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XXXI
After giving his alms to the youngest one,
Pensive, he stopped to watch them. — A long fast
Had thinned their cheek, had withered their brow.
All four of them had sat down on the ground in a circle,
Then, having shared out, as angels would do,
A piece of black bread picked up from our mire,
They were eating; but with an air so drear and so grieving
That seeing them thus any woman would have wept.
For they were lost on the earth where we live,
And all alone, four children, in the crowd of men!
— Yes, with neither father nor mother! And not even a loft.
No shelter. All barefoot; except the last one
Who dragged, poor love, beneath his faltering foot,
Old shoes too big tied with a bit of string.
In ditches, at night, they often sleep.
So, how cold they are, in the morning, in the open wind,
When the tree, shivering at the lark’s cry,
Raises against a clear sky its black silhouette!
Their hands were red yet rosy when God made them.
On Sundays, in the hamlet, seeking some vile profit,
They wander. The little one, beneath his unhealthy pallor,
Sings, without understanding it, an obscene song,
To make laugh — alas! he who weeps in secret! —
Some foul old man at the threshold of a tavern;
So much so that, sometimes, from the reveling den
There falls upon their dark hunger an abject coin,
Alms of hell tossed by sin,
A hideous sou on which the demon has spat!
For the moment, they were eating behind a thicket,
Hidden, and more trembling than the fawn that starts,
For often they are beaten, always they are chased away!
Thus, innocent condemned ones, every day
They pass by hungry, beneath my walls, beneath yours,
And they go at random, the eldest leading the others.
Then he who was dreaming looked up on high.
And his eye saw nothing but the calm and warm ether,
The benevolent sun, the air full of gilded wings,
And the serenity of the azure vaults,
And happiness, cries, triumphant laughter
That from the birds of the sky fell upon these children.
April 3, 1837.
Victor Hugo
Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.
Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/poem-encounter-victor-hugo/