Les Misérables
the grace of God, in the five and twentieth year of his reign, the
emigrants were, by rights, in the five and twentieth year of their
adolescence.
All was harmonious; nothing was too much alive; speech hardly amounted
to a breath; the newspapers, agreeing with the salons, seemed a
papyrus. There were some young people, but they were rather dead. The
liveries in the antechamber were antiquated. These utterly obsolete
personages were served by domestics of the same stamp.
They all had the air of having lived a long time ago, and of
obstinately resisting the sepulchre. Nearly the whole dictionary
consisted of _Conserver, Conservation, Conservateur; to be in good
odor_,—that was the point. There are, in fact, aromatics in the
opinions of these venerable groups, and their ideas smelled of it. It
was a mummified society. The masters were embalmed, the servants were
stuffed with straw.
A worthy old marquise, an _emigrée_ and ruined, who had but a solitary
maid, continued to say: “My people.”
What did they do in Madame de T.’s salon? They were ultra.
To be ultra; this word, although what it represents may not have
disappeared, has no longer any meaning at the present day. Let us
explain it.
To be ultra is to go beyond. It is to attack the sceptre in the name of
the throne, and the mitre in the name of the altar; it is to ill-treat
the thing which one is dragging, it is to kick over the traces; it is
to cavil at the fagot on the score of the amount of cooking received by
heretics; it is to reproach the idol with its small amount of idolatry;
it is to insult through excess of respect; it is to discover that the
Pope is not sufficiently papish, that the King is not sufficiently
royal, and that the night has too much light; it is to be discontented
with alabaster, with snow, with the swan and the lily in the name of
whiteness; it is to be a partisan of things to the point of becoming
their enemy; it is to be so strongly for, as to be against.
The ultra spirit especially characterizes the first phase of the
Restoration.
Nothing in history resembles that quarter of an hour which begins in
1814 and terminates about 1820, with the advent of M. de Villèle, the
practical man of the Right. These six years were an extraordinary
moment; at one and the same time brilliant and gloomy, smiling and
sombre, illuminated as by the radiance of dawn and entirely covered, at
the same time, with the shadows of the great catastrophes which still
filled the horizon and were slowly sinking into the past. There existed
in that light and that shadow, a complete little new and old world,
comic and sad, juvenile and senile, which was rubbing its eyes; nothing
resembles an awakening like a return; a group which regarded France
with ill-temper, and which France regarded with irony; good old owls of
marquises by the streetful, who had returned, and of ghosts, the
“former” subjects of amazement at everything, brave and noble gentlemen
who smiled at being in France but wept also, delighted to behold their
country once more, in despair at not finding their monarchy; the
nobility of the Crusades treating the nobility of the Empire, that is
to say, the nobility of the sword, with scorn; historic races who had
lost the sense of history; the sons of the companions of Charlemagne
disdaining the companions of Napoleon. The swords, as we have just
remarked, returned the insult; the sword of Fontenoy was laughable and
nothing but a scrap of rusty iron; the sword of Marengo was odious and
was only a sabre. Former days did not recognize Yesterday. People no
longer had the feeling for what was grand. There was some one who
called Bonaparte Scapin. This Society no longer exists. Nothing of it,
we repeat, exists to-day. When we select from it some one figure at
random, and attempt to make it live again in thought, it seems as
strange to us as the world before the Deluge. It is because it, too, as
a matter of fact, has been engulfed in a deluge. It has disappeared
beneath two Revolutions. What billows are ideas! How quickly they cover
all that it is their mission to destroy and to bury, and how promptly
they create frightful gulfs!
Such was the physiognomy of the salons of those distant and candid
times when M. Martainville had more wit than Voltaire.
These salons had a literature and politics of their own. They believed
in Fiévée. M. Agier laid down the law in them. They commentated M.
Colnet, the old bookseller and publicist of the Quay Malaquais.
Napoleon was to them thoroughly the Corsican Ogre. Later on the
introduction into history of M. le Marquis de Bonaparte,
Lieutenant-General of the King’s armies, was a concession to the spirit
of the age.
These salons did not long preserve their purity. Beginning with 1818,
doctrinarians began to spring up in them, a disturbing shade. Their way
was to be Royalists and to excuse themselves for being so. Where the
ultras were very proud, the doctrinarians were rather ashamed. They had
wit; they had silence; their political dogma was suitably impregnated
with arrogance; they should have succeeded. They indulged, and usefully
too, in excesses in the matter of white neckties and tightly buttoned
coats. The mistake or the misfortune of the doctrinarian party was to
create aged youth. They assumed the poses of wise men. They dreamed of
engrafting a temperate power on the absolute and excessive principle.
