e promiscuousness of ashes. She was thrown into the public grave.
Her grave resembled her bed.
[The end of Volume I. "Fantine"]
BOOK FIRST.-WATERLOO
CHAPTER I
WHAT IS MET WITH ON THE WAY FROM NIVELLES
year (1861), on a beautiful May morning, a traveller, the personwho is telling this story, was coming from Nivelles, and directinghis course towards La Hulpe. He was on foot. He was pursuinga broad paved road, which undulated between two rows of trees,over the hills which succeed each other, raise the road and let itfall again, and produce something in the nature of enormous waves.
He had passed Lillois and Bois-Seigneur-Isaac. In the west heperceived the slate-roofed tower of Braine-l''Alleud, which hasthe form of a reversed vase. He had just left behind a wood uponan eminence; and at the angle of the cross-road, by the sideof a sort of mouldy gibbet bearing the inscription AncientBarrier No. 4, a public house, bearing on its front this sign: At the Four Winds (Aux Quatre Vents). Echabeau, Private Cafe.
A quarter of a league further on, he arrived at the bottom of alittle valley, where there is water which passes beneath an archmade through the embankment of the road. The clump of sparselyplanted but very green trees, which fills the valley on one side ofthe road, is dispersed over the meadows on the other, and disappearsgracefully and as in order in the direction of Braine-l''Alleud.