Les Misérables
“He is a man who never changes his habits, and he has never received
any one except in the evening.”
“Of what man are you speaking?” asked Cosette.
“I? I said nothing.”
“What do you hope, then?”
“Wait until the day after to-morrow.”
“You wish it?”
“Yes, Cosette.”
She took his head in both her hands, raising herself on tiptoe in order
to be on a level with him, and tried to read his hope in his eyes.
Marius resumed:—
“Now that I think of it, you ought to know my address: something might
happen, one never knows; I live with that friend named Courfeyrac, Rue
de la Verrerie, No. 16.”
He searched in his pocket, pulled out his penknife, and with the blade
he wrote on the plaster of the wall:—
_“16 Rue de la Verrerie.”_
In the meantime, Cosette had begun to gaze into his eyes once more.
“Tell me your thought, Marius; you have some idea. Tell it to me. Oh!
tell me, so that I may pass a pleasant night.”
“This is my idea: that it is impossible that God should mean to part
us. Wait; expect me the day after to-morrow.”
“What shall I do until then?” said Cosette. “You are outside, you go,
and come! How happy men are! I shall remain entirely alone! Oh! How sad
I shall be! What is it that you are going to do to-morrow evening? tell
me.”
“I am going to try something.”
“Then I will pray to God and I will think of you here, so that you may
be successful. I will question you no further, since you do not wish
it. You are my master. I shall pass the evening to-morrow in singing
that music from _Euryanthe_ that you love, and that you came one
evening to listen to, outside my shutters. But day after to-morrow you
will come early. I shall expect you at dusk, at nine o’clock precisely,
I warn you. Mon Dieu! how sad it is that the days are so long! On the
stroke of nine, do you understand, I shall be in the garden.”
“And I also.”
And without having uttered it, moved by the same thought, impelled by
those electric currents which place lovers in continual communication,
both being intoxicated with delight even in their sorrow, they fell
into each other’s arms, without perceiving that their lips met while
their uplifted eyes, overflowing with rapture and full of tears, gazed
upon the stars.
When Marius went forth, the street was deserted. This was the moment
when Éponine was following the ruffians to the boulevard.
While Marius had been dreaming with his head pressed to the tree, an
idea had crossed his mind; an idea, alas! that he himself judged to be
senseless and impossible. He had come to a desperate decision.
CHAPTER VII—THE OLD HEART AND THE YOUNG HEART IN THE PRESENCE OF EACH
OTHER
At that epoch, Father Gillenormand was well past his ninety-first
birthday. He still lived with Mademoiselle Gillenormand in the Rue des
Filles-du-Calvaire, No. 6, in the old house which he owned. He was, as
the reader will remember, one of those antique old men who await death
perfectly erect, whom age bears down without bending, and whom even
sorrow cannot curve.
Still, his daughter had been saying for some time: “My father is
sinking.” He no longer boxed the maids’ ears; he no longer thumped the
landing-place so vigorously with his cane when Basque was slow in
opening the door. The Revolution of July had exasperated him for the
space of barely six months. He had viewed, almost tranquilly, that
coupling of words, in the _Moniteur:_ M. Humblot-Conté, peer of France.
The fact is, that the old man was deeply dejected. He did not bend, he
did not yield; this was no more a characteristic of his physical than
of his moral nature, but he felt himself giving way internally. For
four years he had been waiting for Marius, with his foot firmly
planted, that is the exact word, in the conviction that that
good-for-nothing young scamp would ring at his door some day or other;
now he had reached the point, where, at certain gloomy hours, he said
to himself, that if Marius made him wait much longer—It was not death
that was insupportable to him; it was the idea that perhaps he should
never see Marius again. The idea of never seeing Marius again had never
entered his brain until that day; now the thought began to recur to
him, and it chilled him. Absence, as is always the case in genuine and
natural sentiments, had only served to augment the grandfather’s love
for the ungrateful child, who had gone off like a flash. It is during
December nights, when the cold stands at ten degrees, that one thinks
oftenest of the son.
M. Gillenormand was, or thought himself, above all things, incapable of
taking a single step, he—the grandfather, towards his grandson; “I
would die rather,” he said to himself. He did not consider himself as
the least to blame; but he thought of Marius only with profound
tenderness, and the mute despair of an elderly, kindly old man who is
about to vanish in the dark.
He began to lose his teeth, which added to his sadness.
M. Gillenormand, without however acknowledging it to himself, for it
would have rendered him furious and ashamed, had never loved a mistress
as he loved Marius.
He had had placed in his chamber, opposite the head of his bed, so that
it should be the first thing on which his eyes fell on waking, an old
portrait of his other daughter, who was dead, Madame Pontmercy, a
portrait which had been taken when she was eighteen. He gazed
incessantly at that portrait. One day, he happened to say, as he gazed
upon it:—
“I think the likeness is strong.”
“To my sister?” inquired Mademoiselle Gillenormand. “Yes, certainly.”
The old man added:—
“And to him also.”
Once as he sat with his knees pressed together, and his eyes almost
closed, in a despondent attitude, his daughter ventured to say to him:—
“Father, are you as angry with him as ever?”
She paused, not daring to proceed further.
“With whom?” he demanded.
