RKS French Literature: Necessity Can be So Ungracious! (Victor Hugo)

‘Tis an unpleasant thing to go without one’s dinner. ’Tis less gratifying still to go without one’s supper and not know where to sleep. Gringoire was at that point. Without food, without lodging, he found himself pressed by necessity on every hand, and he thought necessity very ungracious. He had long discovered this truth – that Jupiter created man in a fit of misanthropy, and that throughout the life of the wisest man his destiny keeps philosophy in a state of siege. For his own part, he had never found the blockade so complete. He heard his stomach sound a truce, and he thought it very unkind that his evil destiny should reduce his philosophy by simple starvation.

Victor Hugo, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”