Les Miserables, Wilbour Translation

WHEN sixteen years old, one evening, at the opera, he had had the honour of being stared at, at the same time, by two beautie then mature and celebrated and besung by Voltaire, La Camargo and La Salle. Caught between two fires, he had made a heroic retreat towards a little danseuse, a girl named Nahenry, who

Les Miserablcs was sixteen years old, like him obscure as a cat, and with whom he fell in love. He was full of reminiscences. He would exclaim : "How pretty she was, that Guimard Guimardin Guimardinette, the last time I saw her at Longchamps, frizzled in lofty sentiments, with her curious trinkets in turquoise, her dress the colour of a new-born child, and her muff in agitation! " He had worn in his youth a vest of London short, of which he talked frequently and fluently. " I was dressed like a Turk of the Levantine Levant," said he. Madame de Boufflers, having accidentally seen him when he was twenty years old, described him as a " charming fool." He ridiculed all the names which he saw in politics or in power, finding them low and vulgar. He read the journals, the newspapers, the gazettes, as he said, stifling with bursts of laughter. "Oh!" said he, "what are these people! Corbiere! Humann! Casimir Perier! those are ministers for you. I imagine I see this in a journal: M. Gillenormand, Minister; that would be a joke. Well! they are so stupid that it would go! " He called everything freely by its name, proper or improper, and was never restrained by the presence of women. He would say coarse, obscene, and indecent things with an inexpressible tranquillity and coolness which was elegant. It was the off-hand way of his time. It is worthy of remark, that the age of periphrases in verse was the age of crudities in prose. His godfather had predicted that he would be a man of genius., and gave him these two significant names: Luke Esprit.