Les Misérables
not have been sorry to thrust her spectacles into the affair. Tasting a
mystery resembles getting the first flavor of a scandal; sainted souls
do not detest this. There is some curiosity about scandal in the secret
compartments of bigotry.
So she was the prey of a vague appetite for learning a history.
In order to get rid of this curiosity which agitated her a little
beyond her wont, she took refuge in her talents, and set about
scalloping, with one layer of cotton after another, one of those
embroideries of the Empire and the Restoration, in which there are
numerous cart-wheels. The work was clumsy, the worker cross. She had
been seated at this for several hours when the door opened.
Mademoiselle Gillenormand raised her nose. Lieutenant Théodule stood
before her, making the regulation salute. She uttered a cry of delight.
One may be old, one may be a prude, one may be pious, one may be an
aunt, but it is always agreeable to see a lancer enter one’s chamber.
“You here, Théodule!” she exclaimed.
“On my way through town, aunt.”
“Embrace me.”
“Here goes!” said Théodule.
And he kissed her. Aunt Gillenormand went to her writing-desk and
opened it.
“You will remain with us a week at least?”
“I leave this very evening, aunt.”
“It is not possible!”
“Mathematically!”
“Remain, my little Théodule, I beseech you.”
“My heart says ‘yes,’ but my orders say ‘no.’ The matter is simple.
They are changing our garrison; we have been at Melun, we are being
transferred to Gaillon. It is necessary to pass through Paris in order
to get from the old post to the new one. I said: ‘I am going to see my
aunt.’”
“Here is something for your trouble.”
And she put ten louis into his hand.
“For my pleasure, you mean to say, my dear aunt.”
Théodule kissed her again, and she experienced the joy of having some
of the skin scratched from her neck by the braidings on his uniform.
“Are you making the journey on horseback, with your regiment?” she
asked him.
“No, aunt. I wanted to see you. I have special permission. My servant
is taking my horse; I am travelling by diligence. And, by the way, I
want to ask you something.”
“What is it?”
“Is my cousin Marius Pontmercy travelling so, too?”
“How do you know that?” said his aunt, suddenly pricked to the quick
with a lively curiosity.
“On my arrival, I went to the diligence to engage my seat in the
coupé.”
“Well?”
“A traveller had already come to engage a seat in the imperial. I saw
his name on the card.”
“What name?”
“Marius Pontmercy.”
“The wicked fellow!” exclaimed his aunt. “Ah! your cousin is not a
steady lad like yourself. To think that he is to pass the night in a
diligence!”
“Just as I am going to do.”
“But you—it is your duty; in his case, it is wildness.”
“Bosh!” said Théodule.
Here an event occurred to Mademoiselle Gillenormand the elder,—an idea
struck her. If she had been a man, she would have slapped her brow. She
apostrophized Théodule:—
“Are you aware whether your cousin knows you?”
“No. I have seen him; but he has never deigned to notice me.”
“So you are going to travel together?”
“He in the imperial, I in the coupé.”
“Where does this diligence run?”
“To Andelys.”
“Then that is where Marius is going?”
“Unless, like myself, he should stop on the way. I get down at Vernon,
in order to take the branch coach for Gaillon. I know nothing of
Marius’ plan of travel.”
“Marius! what an ugly name! what possessed them to name him Marius?
While you, at least, are called Théodule.”
“I would rather be called Alfred,” said the officer.
“Listen, Théodule.”
“I am listening, aunt.”
“Pay attention.”
“I am paying attention.”
“You understand?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Marius absents himself!”
“Eh! eh!”
“He travels.”
“Ah! ah!”
“He spends the night out.”
“Oh! oh!”
“We should like to know what there is behind all this.”
Théodule replied with the composure of a man of bronze:—
“Some petticoat or other.”
And with that inward laugh which denotes certainty, he added:—
“A lass.”
“That is evident,” exclaimed his aunt, who thought she heard M.
Gillenormand speaking, and who felt her conviction become irresistible
at that word _fillette_, accentuated in almost the very same fashion by
the granduncle and the grandnephew. She resumed:—
“Do us a favor. Follow Marius a little. He does not know you, it will
be easy. Since a lass there is, try to get a sight of her. You must
write us the tale. It will amuse his grandfather.”
Théodule had no excessive taste for this sort of spying; but he was
much touched by the ten louis, and he thought he saw a chance for a
possible sequel. He accepted the commission and said: “As you please,
aunt.”
And he added in an aside, to himself: “Here I am a duenna.”
Mademoiselle Gillenormand embraced him.
“You are not the man to play such pranks, Théodule. You obey
discipline, you are the slave of orders, you are a man of scruples and
duty, and you would not quit your family to go and see a creature.”
The lancer made the pleased grimace of Cartouche when praised for his
probity.
Marius, on the evening following this dialogue, mounted the diligence
without suspecting that he was watched. As for the watcher, the first
thing he did was to fall asleep. His slumber was complete and
conscientious. Argus snored all night long.
At daybreak, the conductor of the diligence shouted: “Vernon! relay of
Vernon! Travellers for Vernon!” And Lieutenant Théodule woke.
“Good,” he growled, still half asleep, “this is where I get out.”
Then, as his memory cleared by degrees, the effect of waking, he
recalled his aunt, the ten louis, and the account which he had
undertaken to render of the deeds and proceedings of Marius. This set
him to laughing.
