THE WILD MAN IN HIS LAIR

THE WILD MAN IN HIS LAIR
Cities, like forests, have their caverns in which all the most wicked and formidable creatures which they contain conceal themselves.
Only, in cities, that which thus conceals itself is ferocious, unclean, and petty, that is to say, ugly;cheap mbt shoes in forests, that which conceals itself is ferocious, savage, and grand, that is to say, beautiful.
Taking one lair with another, the beast's is preferable to the man's. Caverns are better than hovels.
What Marius now beheld was a hovel.
Marius was poor, and his chamber was poverty-stricken, but as his poverty was noble, his garret was neat.
The den upon which his eye now rested was abject, dirty, fetid, pestiferous, mean, sordid.
The only furniture consisted of a straw chair, an infirm table, some old bits of crockery, mbt shoes on saleand in two of the corners, two indescribable pallets; all the light was furnishd by a dormer window of four panes, draped with spiders' webs.
Through this aperture there penetrated just enough light to make the face of a man appear like the face of a phantom.
The walls had a leprous aspect, and were covered with seams and scars, like a visage disfigured by some horrible malady; a repulsive moisture exuded from them.
Obscene sketches roughly sketched with charcoal could be distinguished upon them.
The chamber which Marius occupied had a dilapidated brick pavement; this one was neither tiled nor planked; its inhabitants stepped directly on the antique plaster of the hovel, ecco shoes salewhich had grown black under the long-continued pressure of feet.
Upon this uneven floor, where the dirt seemed to be fairly incrusted, and which possessed but one virginity, that of the broom, were capriciously grouped constellations of old shoes, socks, and repulsive rags; however, this room had a fireplace, clarks shoes saleso it was let for forty francs a year. There was every sort of thing in that fireplace, a brazier, a pot, broken boards, rags suspended from nails, a bird-cage, ashes, and even a little fire.
Two brands were smouldering there in a melancholy way.
One thing which added still more to the horrors of this garret was, that it was large.
It had projections and angles and black holes, the lower sides of roofs, bays, and promontories.
Hence horrible, unfathomable nooks where it seemed as though spiders as big as one's fist, wood-lice as large as one's foot, and perhaps even--who knows?-- some monstrous human beings, must be hiding.
One of the pallets was near the door, the other near the window. One end of each touched the fireplace and faced Marius.
In a corner near the aperture through which Marius was gazing, a colored engraving in a black frame was suspended to a nail on the wall, and at its bottom, in large letters, was the inscription:
THE DREAM. This represented a sleeping woman, and a child, also asleep, the child on the woman's lap, ecco shoes on salean eagle in a cloud, with a crown in his beak, and the woman thrusting the crown away from the child's head, without awaking the latter; in the background, Napoleon in a glory, leaning on a very blue column with a yellow capital ornamented with this inscription: