Les Miserables, Wilbour Translation

HE had taken several prizes in his youth at the college at Moulins, where he was born, and had been crowned by the hands of the Duke de Nivernais, whom he called the Duke de Nevers. Neither the Convention, nor the death of Louis XVI., nor Napoleon, nor the return of the Bourbons, had been able to efface the memory of this coronation. The Duke de Nevers was to him the great figure of the century. " What a noble, great lord, " said he, " and what a fine air he had with his blue ribbon! " In Monsieur Gillenormand's eyes, Catharine II. had atoned for the crime of the partition of Poland by buying the secret of the elixir of gold from Bestuchef, for three thousand roubles. Over this he grew animated. " The elixir of gold," exclaimed he, " Bestuchef's yellow dye, General Lamotte's drops, these were in the eighteenth century, at a louis for a half ounce flask, the great remedy for the catastrophes of love, the panacea against Venus. Louis XV. sent two hundred flasks tc the Pope." He would have been greatly exasperated and thrown off his balance if anybody had told him that the elixir of gold was nothing but the perchloride of iron. Monsieur Gillenormand worshipped the Bourbons and held 1789 in horror; he was constantly relating how he saved himself during the Reign of Terror, and how, if he had not had a good deal of gaiety and a good deal of wit, his head would have been cut off. If any young man ventured to eulogise the republic in his presence, he turned black in the face, and was angry enough to faint. Sometimes he would allude to his ninety years of age, and say, / really hope that 1 shall not see ninety-three twice. At other times he intimated to his people that he intended to live a hundred years.