“Perhaps he is no longer in the coach,” he thought, as he rebuttoned
the waistcoat of his undress uniform. “He may have stopped at Poissy;
he may have stopped at Triel; if he did not get out at Meulan, he may
have got out at Mantes, unless he got out at Rolleboise, or if he did
not go on as far as Pacy, with the choice of turning to the left at
Évreus, or to the right at Laroche-Guyon. Run after him, aunty. What
the devil am I to write to that good old soul?”
At that moment a pair of black trousers descending from the imperial,
made its appearance at the window of the coupé.
“Can that be Marius?” said the lieutenant.
It was Marius.
A little peasant girl, all entangled with the horses and the postilions
at the end of the vehicle, was offering flowers to the travellers.
“Give your ladies flowers!” she cried.
Marius approached her and purchased the finest flowers in her flat
basket.
“Come now,” said Théodule, leaping down from the coupé, “this piques my
curiosity. Who the deuce is he going to carry those flowers to? She
must be a splendidly handsome woman for so fine a bouquet. I want to
see her.”
And no longer in pursuance of orders, but from personal curiosity, like
dogs who hunt on their own account, he set out to follow Marius.
Marius paid no attention to Théodule. Elegant women descended from the
diligence; he did not glance at them. He seemed to see nothing around
him.
“He is pretty deeply in love!” thought Théodule.
Marius directed his steps towards the church.
“Capital,” said Théodule to himself. “Rendezvous seasoned with a bit of
mass are the best sort. Nothing is so exquisite as an ogle which passes
over the good God’s head.”
On arriving at the church, Marius did not enter it, but skirted the
apse. He disappeared behind one of the angles of the apse.
“The rendezvous is appointed outside,” said Théodule. “Let’s have a
look at the lass.”
And he advanced on the tips of his boots towards the corner which
Marius had turned.
On arriving there, he halted in amazement.
Marius, with his forehead clasped in his hands, was kneeling upon the
grass on a grave. He had strewn his bouquet there. At the extremity of
the grave, on a little swelling which marked the head, there stood a
cross of black wood with this name in white letters: COLONEL BARON
PONTMERCY. Marius’ sobs were audible.
The “lass” was a grave.
CHAPTER VIII—MARBLE AGAINST GRANITE
It was hither that Marius had come on the first occasion of his
absenting himself from Paris. It was hither that he had come every time
that M. Gillenormand had said: “He is sleeping out.”
Lieutenant Théodule was absolutely put out of countenance by this
unexpected encounter with a sepulchre; he experienced a singular and
disagreeable sensation which he was incapable of analyzing, and which
was composed of respect for the tomb, mingled with respect for the
colonel. He retreated, leaving Marius alone in the cemetery, and there
was discipline in this retreat. Death appeared to him with large
epaulets, and he almost made the military salute to him. Not knowing
what to write to his aunt, he decided not to write at all; and it is
probable that nothing would have resulted from the discovery made by
Théodule as to the love affairs of Marius, if, by one of those
mysterious arrangements which are so frequent in chance, the scene at
Vernon had not had an almost immediate counter-shock at Paris.
Marius returned from Vernon on the third day, in the middle of the
morning, descended at his grandfather’s door, and, wearied by the two
nights spent in the diligence, and feeling the need of repairing his
loss of sleep by an hour at the swimming-school, he mounted rapidly to
his chamber, took merely time enough to throw off his travelling-coat,
and the black ribbon which he wore round his neck, and went off to the
bath.
M. Gillenormand, who had risen betimes like all old men in good health,
had heard his entrance, and had made haste to climb, as quickly as his
old legs permitted, the stairs to the upper story where Marius lived,
in order to embrace him, and to question him while so doing, and to
find out where he had been.
But the youth had taken less time to descend than the old man had to
ascend, and when Father Gillenormand entered the attic, Marius was no
longer there.
The bed had not been disturbed, and on the bed lay, outspread, but not
defiantly the great-coat and the black ribbon.
“I like this better,” said M. Gillenormand.
And a moment later, he made his entrance into the salon, where
Mademoiselle Gillenormand was already seated, busily embroidering her
cart-wheels.
The entrance was a triumphant one.
M. Gillenormand held in one hand the great-coat, and in the other the
neck-ribbon, and exclaimed:—
“Victory! We are about to penetrate the mystery! We are going to learn
the most minute details; we are going to lay our finger on the
debaucheries of our sly friend! Here we have the romance itself. I have
the portrait!”
In fact, a case of black shagreen, resembling a medallion portrait, was
suspended from the ribbon.
The old man took this case and gazed at it for some time without
opening it, with that air of enjoyment, rapture, and wrath, with which
a poor hungry fellow beholds an admirable dinner which is not for him,
pass under his very nose.
“For this evidently is a portrait. I know all about such things. That
is worn tenderly on the heart. How stupid they are! Some abominable
fright that will make us shudder, probably! Young men have such bad
taste nowadays!”
“Let us see, father,” said the old spinster.
The case opened by the pressure of a spring. They found in it nothing
but a carefully folded paper.
_“From the same to the same,”_ said M. Gillenormand, bursting with
laughter. “I know what it is. A billet-doux.”
“Ah! let us read it!” said the aunt.