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Simon went home. But when he reached the alley where he lived, he caught sight of a group of people who were laughing and shrieking, and it turned out to be a woman who was attracting the attention of these night owls. She held a switch with which she was striking a drunkard who appeared to be her husband, whom she had just dragged out of some little bar. All this while she was shrieking, and as Simon approached, she cried out to him in loud shrieked words, lamenting what a scoundrel she had for a husband. All at once from the top of the building beneath which the group was standing, a stream of water came shooting out, maliciously wetting the heads and clothes of those standing below. It was a custom in this corner of the old part of town to pour water on nocturnal revelers who got too noisy. This custom might well have attained a venerable, hallowed age, but it was nonetheless always shockingly novel and striking for those on whom it was brought to bear. Everyone directed imprecations in the direction of the woman standing up above in a white mantilla gazing down at them like a malevolent wicked spirit. Simon more than all the others shouted up to her: “What in the world are you thinking of up there, you woman or man in the window frame? If you have too much water, pour it on your own head instead of other people’s. Your head may well be in more need of it. What sort of manners is that, dousing the street in the post-midnight hour and treacherously plunging people into a bath along with their clothes. Were you not so high up, and I not so far below, I’d take a bite right out of that apple-head of yours until your mouth watered! Good Lord, if there is such a thing as justice, you should pay me a thaler for every drop that’s sprinkled my shoulders, since it seems to me this would spoil your pleasure. Withdraw from sight, you ghost up there, or you’ll tempt me to scale the wall of your building in order to ascertain whether you’re wearing woman’s or man’s hair. The outrage of being sprinkled like this is enough to turn a man into a devil!”

Simon was whipping himself into a frenzy with this vulgar speech. It did him good to be able to shout and bluster. A few moments later, after all, he’d be lying in bed fast asleep. How tedious it was always to be doing exactly the same thing. Starting tomorrow, he would resolve to become a different person. The next day, sitting in the Copyists Office, filled with and distracted by his thoughts of Klara, he made many slips of the pen, causing the secretary of the Office, a former staff captain, to reproach him and threaten that he’d be given no more work if he didn’t intend to go about it more conscientiously.

<p>— 18–</p>
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Великий французский писатель Виктор Гюго — один из самых ярких представителей прогрессивно-романтической литературы XIX века. Вот уже более ста лет во всем мире зачитываются его блестящими романами, со сцен театров не сходят его драмы. В данном томе представлен один из лучших романов Гюго — «Отверженные». Это громадная эпопея, представляющая целую энциклопедию французской жизни начала XIX века. Сюжет романа чрезвычайно увлекателен, судьбы его героев удивительно связаны между собой неожиданными и таинственными узами. Его основная идея — это путь от зла к добру, моральное совершенствование как средство преобразования жизни.Перевод под редакцией Анатолия Корнелиевича Виноградова (1931).

Виктор Гюго , Вячеслав Александрович Егоров , Джордж Оливер Смит , Лаванда Риз , Марина Колесова , Оксана Сергеевна Головина

Проза / Классическая проза / Классическая проза ХIX века / Историческая литература / Образование и наука