Chapter 275 Justified Anger of Three Barbers

The barber, who had driven away the two children whom Gavroche had so lovingly carried in the elephant's belly, was in the shop shaving an old soldier who had served in the empire, and they were talking at the same time. talk.Of course the barber could not avoid talking to the old soldier about the uprising, then about General Lamarck, and from General Lamarck to the Emperor.This is a conversation between a barber and a soldier.If Prudhomme had been there at that time, he would have made an artistic treatment, entitled "Dialogue between the Razor and the Saber". "Sir," said the barber, "is your Majesty a good horseman?"

"Not smart. He doesn't know how to get off a horse. But he never fell off." "Has he got a lot of good horses? Shouldn't he have a lot of good horses?" "The day he gave me the Cross of Merit, I had a good look at his beast. It was a galley horse, all white. Its ears were set wide apart and its spine was sunken. On its long thin head was a black Star, with a long neck, very prominent kneecaps, broad ribs, sloping shoulders, and strong hips. A little taller than fifteen balms." "A beautiful horse," said the barber. "It's His Majesty's livestock."

The barber felt it appropriate to take a moment of silence after hearing such a title.Having done so, he went on to say: "The emperor was only wounded once, was he not, sir?" The old soldier replied with the calm dignity expected of an eyewitness at the time: "On the heels. On the Regensburg field. I never saw him so well dressed. He was as clean as a new sou that day." "As for you, Mr. Veteran, you must always hang dots." "I," said the soldier, "ah! nothing serious. I was cut twice in the back of the neck in Marengo, a bullet in the right arm in Austerlitz, in the left buttock in Jena I ate one too, got a bayonet at Friedland, stabbed at... here, at the Moskva River, took seven or eight random spear shots, and at Lützen, a flowering bomb blew off one of my fingers . . . Ah! And, at Waterloo, a shot in the thigh. That's all."

"How good it is," exclaimed the barber with a sonorous tone, "how good it is to die on the battlefield! I tell you the truth, instead of getting sick, take medicine, put on plasters, enemas, call a doctor, and do nothing. When my body deteriorates day by day, and I lie on a broken bed and die slowly, I would rather take a bullet in the stomach!" "You are not afraid of discomfort," said the soldier. As soon as he finished speaking, a kind of explosive sound, so frightening, shook the shop.A large pane of glass in the window suddenly bloomed. "Oh, God!" he cried, "there really is one!"

"A what?" "Cannonball." "Right here," said the soldier. He picked up something that was rolling on the ground, a round pebble. The barber ran to the broken glass and saw Gavroche galloping towards St. John's Market.He was thinking of the two children when he walked past the barber shop, and couldn't restrain his desire to say hello to him, so he threw a stone towards his glass window. "You see!" bellowed the barber, whose face had turned from pale to green, "this fellow does evil for evil's sake. Did I offend him, wild boy?"