Les Misérables
child in their own way. Perhaps the colonel was wrong to accept these
conditions, but he submitted to them, thinking that he was doing right
and sacrificing no one but himself.
The inheritance of Father Gillenormand did not amount to much; but the
inheritance of Mademoiselle Gillenormand the elder was considerable.
This aunt, who had remained unmarried, was very rich on the maternal
side, and her sister’s son was her natural heir. The boy, whose name
was Marius, knew that he had a father, but nothing more. No one opened
his mouth to him about it. Nevertheless, in the society into which his
grandfather took him, whispers, innuendoes, and winks, had eventually
enlightened the little boy’s mind; he had finally understood something
of the case, and as he naturally took in the ideas and opinions which
were, so to speak, the air he breathed, by a sort of infiltration and
slow penetration, he gradually came to think of his father only with
shame and with a pain at his heart.
While he was growing up in this fashion, the colonel slipped away every
two or three months, came to Paris on the sly, like a criminal breaking
his ban, and went and posted himself at Saint-Sulpice, at the hour when
Aunt Gillenormand led Marius to the mass. There, trembling lest the
aunt should turn round, concealed behind a pillar, motionless, not
daring to breathe, he gazed at his child. The scarred veteran was
afraid of that old spinster.
From this had arisen his connection with the curé of Vernon, M. l’Abbé
Mabeuf.
That worthy priest was the brother of a warden of Saint-Sulpice, who
had often observed this man gazing at his child, and the scar on his
cheek, and the large tears in his eyes. That man, who had so manly an
air, yet who was weeping like a woman, had struck the warden. That face
had clung to his mind. One day, having gone to Vernon to see his
brother, he had encountered Colonel Pontmercy on the bridge, and had
recognized the man of Saint-Sulpice. The warden had mentioned the
circumstance to the curé, and both had paid the colonel a visit, on
some pretext or other. This visit led to others. The colonel, who had
been extremely reserved at first, ended by opening his heart, and the
curé and the warden finally came to know the whole history, and how
Pontmercy was sacrificing his happiness to his child’s future. This
caused the curé to regard him with veneration and tenderness, and the
colonel, on his side, became fond of the curé. And moreover, when both
are sincere and good, no men so penetrate each other, and so amalgamate
with each other, as an old priest and an old soldier. At bottom, the
man is the same. The one has devoted his life to his country here
below, the other to his country on high; that is the only difference.
Twice a year, on the first of January and on St. George’s day, Marius
wrote duty letters to his father, which were dictated by his aunt, and
which one would have pronounced to be copied from some formula; this
was all that M. Gillenormand tolerated; and the father answered them
with very tender letters which the grandfather thrust into his pocket
unread.
CHAPTER III—REQUIESCANT
Madame de T.’s salon was all that Marius Pontmercy knew of the world.
It was the only opening through which he could get a glimpse of life.
This opening was sombre, and more cold than warmth, more night than
day, came to him through this skylight. This child, who had been all
joy and light on entering this strange world, soon became melancholy,
and, what is still more contrary to his age, grave. Surrounded by all
those singular and imposing personages, he gazed about him with serious
amazement. Everything conspired to increase this astonishment in him.
There were in Madame de T.’s salon some very noble ladies named Mathan,
Noé, Lévis,—which was pronounced Lévi,—Cambis, pronounced Cambyse.
These antique visages and these Biblical names mingled in the child’s
mind with the Old Testament which he was learning by heart, and when
they were all there, seated in a circle around a dying fire, sparely
lighted by a lamp shaded with green, with their severe profiles, their
gray or white hair, their long gowns of another age, whose lugubrious
colors could not be distinguished, dropping, at rare intervals, words
which were both majestic and severe, little Marius stared at them with
frightened eyes, in the conviction that he beheld not women, but
patriarchs and magi, not real beings, but phantoms.