They opposed, and sometimes with rare intelligence, conservative
liberalism to the liberalism which demolishes. They were heard to say:
“Thanks for Royalism! It has rendered more than one service. It has
brought back tradition, worship, religion, respect. It is faithful,
brave, chivalric, loving, devoted. It has mingled, though with regret,
the secular grandeurs of the monarchy with the new grandeurs of the
nation. Its mistake is not to understand the Revolution, the Empire,
glory, liberty, young ideas, young generations, the age. But this
mistake which it makes with regard to us,—have we not sometimes been
guilty of it towards them? The Revolution, whose heirs we are, ought to
be intelligent on all points. To attack Royalism is a misconstruction
of liberalism. What an error! And what blindness! Revolutionary France
is wanting in respect towards historic France, that is to say, towards
its mother, that is to say, towards itself. After the 5th of September,
the nobility of the monarchy is treated as the nobility of the Empire
was treated after the 5th of July. They were unjust to the eagle, we
are unjust to the fleur-de-lys. It seems that we must always have
something to proscribe! Does it serve any purpose to ungild the crown
of Louis XIV., to scrape the coat of arms of Henry IV.? We scoff at M.
de Vaublanc for erasing the N’s from the bridge of Jena! What was it
that he did? What are we doing? Bouvines belongs to us as well as
Marengo. The fleurs-de-lys are ours as well as the N’s. That is our
patrimony. To what purpose shall we diminish it? We must not deny our
country in the past any more than in the present. Why not accept the
whole of history? Why not love the whole of France?”
It is thus that doctrinarians criticised and protected Royalism, which
was displeased at criticism and furious at protection.
The ultras marked the first epoch of Royalism, congregation
characterized the second. Skill follows ardor. Let us confine ourselves
here to this sketch.
In the course of this narrative, the author of this book has
encountered in his path this curious moment of contemporary history; he
has been forced to cast a passing glance upon it, and to trace once
more some of the singular features of this society which is unknown
to-day. But he does it rapidly and without any bitter or derisive idea.
Souvenirs both respectful and affectionate, for they touch his mother,
attach him to this past. Moreover, let us remark, this same petty world
had a grandeur of its own. One may smile at it, but one can neither
despise nor hate it. It was the France of former days.
Marius Pontmercy pursued some studies, as all children do. When he
emerged from the hands of Aunt Gillenormand, his grandfather confided
him to a worthy professor of the most purely classic innocence. This
young soul which was expanding passed from a prude to a vulgar pedant.
Marius went through his years of college, then he entered the law
school. He was a Royalist, fanatical and severe. He did not love his
grandfather much, as the latter’s gayety and cynicism repelled him, and
his feelings towards his father were gloomy.
He was, on the whole, a cold and ardent, noble, generous, proud,
religious, enthusiastic lad; dignified to harshness, pure to shyness.
CHAPTER IV—END OF THE BRIGAND
The conclusion of Marius’ classical studies coincided with M.
Gillenormand’s departure from society. The old man bade farewell to the
Faubourg Saint-Germain and to Madame de T.’s salon, and established
himself in the Marais, in his house of the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire.
There he had for servants, in addition to the porter, that chambermaid,
Nicolette, who had succeeded to Magnon, and that short-breathed and
pursy Basque, who have been mentioned above.
In 1827, Marius had just attained his seventeenth year. One evening, on
his return home, he saw his grandfather holding a letter in his hand.
“Marius,” said M. Gillenormand, “you will set out for Vernon
to-morrow.”
“Why?” said Marius.
“To see your father.”
Marius was seized with a trembling fit. He had thought of everything
except this—that he should one day be called upon to see his father.
Nothing could be more unexpected, more surprising, and, let us admit
it, more disagreeable to him. It was forcing estrangement into
reconciliation. It was not an affliction, but it was an unpleasant
duty.
Marius, in addition to his motives of political antipathy, was
convinced that his father, _the slasher_, as M. Gillenormand called him
on his amiable days, did not love him; this was evident, since he had
abandoned him to others. Feeling that he was not beloved, he did not
love. “Nothing is more simple,” he said to himself.
He was so astounded that he did not question M. Gillenormand. The
grandfather resumed:—
“It appears that he is ill. He demands your presence.”
And after a pause, he added:—
“Set out to-morrow morning. I think there is a coach which leaves the
Cour des Fontaines at six o’clock, and which arrives in the evening.
Take it. He says that here is haste.”
Then he crushed the letter in his hand and thrust it into his pocket.
Marius might have set out that very evening and have been with his
father on the following morning. A diligence from the Rue du Bouloi
took the trip to Rouen by night at that date, and passed through
Vernon. Neither Marius nor M. Gillenormand thought of making inquiries
about it.
The next day, at twilight, Marius reached Vernon. People were just
beginning to light their candles. He asked the first person whom he met
for “M. Pontmercy’s house.” For in his own mind, he agreed with the
Restoration, and like it, did not recognize his father’s claim to the
title of either colonel or baron.
The house was pointed out to him. He rang; a woman with a little lamp
in her hand opened the door.
“M. Pontmercy?” said Marius.
The woman remained motionless.
“Is this his house?” demanded Marius.
The woman nodded affirmatively.
“Can I speak with him?”
The woman shook her head.
“But I am his son!” persisted Marius. “He is expecting me.”
“He no longer expects you,” said the woman.
Then he perceived that she was weeping.
She pointed to the door of a room on the ground floor; he entered.
In that room, which was lighted by a tallow candle standing on the
chimney-piece, there were three men, one standing erect, another