Les Misérables

1

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

2

Liège: a cork-tree. Pau: a jest on peau, skin.

3

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).

4

An ex-convict.

5

This parenthesis is due to Jean Valjean.

6

A bullet as large as an egg.

7

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

8

This is the inscription: —

D. O. M.

CY A ETE ÉCRASÉ

PAR MALHEUR

SOUS UN CHARIOT,

MONSIEUR BERNARD

DE BRYE MARCHAND

A BRUXELLE LE [illegible]

FEVRIER 1637.

9

A heavy rifled gun.

10

“A battle terminated, a day finished, false measures repaired, greater successes assured for the morrow, – all was lost by a moment of panic, terror.” – Napoleon, Dictées de Sainte Hélène.

11

Five winning numbers in a lottery

12

Literally “made cuirs”; i. e., pronounced a t or an s at the end of words where the opposite letter should occur, or used either one of them where neither exists.

13

Lawyer Corbeau, perched on a docket, held in his beak a writ of execution; Lawyer Renard, attracted by the smell, addressed him nearly as follows, etc.

14

This is the factory of Goblet Junior: Come choose your jugs and crocks, Flower-pots, pipes, bricks. The Heart sells Diamonds to every comer.

15

On the boughs hang three bodies of unequal merits: Dismas and Gesmas, between is the divine power. Dismas seeks the heights, Gesmas, unhappy man, the lowest regions; the highest power will preserve us and our effects. If you repeat this verse, you will not lose your things by theft.

16

Instead of porte cochère and porte bàtarde.

17

Jesus-my-God-bandy-leg – down with the moon!

18

Chicken: slang allusion to the noise made in calling poultry.

19

Louis XVIII. is represented in comic pictures of that day as having a pear-shaped head.

20

Tuck into your trousers the shirt-tail that is hanging out. Let it not be said that patriots have hoisted the white flag.

21

In order to re-establish the shaken throne firmly on its base, soil (Des solles), greenhouse and house (Decazes) must be changed.

22

Suspendu, suspended; pendu, hung.

23

L’Aile, wing.

24

The slang term for a painter’s assistant.

25

If Cæsar had given me glory and war, and I were obliged to quit my mother’s love, I would say to great Cæsar, “Take back thy sceptre and thy chariot; I prefer the love of my mother.”

26

Whether the sun shines brightly or dim, the bear returns to his cave.

27

The peep-hole is a Judas in French. Hence the half-punning allusion.

28

Our love has lasted a whole week, but how short are the instants of happiness! To adore each other for eight days was hardly worth the while! The time of love should last forever.

29

You leave me to go to glory; my sad heart will follow you everywhere.

30

A democrat.

31

King Bootkick went a-hunting after crows, mounted on two stilts. When one passed beneath them, one paid him two sous.

32

In olden times, fouriers were the officials who preceded the Court and allotted the lodgings.

33

A game of ninepins, in which one side of the ball is smaller than the other, so that it does not roll straight, but describes a curve on the ground.

34

From April 19 to May 20.

35

Merlan: a sobriquet given to hairdressers because they are white with powder.

36

The scaffold.

37

Argot of the Temple.

38

Argot of the barriers.

39

The Last Day of a Condemned Man.

40

“Vous trouverez dans ces potains-là, une foultitude de raisons pour que je me libertise.”

41

It must be observed, however, that mac in Celtic means son.

42

Smoke puffed in the face of a person asleep.

43

Je n’entrave que le dail comment meck, le daron des orgues, peut atiger ses mômes et ses momignards et les locher criblant sans être agité lui-meme.

44

At night one sees nothing, by day one sees very well; the bourgeois gets flurried over an apocryphal scrawl, practice virtue, tutu, pointed hat!

45

Chien, dog, trigger.

46

Here is the morn appearing. When shall we go to the forest, Charlot asked Charlotte. Tou, tou, tou, for Chatou, I have but one God, one King, one half-farthing, and one boot. And these two poor little wolves were as tipsy as sparrows from having drunk dew and thyme very early in the morning. And these two poor little things were as drunk as thrushes in a vineyard; a tiger laughed at them in his cave. The one cursed, the other swore. When shall we go to the forest? Charlot asked Charlotte.

47

There swings the horrible skeleton of a poor lover who hung himself.

48

She astounds at ten paces, she frightens at two, a wart inhabits her hazardous nose; you tremble every instant lest she should blow it at you, and lest, some fine day, her nose should tumble into her mouth.

49

Matelote: a culinary preparation of various fishes. Gibelotte: stewed rabbits.

50

Treat if you can, and eat if you dare.

51

Bipède sans plume: biped without feathers – pen.

52

Municipal officer of Toulouse.

53

Do you remember our sweet life, when we were both so young, and when we had no other desire in our hearts than to be well dressed and in love? When, by adding your age to my age, we could not count forty years between us, and when, in our humble and tiny household, everything was spring to us even in winter. Fair days! Manuel was proud and wise, Paris sat at sacred banquets, Foy launched thunderbolts, and your corsage had a pin on which I pricked myself. Everything gazed upon you. A briefless lawyer, when I took you to the Prado to dine, you were so beautiful that the roses seemed to me to turn round, and I heard them say: Is she not beautiful! How good she smells! What billowing hair! Beneath her mantle she hides a wing. Her charming bonnet is hardly unfolded. I wandered with thee, pressing thy supple arm. The passers-by thought that love bewitched had wedded, in our happy couple, the gentle month of April to the fair month of May. We lived concealed, content, with closed doors, devouring love, that sweet forbidden fruit. My mouth had not uttered a thing when thy heart had already responded. The Sorbonne was the bucolic spot where I adored thee from eve till morn. ‘Tis thus that an amorous soul applies the chart of the Tender to the Latin country. O Place Maubert! O Place Dauphine! When in the fresh spring-like hut thou didst draw thy stocking on thy delicate leg, I saw a star in the depths of the garret. I have read a great deal of Plato, but nothing of it remains by me; better than Malebranche and then Lamennais thou didst demonstrate to me celestial goodness with a flower which thou gavest to me, I obeyed thee, thou didst submit to me; oh gilded garret! to lace thee! to behold thee going and coming from dawn in thy chemise, gazing at thy young brow in thine ancient mirror! And who, then, would forego the memory of those days of aurora and the firmament, of flowers, of gauze and of moire, when love stammers a charming slang? Our gardens consisted of a pot of tulips; thou didst mask the window with thy petticoat; I took the earthenware bowl and I gave thee the Japanese cup. And those great misfortunes which made us laugh! Thy cuff scorched, thy boa lost! And that dear portrait of the divine Shakespeare which we sold one evening that we might sup! I was a beggar and thou wert charitable. I kissed thy fresh round arms in haste. A folio Dante served us as a table on which to eat merrily a centime’s worth of chestnuts. The first time that, in my joyous den, I snatched a kiss from thy fiery lip, when thou wentest forth, dishevelled and blushing, I turned deathly pale and I believed in God. Dost thou recall our innumerable joys, and all those fichus changed to rags? Oh! what sighs from our hearts full of gloom fluttered forth to the heavenly depths!

54

My nose is in tears, my friend Bugeaud, lend me thy gendarmes that I may say a word to them. With a blue capote and a chicken in his shako, here’s the banlieue, co-cocorico.

55

Love letters.

56

“The bird slanders in the elms,

And pretends that yesterday, Atala

Went off with a Russian,

Where fair maids go.

Lon la.

My friend Pierrot, thou pratest, because Mila knocked at her pane the other day and called me. The jades are very charming, their poison which bewitched me would intoxicate Monsieur Orfila. I’m fond of love and its bickerings, I love Agnes, I love Pamela, Lise burned herself in setting me aflame. In former days when I saw the mantillas of Suzette and of Zéila, my soul mingled with their folds. Love, when thou gleamest in the dark thou crownest Lola with roses, I would lose my soul for that. Jeanne, at thy mirror thou deckest thyself! One fine day, my heart flew forth. I think that it is Jeanne who has it. At night, when I come from the quadrilles, I show Stella to the stars, and I say to them: “Behold her.” Where fair maids go, lon la.

57

But some prisons still remain, and I am going to put a stop to this sort of public order. Does any one wish to play at skittles? The whole ancient world fell in ruin, when the big ball rolled. Good old folks, let us smash with our crutches that Louvre where the monarchy displayed itself in furbelows. We have forced its gates. On that day, King Charles X. did not stick well and came unglued.

58

Steps on the Aventine Hill, leading to the Tiber, to which the bodies of executed criminals were dragged by hooks to be thrown into the Tiber.

59

Mustards.

60

From casser, to break: break-necks.

61

In allusion to the expression, coiffer Sainte-Catherine, “to remain unmarried.”

62

“Thus, hemming in the course of thy musings, Alcippus, it is true that thou wilt wed ere long.”

63

Tirer le diable par la queue, “to live from hand to mouth.”

64

“Triton trotted on before, and drew from his conch-shell sounds so ravishing that he delighted everyone!”

65

“A Shrove-Tuesday marriage will have no ungrateful children.”

66

A short mask.

67

In allusion to the story of Prometheus.

68

Un fafiot sérieux. Fafiot is the slang term for a bank-bill, derived from its rustling noise.

69

He sleeps. Although his fate was very strange, he lived. He died when he had no longer his angel. The thing came to pass simply, of itself, as the night comes when day is gone.