“With that poor Marius.”
He raised his aged head, laid his withered and emaciated fist on the
table, and exclaimed in his most irritated and vibrating tone:—
“Poor Marius, do you say! That gentleman is a knave, a wretched
scoundrel, a vain little ingrate, a heartless, soulless, haughty, and
wicked man!”
And he turned away so that his daughter might not see the tear that
stood in his eye.
Three days later he broke a silence which had lasted four hours, to say
to his daughter point-blank:—
“I had the honor to ask Mademoiselle Gillenormand never to mention him
to me.”
Aunt Gillenormand renounced every effort, and pronounced this acute
diagnosis: “My father never cared very much for my sister after her
folly. It is clear that he detests Marius.”
“After her folly” meant: “after she had married the colonel.”
However, as the reader has been able to conjecture, Mademoiselle
Gillenormand had failed in her attempt to substitute her favorite, the
officer of lancers, for Marius. The substitute, Théodule, had not been
a success. M. Gillenormand had not accepted the _quid pro quo_. A
vacancy in the heart does not accommodate itself to a stop-gap.
Théodule, on his side, though he scented the inheritance, was disgusted
at the task of pleasing. The goodman bored the lancer; and the lancer
shocked the goodman. Lieutenant Théodule was gay, no doubt, but a
chatter-box, frivolous, but vulgar; a high liver, but a frequenter of
bad company; he had mistresses, it is true, and he had a great deal to
say about them, it is true also; but he talked badly. All his good
qualities had a defect. M. Gillenormand was worn out with hearing him
tell about the love affairs that he had in the vicinity of the barracks
in the Rue de Babylone. And then, Lieutenant Gillenormand sometimes
came in his uniform, with the tricolored cockade. This rendered him
downright intolerable. Finally, Father Gillenormand had said to his
daughter: “I’ve had enough of that Théodule. I haven’t much taste for
warriors in time of peace. Receive him if you choose. I don’t know but
I prefer slashers to fellows that drag their swords. The clash of
blades in battle is less dismal, after all, than the clank of the
scabbard on the pavement. And then, throwing out your chest like a
bully and lacing yourself like a girl, with stays under your cuirass,
is doubly ridiculous. When one is a veritable man, one holds equally
aloof from swagger and from affected airs. He is neither a blusterer
nor a finnicky-hearted man. Keep your Théodule for yourself.”
It was in vain that his daughter said to him: “But he is your
grandnephew, nevertheless,”—it turned out that M. Gillenormand, who was
a grandfather to the very finger-tips, was not in the least a
grand-uncle.
In fact, as he had good sense, and as he had compared the two, Théodule
had only served to make him regret Marius all the more.
One evening,—it was the 24th of June, which did not prevent Father
Gillenormand having a rousing fire on the hearth,—he had dismissed his
daughter, who was sewing in a neighboring apartment. He was alone in
his chamber, amid its pastoral scenes, with his feet propped on the
andirons, half enveloped in his huge screen of coromandel lacquer, with
its nine leaves, with his elbow resting on a table where burned two
candles under a green shade, engulfed in his tapestry armchair, and in
his hand a book which he was not reading. He was dressed, according to
his wont, like an _incroyable_, and resembled an antique portrait by
Garat. This would have made people run after him in the street, had not
his daughter covered him up, whenever he went out, in a vast bishop’s
wadded cloak, which concealed his attire. At home, he never wore a
dressing gown, except when he rose and retired. “It gives one a look of
age,” said he.
Father Gillenormand was thinking of Marius lovingly and bitterly; and,
as usual, bitterness predominated. His tenderness once soured always
ended by boiling and turning to indignation. He had reached the point
where a man tries to make up his mind and to accept that which rends
his heart. He was explaining to himself that there was no longer any
reason why Marius should return, that if he intended to return, he
should have done it long ago, that he must renounce the idea. He was
trying to accustom himself to the thought that all was over, and that
he should die without having beheld “that gentleman” again. But his
whole nature revolted; his aged paternity would not consent to this.
“Well!” said he,—this was his doleful refrain,—“he will not return!”
His bald head had fallen upon his breast, and he fixed a melancholy and
irritated gaze upon the ashes on his hearth.
In the very midst of his reverie, his old servant Basque entered, and
inquired:—
“Can Monsieur receive M. Marius?”
The old man sat up erect, pallid, and like a corpse which rises under
the influence of a galvanic shock. All his blood had retreated to his
heart. He stammered:—
“M. Marius what?”
“I don’t know,” replied Basque, intimidated and put out of countenance
by his master’s air; “I have not seen him. Nicolette came in and said
to me: ‘There’s a young man here; say that it is M. Marius.’”
Father Gillenormand stammered in a low voice:—
“Show him in.”
And he remained in the same attitude, with shaking head, and his eyes
fixed on the door. It opened once more. A young man entered. It was
Marius.
Marius halted at the door, as though waiting to be bidden to enter.
His almost squalid attire was not perceptible in the obscurity caused
by the shade. Nothing could be seen but his calm, grave, but strangely
sad face.
It was several minutes before Father Gillenormand, dulled with
amazement and joy, could see anything except a brightness as when one
is in the presence of an apparition. He was on the point of swooning;