Les Misérables
carried to Marius’ bedside; he required his daughter to take the finest
linen in the house for compresses and bandages. Mademoiselle
Gillenormand, like a sage and elderly person, contrived to spare the
fine linen, while allowing the grandfather to think that he was obeyed.
M. Gillenormand would not permit any one to explain to him, that for
the preparation of lint batiste is not nearly so good as coarse linen,
nor new linen as old linen. He was present at all the dressings of the
wounds from which Mademoiselle Gillenormand modestly absented herself.
When the dead flesh was cut away with scissors, he said: “Aïe! aïe!”
Nothing was more touching than to see him with his gentle, senile
palsy, offer the wounded man a cup of his cooling-draught. He
overwhelmed the doctor with questions. He did not observe that he asked
the same ones over and over again.
On the day when the doctor announced to him that Marius was out of
danger, the good man was in a delirium. He made his porter a present of
three louis. That evening, on his return to his own chamber, he danced
a gavotte, using his thumb and forefinger as castanets, and he sang the
following song:
“Jeanne est née à Fougère “Amour, tu vis en elle;
Vrai nid d’une bergère; Car c’est dans sa prunelle
J’adore son jupon, Que tu mets ton carquois.
Fripon. Narquois!
“Moi, je la chante, et j’aime,
Plus que Diane même,
Jeanne et ses durs tetons
Bretons.”61
Then he knelt upon a chair, and Basque, who was watching him through
the half-open door, made sure that he was praying.
Up to that time, he had not believed in God.
At each succeeding phase of improvement, which became more and more
pronounced, the grandfather raved. He executed a multitude of
mechanical actions full of joy; he ascended and descended the stairs,
without knowing why. A pretty female neighbor was amazed one morning at
receiving a big bouquet; it was M. Gillenormand who had sent it to her.
The husband made a jealous scene. M. Gillenormand tried to draw
Nicolette upon his knees. He called Marius, “M. le Baron.” He shouted:
“Long live the Republic!”
Every moment, he kept asking the doctor: “Is he no longer in danger?”
He gazed upon Marius with the eyes of a grandmother. He brooded over
him while he ate. He no longer knew himself, he no longer rendered
himself an account of himself. Marius was the master of the house,
there was abdication in his joy, he was the grandson of his grandson.
In the state of joy in which he then was, he was the most venerable of
children. In his fear lest he might fatigue or annoy the convalescent,
he stepped behind him to smile. He was content, joyous, delighted,
charming, young. His white locks added a gentle majesty to the gay
radiance of his visage. When grace is mingled with wrinkles, it is
adorable. There is an indescribable aurora in beaming old age.
As for Marius, as he allowed them to dress his wounds and care for him,
he had but one fixed idea: Cosette.
After the fever and delirium had left him, he did not again pronounce
her name, and it might have been supposed that he no longer thought of
her. He held his peace, precisely because his soul was there.
He did not know what had become of Cosette; the whole affair of the Rue
de la Chanvrerie was like a cloud in his memory; shadows that were
almost indistinct, floated through his mind, Éponine, Gavroche, Mabeuf,
the Thénardiers, all his friends gloomily intermingled with the smoke
of the barricade; the strange passage of M. Fauchelevent through that
adventure produced on him the effect of a puzzle in a tempest; he
understood nothing connected with his own life, he did not know how nor
by whom he had been saved, and no one of those around him knew this;
all that they had been able to tell him was, that he had been brought
home at night in a hackney-coach, to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire;
past, present, future were nothing more to him than the mist of a vague
idea; but in that fog there was one immovable point, one clear and
precise outline, something made of granite, a resolution, a will; to
find Cosette once more. For him, the idea of life was not distinct from
the idea of Cosette. He had decreed in his heart that he would not
accept the one without the other, and he was immovably resolved to
exact of any person whatever, who should desire to force him to
live,—from his grandfather, from fate, from hell,—the restitution of
his vanished Eden.
He did not conceal from himself the fact that obstacles existed.
Let us here emphasize one detail, he was not won over and was but
little softened by all the solicitude and tenderness of his
grandfather. In the first place, he was not in the secret; then, in his
reveries of an invalid, which were still feverish, possibly, he
distrusted this tenderness as a strange and novel thing, which had for
its object his conquest. He remained cold. The grandfather absolutely
wasted his poor old smile. Marius said to himself that it was all right
so long as he, Marius, did not speak, and let things take their course;
but that when it became a question of Cosette, he would find another
face, and that his grandfather’s true attitude would be unmasked. Then
there would be an unpleasant scene; a recrudescence of family
questions, a confrontation of positions, every sort of sarcasm and all
manner of objections at one and the same time, Fauchelevent,
Coupelevent, fortune, poverty, a stone about his neck, the future.