With these phantoms, priests were sometimes mingled, frequenters of
this ancient salon, and some gentlemen; the Marquis de Sass****,
private secretary to Madame de Berry, the Vicomte de Val***, who
published, under the pseudonym of _Charles-Antoine_, monorhymed odes,
the Prince de Beauff*******, who, though very young, had a gray head
and a pretty and witty wife, whose very low-necked toilettes of scarlet
velvet with gold torsades alarmed these shadows, the Marquis de C*****
d’E******, the man in all France who best understood “proportioned
politeness,” the Comte d’Am*****, the kindly man with the amiable chin,
and the Chévalier de Port-de-Guy, a pillar of the library of the
Louvre, called the King’s cabinet, M. de Port-de-Guy, bald, and rather
aged than old, was wont to relate that in 1793, at the age of sixteen,
he had been put in the galleys as refractory and chained with an
octogenarian, the Bishop of Mirepoix, also refractory, but as a priest,
while he was so in the capacity of a soldier. This was at Toulon. Their
business was to go at night and gather up on the scaffold the heads and
bodies of the persons who had been guillotined during the day; they
bore away on their backs these dripping corpses, and their red
galley-slave blouses had a clot of blood at the back of the neck, which
was dry in the morning and wet at night. These tragic tales abounded in
Madame de T.’s salon, and by dint of cursing Marat, they applauded
Trestaillon. Some deputies of the undiscoverable variety played their
whist there; M. Thibord du Chalard, M. Lemarchant de Gomicourt, and the
celebrated scoffer of the right, M. Cornet-Dincourt. The bailiff de
Ferrette, with his short breeches and his thin legs, sometimes
traversed this salon on his way to M. de Talleyrand. He had been M. le
Comte d’Artois’ companion in pleasures and unlike Aristotle crouching
under Campaspe, he had made the Guimard crawl on all fours, and in that
way he had exhibited to the ages a philosopher avenged by a bailiff. As
for the priests, there was the Abbé Halma, the same to whom M. Larose,
his collaborator on _la Foudre_, said: “Bah! Who is there who is not
fifty years old? a few greenhorns perhaps?” The Abbé Letourneur,
preacher to the King, the Abbé Frayssinous, who was not, as yet, either
count, or bishop, or minister, or peer, and who wore an old cassock
whose buttons were missing, and the Abbé Keravenant, Curé of
Saint-Germain-des-Prés; also the Pope’s Nuncio, then Monsignor Macchi,
Archbishop of Nisibi, later on Cardinal, remarkable for his long,
pensive nose, and another Monsignor, entitled thus: Abbate Palmieri,
domestic prelate, one of the seven participant prothonotaries of the
Holy See, Canon of the illustrious Liberian basilica, Advocate of the
saints, _Postulatore dei Santi_, which refers to matters of
canonization, and signifies very nearly: Master of Requests of the
section of Paradise. Lastly, two cardinals, M. de la Luzerne, and M. de
Cl****** T*******. The Cardinal of Luzerne was a writer and was
destined to have, a few years later, the honor of signing in the
_Conservateur_ articles side by side with Chateaubriand; M. de Cl******
T******* was Archbishop of Toul****, and often made trips to Paris, to
his nephew, the Marquis de T*******, who was Minister of Marine and
War. The Cardinal of Cl****** T******* was a merry little man, who
displayed his red stockings beneath his tucked-up cassock; his
specialty was a hatred of the Encyclopædia, and his desperate play at
billiards, and persons who, at that epoch, passed through the Rue
M***** on summer evenings, where the hotel de Cl****** T******* then
stood, halted to listen to the shock of the balls and the piercing
voice of the Cardinal shouting to his conclavist, Monseigneur Cotiret,
Bishop _in partibus_ of Caryste: “Mark, Abbé, I make a cannon.” The
Cardinal de Cl****** T******* had been brought to Madame de T.’s by his
most intimate friend, M. de Roquelaure, former Bishop of Senlis, and
one of the Forty. M. de Roquelaure was notable for his lofty figure and
his assiduity at the Academy; through the glass door of the neighboring
hall of the library where the French Academy then held its meetings,
the curious could, on every Tuesday, contemplate the Ex-Bishop of
Senlis, usually standing erect, freshly powdered, in violet hose, with
his back turned to the door, apparently for the purpose of allowing a
better view of his little collar. All these ecclesiastics, though for
the most part as much courtiers as churchmen, added to the gravity of
the T. salon, whose seigniorial aspect was accentuated by five peers of
France, the Marquis de Vib****, the Marquis de Tal***, the Marquis de
Herb*******, the Vicomte Damb***, and the Duc de Val********. This Duc
de Val********, although Prince de Mon***, that is to say a reigning
prince abroad, had so high an idea of France and its peerage, that he
viewed everything through their medium. It was he who said: “The
Cardinals are the peers of France of Rome; the lords are the peers of
France of England.” Moreover, as it is indispensable that the
Revolution should be everywhere in this century, this feudal salon was,
as we have said, dominated by a bourgeois. M. Gillenormand reigned
there.
There lay the essence and quintessence of the Parisian white society.
There reputations, even Royalist reputations, were held in quarantine.
There is always a trace of anarchy in renown. Chateaubriand, had he
entered there, would have produced the effect of Père Duchêne. Some of
the scoffed-at did, nevertheless, penetrate thither on sufferance.
Comte Beug*** was received there, subject to correction.
The “noble” salons of the present day no longer resemble those salons.
The Faubourg Saint-Germain reeks of the fagot even now. The Royalists
of to-day are demagogues, let us record it to their credit.
At Madame de T.’s the society was superior, taste was exquisite and
haughty, under the cover of a great show of politeness. Manners there
admitted of all sorts of involuntary refinements which were the old
régime itself, buried but still alive. Some of these habits, especially
in the matter of language, seem eccentric. Persons but superficially
acquainted with them would have taken for provincial that which was
only antique. A woman was called _Madame la Générale. Madame la
Colonelle_ was not entirely disused. The charming Madame de Léon, in
memory, no doubt, of the Duchesses de Longueville and de Chevreuse,
preferred this appellation to her title of Princesse. The Marquise de
Créquy was also called _Madame la Colonelle_.
It was this little high society which invented at the Tuileries the
refinement of speaking to the King in private as _the King_, in the
third person, and never as _Your Majesty_, the designation of _Your
Majesty_ having been “soiled by the usurper.”
Men and deeds were brought to judgment there. They jeered at the age,
which released them from the necessity of understanding it. They
abetted each other in amazement. They communicated to each other that
modicum of light which they possessed. Methuselah bestowed information
on Epimenides. The deaf man made the blind man acquainted with the
course of things. They declared that the time which had elapsed since
Coblentz had not existed. In the same manner that Louis XVIII. was by