Les Misérables, Part One, Book Five, Chapter III

I'm still (slowly) reading Les Misérables, the first time for this particular translation and an unabridged edition.  Recently, I read Chapter III ("Sums Deposited with Laffitte") of Part One, Book Five.  This chapter contains one of my favorite lines, but I was a bit disappointed with how it's rendered in this translation:  "Books are remote but reliable friends."  I much prefer the other translation I read, where this line is "Books are cold but sure friends."  I lookt up the original French (which I got as a free e-book years ago) and found that it's "les livres sont des amis froids et sûrs."  I would translate this as "books are cold and sure friends."  "Et" is usually translated "and," but apparently both translators felt that the context permitted a more adversative conjunction.

A couple weeks after I read this, I was still thinking about the original French sentence, and I realized that there's assonance between "livres" and "amis" and that this emphasizes this type of clause.  "Livres" ("books") is the subject nominative, and "amis" ("friends") is the predicate nominative.  Both words have the same semantic weight, so to speak (nouns on opposite sides of a copulative verb), and the assonance between them indicates this balanced relationship.

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Almost as a side-note, I'll add this:  the entire sentence (describing Jean Valjean in the guise of Monsieur Madeleine) is "He loved books; books are remote but reliable friends," and this provides a direct contrast with Javert, described two chapters later (in Chapter V. "Dim Flashes of Lightning on the Horizon"):  "In his rare spare time, although he hated books, he would read...."

Arthur Conan Doyle's "A Scandal in Bohemia"

On 1 January, I started re-reading (for the first time) The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes, which contains facsimiles of thirty-seven Holmes stories and The Hound of the Baskervilles as they originally appeared in The Strand magazine.  As I was reading the second part of "A Scandal in Bohemia," I discovered that Watson is not a very reliable narrator.

As Irene Adler's carriage arrives at Briony Lodge, Watson describes how "a fierce quarrel broke out [between loafers trying to earn a bit of money by opening the door for her], which was increased by the two guardsmen, who took sides with one of the loungers, and by the scissors grinder, who was equally hot upon the other side... Holmes dashed into the crowed to protect the lady; but, just as he reached her, he gave a cry and dropped to the ground, with the blood running freely down his face."

After the rest of Holmes' plan had been carried out and he has located the photograph that the King of Bohemia had hired him to retrieve, he returns to Watson and explains some of the particulars of his plan:

"The matter was perfectly simple.  You, of course, saw that everyone in the street was an accomplice.  They were all engaged for the evening."

"I guessed as much."

"Then, when the row broke out, I had a little moist red paint in the palm of my hand.  I rushed forward, fell down, clapped my hand to my face, and became a piteous spectacle.  It is an old trick."

"That also I could fathom."

In his description above, Watson writes that "the blood [was] running freely down his face," yet here he claims that he knew all along that it was merely red paint.  Either he's lying to Holmes and trying to save face (apparently not willing to admit that he, a medical doctor, mistook red paint for blood), or he purposely misled his readers earlier in an effort to sensationalize his account.