Book VII

on account of its grave sonorousness and its majestic stride; a tongue in which a husband is called a consort , and a woman a spouse ; Paris, the centre of art and civilization ; the king, the monarch ; Monseigneur the Bishop, a sainted pontiff ; the district-attorney, the eloquent interpreter of public prosecution ; the arguments, the accents which we have just listened to ; the age of Louis XIV , the grand age ; a theatre, the temple of Melpomene ; the reigning family, the august blood of our kings ; a concert, a musical solemnity ; the General Commandant of the province, the illustrious warrior, who, etc. ; the pupils in the seminary, these tender levities ; errors imputed to newspapers, the imposture which distills its venom through the columns of those organs ; etc. The lawyer had, accordingly, begun with an explanation as to the theft of the apples⁠—an awkward matter couched in fine style; but Bénigne Bossuet himself was obliged to allude to a chicken in the midst of a funeral oration, and he extricated himself from the situation in stately fashion. The lawyer established the fact that the theft of the apples had not been circumstantially proved. His client, whom he, in his character of counsel, persisted in calling Champmathieu, had not been seen scaling that wall nor breaking that branch by anyone. He had been taken with that branch (which the lawyer preferred to call a bough ) in his possession; but he said that he had found it broken off and lying on the ground, and had picked it up. Where was there any proof to the contrary? No doubt that branch had been broken off and concealed after the scaling of the wall, then thrown away by the alarmed marauder; there was no doubt that there had been a thief in the case. But what proof was there that that thief had been Champmathieu? One thing only. His character as an ex-convict. The lawyer did not deny that that character appeared to be, unhappily, well attested; the accused had resided at Faverolles; the accused had exercised the calling of a tree-pruner there; the name of Champmathieu might well have had its origin in Jean Mathieu; all that was true⁠—in short, four witnesses recognize Champmathieu, positively and without hesitation, as that convict, Jean Valjean; to these