Les Misérables Volume IV Book 7 Chapter 2

In which the curious and labyrinthine language of slang is laid bare as a living relic, a tangled weave of many tongues and ages, flourishing beneath the surface of civilisation among the oppressed and outlawed, its words as vivid as scars on the flesh of society. It is beneath the shadowy beam of a prison cellar that these voices sing their sorrowful refrains, revealing in their metaphor and mystery the soul of those fettered in darkness, whose secret lives and coded tongue form a hidden world within the city’s heart.