Les Misérables
silent and grave, he was, nonetheless, both winged and armed.
Marius, up to that time solitary and inclined to soliloquy, and to
asides, both by habit and by taste, was a little fluttered by this
covey of young men around him. All these various initiatives solicited
his attention at once, and pulled him about. The tumultuous movements
of these minds at liberty and at work set his ideas in a whirl.
Sometimes, in his trouble, they fled so far from him, that he had
difficulty in recovering them. He heard them talk of philosophy, of
literature, of art, of history, of religion, in unexpected fashion. He
caught glimpses of strange aspects; and, as he did not place them in
proper perspective, he was not altogether sure that it was not chaos
that he grasped. On abandoning his grandfather’s opinions for the
opinions of his father, he had supposed himself fixed; he now
suspected, with uneasiness, and without daring to avow it to himself,
that he was not. The angle at which he saw everything began to be
displaced anew. A certain oscillation set all the horizons of his
brains in motion. An odd internal upsetting. He almost suffered from
it.
It seemed as though there were no “consecrated things” for those young
men. Marius heard singular propositions on every sort of subject, which
embarrassed his still timid mind.
A theatre poster presented itself, adorned with the title of a tragedy
from the ancient repertory called classic: “Down with tragedy dear to
the bourgeois!” cried Bahorel. And Marius heard Combeferre reply:—
“You are wrong, Bahorel. The bourgeoisie loves tragedy, and the
bourgeoisie must be left at peace on that score. Bewigged tragedy has a
reason for its existence, and I am not one of those who, by order of
Æschylus, contest its right to existence. There are rough outlines in
nature; there are, in creation, ready-made parodies; a beak which is
not a beak, wings which are not wings, gills which are not gills, paws
which are not paws, a cry of pain which arouses a desire to laugh,
there is the duck. Now, since poultry exists by the side of the bird, I
do not see why classic tragedy should not exist in the face of antique
tragedy.”
Or chance decreed that Marius should traverse Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau
between Enjolras and Courfeyrac.
Courfeyrac took his arm:—
“Pay attention. This is the Rue Plâtrière, now called Rue Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, on account of a singular household which lived in it sixty
years ago. This consisted of Jean-Jacques and Thérèse. From time to
time, little beings were born there. Thérèse gave birth to them,
Jean-Jacques represented them as foundlings.”
And Enjolras addressed Courfeyrac roughly:—
“Silence in the presence of Jean-Jacques! I admire that man. He denied
his own children, that may be; but he adopted the people.”
Not one of these young men articulated the word: The Emperor. Jean
Prouvaire alone sometimes said Napoleon; all the others said
“Bonaparte.” Enjolras pronounced it “Buonaparte.”
Marius was vaguely surprised. _Initium sapientiæ_.
CHAPTER IV—THE BACK ROOM OF THE CAFÉ MUSAIN
One of the conversations among the young men, at which Marius was
present and in which he sometimes joined, was a veritable shock to his
mind.
This took place in the back room of the Café Musain. Nearly all the
Friends of the A B C had convened that evening. The argand lamp was
solemnly lighted. They talked of one thing and another, without passion
and with noise. With the exception of Enjolras and Marius, who held
their peace, all were haranguing rather at hap-hazard. Conversations
between comrades sometimes are subject to these peaceable tumults. It
was a game and an uproar as much as a conversation. They tossed words
to each other and caught them up in turn. They were chattering in all
quarters.
No woman was admitted to this back room, except Louison, the
dish-washer of the café, who passed through it from time to time, to go
to her washing in the “lavatory.”
Grantaire, thoroughly drunk, was deafening the corner of which he had
taken possession, reasoning and contradicting at the top of his lungs,
and shouting:—
“I am thirsty. Mortals, I am dreaming: that the tun of Heidelberg has
an attack of apoplexy, and that I am one of the dozen leeches which
will be applied to it. I want a drink. I desire to forget life. Life is
a hideous invention of I know not whom. It lasts no time at all, and is
worth nothing. One breaks one’s neck in living. Life is a theatre set
in which there are but few practicable entrances. Happiness is an
antique reliquary painted on one side only. Ecclesiastes says: ‘All is
vanity.’ I agree with that good man, who never existed, perhaps. Zero
not wishing to go stark naked, clothed himself in vanity. O vanity! The
patching up of everything with big words! a kitchen is a laboratory, a
dancer is a professor, an acrobat is a gymnast, a boxer is a pugilist,
an apothecary is a chemist, a wigmaker is an artist, a hodman is an
architect, a jockey is a sportsman, a wood-louse is a pterigybranche.
Vanity has a right and a wrong side; the right side is stupid, it is
the negro with his glass beads; the wrong side is foolish, it is the
philosopher with his rags. I weep over the one and I laugh over the
other. What are called honors and dignities, and even dignity and
honor, are generally of pinchbeck. Kings make playthings of human
pride. Caligula made a horse a consul; Charles II. made a knight of a
sirloin. Wrap yourself up now, then, between Consul Incitatus and
Baronet Roastbeef. As for the intrinsic value of people, it is no
longer respectable in the least. Listen to the panegyric which neighbor
makes of neighbor. White on white is ferocious; if the lily could
speak, what a setting down it would give the dove! A bigoted woman
prating of a devout woman is more venomous than the asp and the cobra.
It is a shame that I am ignorant, otherwise I would quote to you a mass
of things; but I know nothing. For instance, I have always been witty;
when I was a pupil of Gros, instead of daubing wretched little
pictures, I passed my time in pilfering apples; _rapin_24 is the
masculine of _rapine_. So much for myself; as for the rest of you, you
are worth no more than I am. I scoff at your perfections, excellencies,
and qualities. Every good quality tends towards a defect; economy
borders on avarice, the generous man is next door to the prodigal, the
brave man rubs elbows with the braggart; he who says very pious says a
trifle bigoted; there are just as many vices in virtue as there are
holes in Diogenes’ cloak. Whom do you admire, the slain or the slayer,
Cæsar or Brutus? Generally men are in favor of the slayer. Long live
Brutus, he has slain! There lies the virtue. Virtue, granted, but
madness also. There are queer spots on those great men. The Brutus who
killed Cæsar was in love with the statue of a little boy. This statue
was from the hand of the Greek sculptor Strongylion, who also carved
that figure of an Amazon known as the Beautiful Leg, Eucnemos, which
Nero carried with him in his travels. This Strongylion left but two
statues which placed Nero and Brutus in accord. Brutus was in love with
the one, Nero with the other. All history is nothing but wearisome
repetition. One century is the plagiarist of the other. The battle of
Marengo copies the battle of Pydna; the Tolbiac of Clovis and the
Austerlitz of Napoleon are as like each other as two drops of water. I
don’t attach much importance to victory. Nothing is so stupid as to
conquer; true glory lies in convincing. But try to prove something! If
you are content with success, what mediocrity, and with conquering,
what wretchedness! Alas, vanity and cowardice everywhere. Everything
obeys success, even grammar. _Si volet usus_, says Horace. Therefore I
disdain the human race. Shall we descend to the party at all? Do you
wish me to begin admiring the peoples? What people, if you please?
Shall it be Greece? The Athenians, those Parisians of days gone by,
slew Phocion, as we might say Coligny, and fawned upon tyrants to such
an extent that Anacephorus said of Pisistratus: “His urine attracts the
bees.” The most prominent man in Greece for fifty years was that
grammarian Philetas, who was so small and so thin that he was obliged
to load his shoes with lead in order not to be blown away by the wind.
There stood on the great square in Corinth a statue carved by Silanion
and catalogued by Pliny; this statue represented Episthates. What did
Episthates do? He invented a trip. That sums up Greece and glory. Let
us pass on to others. Shall I admire England? Shall I admire France?
France? Why? Because of Paris? I have just told you my opinion of
Athens. England? Why? Because of London? I hate Carthage. And then,
London, the metropolis of luxury, is the headquarters of wretchedness.
There are a hundred deaths a year of hunger in the parish of
Charing-Cross alone. Such is Albion. I add, as the climax, that I have
seen an Englishwoman dancing in a wreath of roses and blue spectacles.
A fig then for England! If I do not admire John Bull, shall I admire
Brother Jonathan? I have but little taste for that slave-holding
brother. Take away _Time is money_, what remains of England? Take away
_Cotton is king_, what remains of America? Germany is the lymph, Italy
is the bile. Shall we go into ecstasies over Russia? Voltaire admired
it. He also admired China. I admit that Russia has its beauties, among
others, a stout despotism; but I pity the despots. Their health is
delicate. A decapitated Alexis, a poignarded Peter, a strangled Paul,
another Paul crushed flat with kicks, divers Ivans strangled, with
their throats cut, numerous Nicholases and Basils poisoned, all this
indicates that the palace of the Emperors of Russia is in a condition
of flagrant insalubrity. All civilized peoples offer this detail to the
admiration of the thinker; war; now, war, civilized war, exhausts and
sums up all the forms of ruffianism, from the brigandage of the
Trabuceros in the gorges of Mont Jaxa to the marauding of the Comanche
Indians in the Doubtful Pass. ‘Bah!’ you will say to me, ‘but Europe is
certainly better than Asia?’ I admit that Asia is a farce; but I do not
precisely see what you find to laugh at in the Grand Lama, you peoples
of the west, who have mingled with your fashions and your elegances all
the complicated filth of majesty, from the dirty chemise of Queen
Isabella to the chamber-chair of the Dauphin. Gentlemen of the human
race, I tell you, not a bit of it! It is at Brussels that the most beer
is consumed, at Stockholm the most brandy, at Madrid the most
chocolate, at Amsterdam the most gin, at London the most wine, at
Constantinople the most coffee, at Paris the most absinthe; there are
all the useful notions. Paris carries the day, in short. In Paris, even
the rag-pickers are sybarites; Diogenes would have loved to be a
rag-picker of the Place Maubert better than to be a philosopher at the
Piræus. Learn this in addition; the wineshops of the rag-pickers are
called _bibines_; the most celebrated are the _Saucepan_ and _The
Slaughter-House_. Hence, tea-gardens, goguettes, caboulots, bouibuis,
mastroquets, bastringues, manezingues, bibines of the rag-pickers,
caravanseries of the caliphs, I certify to you, I am a voluptuary, I
eat at Richard’s at forty sous a head, I must have Persian carpets to
roll naked Cleopatra in! Where is Cleopatra? Ah! So it is you, Louison.
Good day.”
Thus did Grantaire, more than intoxicated, launch into speech, catching
at the dish-washer in her passage, from his corner in the back room of
the Café Musain.
Bossuet, extending his hand towards him, tried to impose silence on
him, and Grantaire began again worse than ever:—