is dead. Have you ever noticed that all little
children are blond? Why is it so? He is the son of one of those brigands
of the Loire, but children are innocent of their fathers' crimes.
I remember when he was no higher than that. He could not manage
to pronounce his Ds. He had a way of talking that was so sweet and
indistinct that you would have thought it was a bird chirping. I
remember that once, in front of the Hercules Farnese, people formed a
circle to admire him and marvel at him, he was so handsome, was that
child! He had a head such as you see in pictures. I talked in a deep
voice, and I frightened him with my cane, but he knew very well that it
was only to make him laugh. In the morning, when he entered my room, I
grumbled, but he was like the sunlight to me, all the same. One cannot
defend oneself against those brats. They take hold of you, they hold you
fast, they never let you go again. The truth is, that there never was a
cupid like that child. Now, what can you say for your Lafayettes, your
Benjamin Constants, and your Tirecuir de Corcelles who have killed him?
This cannot be allowed to pass in this fashion."

He approached Marius, who still lay livid and motionless, and to whom
the physician had returned, and began once more to wring his hands. The
old man's pallid lips moved as though mechanically, and permitted the
passage of words that were barely audible, like breaths in the death
agony:

"Ah! heartless lad! Ah! clubbist! Ah! wretch! Ah! Septembrist!"

Reproaches in the low voice of an agonizing man, addressed to a corpse.

Little by little, as it is always indispensable that internal eruptions
should come to the light, the sequence of words returned, but the
grandfather appeared no longer to have the strength to utter them, his
voice was so weak, and extinct, that it seemed to come from the other
side of an abyss:

"It is all the same to me, I am going to die too, that I am. And
to think that there is not a hussy in Paris who would not have been
delighted to make this wretch happy! A scamp who, instead of amusing
himself and enjoying life, went off to fight and get himself shot down
like a brute! And for whom? Why? For the Republic! Instead of going to
dance at the Chaumiere, as it is the duty of young folks to do! What's
the use of being twenty years old? The Republic, a cursed pretty folly!
Poor mothers, beget fine boys, do! Come, he is dead. That will make two
funerals under the same carriag