l they can to make
themselves ugly, they are badly dressed, they are afraid of women, in
the presence of petticoats they have a mendicant air which sets the
girls into fits of laughter; on my word of honor, one would say the poor
creatures were ashamed of love. They are deformed, and they complete
themselves by being stupid; they repeat the puns of Tiercelin and
Potier, they have sack coats, stablemen's waistcoats, shirts of coarse
linen, trousers of coarse cloth, boots of coarse leather, and their
rigmarole resembles their plumage. One might make use of their jargon
to put new soles on their old shoes. And all this awkward batch of brats
has political opinions, if you please. Political opinions should be
strictly forbidden. They fabricate systems, they recast society, they
demolish the monarchy, they fling all laws to the earth, they put the
attic in the cellar's place and my porter in the place of the King, they
turn Europe topsy-turvy, they reconstruct the world, and all their love
affairs consist in staring slily at the ankles of the laundresses as
these women climb into their carts. Ah! Marius! Ah! you blackguard! to
go and vociferate on the public place! to discuss, to debate, to take
measures! They call that measures, just God! Disorder humbles itself
and becomes silly. I have seen chaos, I now see a mess. Students
deliberating on the National Guard,--such a thing could not be seen
among the Ogibewas nor the Cadodaches! Savages who go naked, with their
noddles dressed like a shuttlecock, with a club in their paws, are less
of brutes than those bachelors of arts! The four-penny monkeys! And they
set up for judges! Those creatures deliberate and ratiocinate! The
end of the world is come! This is plainly the end of this miserable
terraqueous globe! A final hiccough was required, and France has emitted
it. Deliberate, my rascals! Such things will happen so long as they go
and read the newspapers under the arcades of the Odeon. That costs them
a sou, and their good sense, and their intelligence, and their heart and
their soul, and their wits. They emerge thence, and decamp from their
families. All newspapers are pests; all, even the Drapeau Blanc! At
bottom, Martainville was a Jacobin. Ah! just Heaven! you may boast of
having driven your grandfather to despair, that you may!"

"That is evident," said Theodule.

And profiting by the fact that M. Gillenormand was taking breath, the
lancer added in a magisterial manner: