Les Misérables
secret suffering was, that he locked it all up within his breast, and
did not allow its existence to be divined. His sorrow was like those
recently invented furnaces which consume their own smoke. It sometimes
happened that officious busybodies spoke to him of Marius, and asked
him: “What is your grandson doing?” “What has become of him?” The old
bourgeois replied with a sigh, that he was a sad case, and giving a
fillip to his cuff, if he wished to appear gay: “Monsieur le Baron de
Pontmercy is practising pettifogging in some corner or other.”
While the old man regretted, Marius applauded himself. As is the case
with all good-hearted people, misfortune had eradicated his bitterness.
He only thought of M. Gillenormand in an amiable light, but he had set
his mind on not receiving anything more from the man who _had been
unkind to his father_. This was the mitigated translation of his first
indignation. Moreover, he was happy at having suffered, and at
suffering still. It was for his father’s sake. The hardness of his life
satisfied and pleased him. He said to himself with a sort of joy that—
_it was certainly the least he could do_; that it was an
expiation;—that, had it not been for that, he would have been punished
in some other way and later on for his impious indifference towards his
father, and such a father! that it would not have been just that his
father should have all the suffering, and he none of it; and that, in
any case, what were his toils and his destitution compared with the
colonel’s heroic life? that, in short, the only way for him to approach
his father and resemble him, was to be brave in the face of indigence,
as the other had been valiant before the enemy; and that that was, no
doubt, what the colonel had meant to imply by the words: “He will be
worthy of it.” Words which Marius continued to wear, not on his breast,
since the colonel’s writing had disappeared, but in his heart.
And then, on the day when his grandfather had turned him out of doors,
he had been only a child, now he was a man. He felt it. Misery, we
repeat, had been good for him. Poverty in youth, when it succeeds, has
this magnificent property about it, that it turns the whole will
towards effort, and the whole soul towards aspiration. Poverty
instantly lays material life bare and renders it hideous; hence
inexpressible bounds towards the ideal life. The wealthy young man has
a hundred coarse and brilliant distractions, horse races, hunting,
dogs, tobacco, gaming, good repasts, and all the rest of it;
occupations for the baser side of the soul, at the expense of the
loftier and more delicate sides. The poor young man wins his bread with
difficulty; he eats; when he has eaten, he has nothing more but
meditation. He goes to the spectacles which God furnishes gratis; he
gazes at the sky, space, the stars, flowers, children, the humanity
among which he is suffering, the creation amid which he beams. He gazes
so much on humanity that he perceives its soul, he gazes upon creation
to such an extent that he beholds God. He dreams, he feels himself
great; he dreams on, and feels himself tender. From the egotism of the
man who suffers he passes to the compassion of the man who meditates.
An admirable sentiment breaks forth in him, forgetfulness of self and
pity for all. As he thinks of the innumerable enjoyments which nature
offers, gives, and lavishes to souls which stand open, and refuses to
souls that are closed, he comes to pity, he the millionnaire of the
mind, the millionnaire of money. All hatred departs from his heart, in
proportion as light penetrates his spirit. And is he unhappy? No. The
misery of a young man is never miserable. The first young lad who comes
to hand, however poor he may be, with his strength, his health, his
rapid walk, his brilliant eyes, his warmly circulating blood, his black
hair, his red lips, his white teeth, his pure breath, will always
arouse the envy of an aged emperor. And then, every morning, he sets
himself afresh to the task of earning his bread; and while his hands
earn his bread, his dorsal column gains pride, his brain gathers ideas.
His task finished, he returns to ineffable ecstasies, to contemplation,
to joys; he beholds his feet set in afflictions, in obstacles, on the
pavement, in the nettles, sometimes in the mire; his head in the light.
He is firm, serene, gentle, peaceful, attentive, serious, content with
little, kindly; and he thanks God for having bestowed on him those two
forms of riches which many a rich man lacks: work, which makes him
free; and thought, which makes him dignified.
This is what had happened with Marius. To tell the truth, he inclined a
little too much to the side of contemplation. From the day when he had
succeeded in earning his living with some approach to certainty, he had
stopped, thinking it good to be poor, and retrenching time from his
work to give to thought; that is to say, he sometimes passed entire
days in meditation, absorbed, engulfed, like a visionary, in the mute
voluptuousness of ecstasy and inward radiance. He had thus propounded
the problem of his life: to toil as little as possible at material
labor, in order to toil as much as possible at the labor which is
impalpable; in other words, to bestow a few hours on real life, and to
cast the rest to the infinite. As he believed that he lacked nothing,
he did not perceive that contemplation, thus understood, ends by
becoming one of the forms of idleness; that he was contenting himself
with conquering the first necessities of life, and that he was resting
from his labors too soon.
It was evident that, for this energetic and enthusiastic nature, this
could only be a transitory state, and that, at the first shock against
the inevitable complications of destiny, Marius would awaken.
In the meantime, although he was a lawyer, and whatever Father
Gillenormand thought about the matter, he was not practising, he was
not even pettifogging. Meditation had turned him aside from pleading.
To haunt attorneys, to follow the court, to hunt up cases—what a bore!
Why should he do it? He saw no reason for changing the manner of
gaining his livelihood! The obscure and ill-paid publishing
establishment had come to mean for him a sure source of work which did
not involve too much labor, as we have explained, and which sufficed
for his wants.
One of the publishers for whom he worked, M. Magimel, I think, offered
to take him into his own house, to lodge him well, to furnish him with
regular occupation, and to give him fifteen hundred francs a year. To
be well lodged! Fifteen hundred francs! No doubt. But renounce his
liberty! Be on fixed wages! A sort of hired man of letters! According
to Marius’ opinion, if he accepted, his position would become both
better and worse at the same time, he acquired comfort, and lost his
dignity; it was a fine and complete unhappiness converted into a
repulsive and ridiculous state of torture: something like the case of a
blind man who should recover the sight of one eye. He refused.
Marius dwelt in solitude. Owing to his taste for remaining outside of
everything, and through having been too much alarmed, he had not
entered decidedly into the group presided over by Enjolras. They had
remained good friends; they were ready to assist each other on occasion
in every possible way; but nothing more. Marius had two friends: one
young, Courfeyrac; and one old, M. Mabeuf. He inclined more to the old
man. In the first place, he owed to him the revolution which had taken
place within him; to him he was indebted for having known and loved his
father. “He operated on me for a cataract,” he said.
The churchwarden had certainly played a decisive part.
It was not, however, that M. Mabeuf had been anything but the calm and
impassive agent of Providence in this connection. He had enlightened
Marius by chance and without being aware of the fact, as does a candle
which some one brings; he had been the candle and not the some one.
As for Marius’ inward political revolution, M. Mabeuf was totally
incapable of comprehending it, of willing or of directing it.
As we shall see M. Mabeuf again, later on, a few words will not be
superfluous.
CHAPTER IV—M. MABEUF
On the day when M. Mabeuf said to Marius: “Certainly I approve of
political opinions,” he expressed the real state of his mind. All
political opinions were matters of indifference to him, and he approved
them all, without distinction, provided they left him in peace, as the
Greeks called the Furies “the beautiful, the good, the charming,” the
Eumenides. M. Mabeuf’s political opinion consisted in a passionate love
for plants, and, above all, for books. Like all the rest of the world,
he possessed the termination in _ist_, without which no one could exist
at that time, but he was neither a Royalist, a Bonapartist, a Chartist,
an Orleanist, nor an Anarchist; he was a _bouquinist_, a collector of
old books. He did not understand how men could busy themselves with
hating each other because of silly stuff like the charter, democracy,
legitimacy, monarchy, the republic, etc., when there were in the world
all sorts of mosses, grasses, and shrubs which they might be looking
at, and heaps of folios, and even of 32mos, which they might turn over.
He took good care not to become useless; having books did not prevent
his reading, being a botanist did not prevent his being a gardener.
When he made Pontmercy’s acquaintance, this sympathy had existed
between the colonel and himself—that what the colonel did for flowers,
he did for fruits. M. Mabeuf had succeeded in producing seedling pears
as savory as the pears of St. Germain; it is from one of his
combinations, apparently, that the October Mirabelle, now celebrated
and no less perfumed than the summer Mirabelle, owes its origin. He
went to mass rather from gentleness than from piety, and because, as he
loved the faces of men, but hated their noise, he found them assembled
and silent only in church. Feeling that he must be something in the
State, he had chosen the career of warden. However, he had never
succeeded in loving any woman as much as a tulip bulb, nor any man as
much as an Elzevir. He had long passed sixty, when, one day, some one
asked him: “Have you never been married?” “I have forgotten,” said he.
When it sometimes happened to him—and to whom does it not happen?—to
say: “Oh! if I were only rich!” it was not when ogling a pretty girl,
as was the case with Father Gillenormand, but when contemplating an old
book. He lived alone with an old housekeeper. He was somewhat gouty,
and when he was asleep, his aged fingers, stiffened with rheumatism,
lay crooked up in the folds of his sheets. He had composed and
published a _Flora of the Environs of Cauteretz_, with colored plates,
a work which enjoyed a tolerable measure of esteem and which sold well.
People rang his bell, in the Rue Mésières, two or three times a day, to
ask for it. He drew as much as two thousand francs a year from it; this
constituted nearly the whole of his fortune. Although poor, he had had
the talent to form for himself, by dint of patience, privations, and
time, a precious collection of rare copies of every sort. He never went
out without a book under his arm, and he often returned with two. The
sole decoration of the four rooms on the ground floor, which composed
his lodgings, consisted of framed herbariums, and engravings of the old
masters. The sight of a sword or a gun chilled his blood. He had never
approached a cannon in his life, even at the Invalides. He had a
passable stomach, a brother who was a curé, perfectly white hair, no
teeth, either in his mouth or his mind, a trembling in every limb, a
Picard accent, an infantile laugh, the air of an old sheep, and he was