grandeur. ↩

  5. Patois of the French Alps: chat de maraude, rascally marauder. ↩

  6. Pride. ↩

  7. Fishmarket. ↩

  8. Du Jardin du Roi. ↩

  9. Potato. ↩

  10. Badajoz is my home, And Love is my name; To my eyes in flame, All my soul doth come; For instruction meet I receive at thy feet. ↩

  11. Give us back our father from Ghent, Give us back our father. ↩

  12. Mon calme. ↩

  13. Liège is a jest on Li’ge: a cork-tree.

    Pau is a jest on peau: skin. ↩

  14. Glaces. ↩

  15. Glaces or ices. ↩

  16. She belonged to that circle where cuckoos and carriages share the same fate; and a jade herself, she lived, as jades live, for the space of a morning (or jade). ↩

  17. An ex-convict. ↩

  18. A bullet as large as an egg. ↩

  19. Walter Scott, Lamartine, Vaulabelle, Charras, Quinet, Thiers. ↩

  20. This is the inscription: D.O.M. cy a été écrasé par malheur sous un cahriot, Monsieue Bernard de Brye Marchand a Bruxelle Le [illegible]

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