Violent resistance; conclusion: a refusal. Marius stiffened himself in
advance.
And then, in proportion as he regained life, the old ulcers of his
memory opened once more, he reflected again on the past, Colonel
Pontmercy placed himself once more between M. Gillenormand and him,
Marius, he told himself that he had no true kindness to expect from a
person who had been so unjust and so hard to his father. And with
health, there returned to him a sort of harshness towards his
grandfather. The old man was gently pained by this. M. Gillenormand,
without however allowing it to appear, observed that Marius, ever since
the latter had been brought back to him and had regained consciousness,
had not once called him father. It is true that he did not say
“monsieur” to him; but he contrived not to say either the one or the
other, by means of a certain way of turning his phrases. Obviously, a
crisis was approaching.
As almost always happens in such cases, Marius skirmished before giving
battle, by way of proving himself. This is called “feeling the ground.”
One morning it came to pass that M. Gillenormand spoke slightingly of
the Convention, apropos of a newspaper which had fallen into his hands,
and gave vent to a Royalist harangue on Danton, Saint-Juste and
Robespierre.—“The men of ’93 were giants,” said Marius with severity.
The old man held his peace, and uttered not a sound during the
remainder of that day.
Marius, who had always present to his mind the inflexible grandfather
of his early years, interpreted this silence as a profound
concentration of wrath, augured from it a hot conflict, and augmented
his preparations for the fray in the inmost recesses of his mind.
He decided that, in case of a refusal, he would tear off his bandages,
dislocate his collar-bone, that he would lay bare all the wounds which
he had left, and would reject all food. His wounds were his munitions
of war. He would have Cosette or die.
He awaited the propitious moment with the crafty patience of the sick.
That moment arrived.
CHAPTER III—MARIUS ATTACKED
One day, M. Gillenormand, while his daughter was putting in order the
phials and cups on the marble of the commode, bent over Marius and said
to him in his tenderest accents: “Look here, my little Marius, if I
were in your place, I would eat meat now in preference to fish. A fried
sole is excellent to begin a convalescence with, but a good cutlet is
needed to put a sick man on his feet.”
Marius, who had almost entirely recovered his strength, collected the
whole of it, drew himself up into a sitting posture, laid his two
clenched fists on the sheets of his bed, looked his grandfather in the
face, assumed a terrible air, and said:
“This leads me to say something to you.”
“What is it?”
“That I wish to marry.”
“Agreed,” said his grandfather.—And he burst out laughing.
“How agreed?”
“Yes, agreed. You shall have your little girl.”
Marius, stunned and overwhelmed with the dazzling shock, trembled in
every limb.
M. Gillenormand went on:
“Yes, you shall have her, that pretty little girl of yours. She comes
every day in the shape of an old gentleman to inquire after you. Ever
since you were wounded, she has passed her time in weeping and making
lint. I have made inquiries. She lives in the Rue de l’Homme Armé, No.
7. Ah! There we have it! Ah! so you want her! Well, you shall have her.
You’re caught. You had arranged your little plot, you had said to
yourself:—‘I’m going to signify this squarely to my grandfather, to
that mummy of the Regency and of the Directory, to that ancient beau,
to that Dorante turned Géronte; he has indulged in his frivolities
also, that he has, and he has had his love affairs, and his grisettes
and his Cosettes; he has made his rustle, he has had his wings, he has
eaten of the bread of spring; he certainly must remember it.’ Ah! you
take the cockchafer by the horns. That’s good. I offer you a cutlet and
you answer me: ‘By the way, I want to marry.’ There’s a transition for
you! Ah! you reckoned on a bickering! You do not know that I am an old
coward. What do you say to that? You are vexed? You did not expect to
find your grandfather still more foolish than yourself, you are wasting
the discourse which you meant to bestow upon me, Mr. Lawyer, and that’s
vexatious. Well, so much the worse, rage away. I’ll do whatever you
wish, and that cuts you short, imbecile! Listen. I have made my
inquiries, I’m cunning too; she is charming, she is discreet, it is not
true about the lancer, she has made heaps of lint, she’s a jewel, she
adores you, if you had died, there would have been three of us, her
coffin would have accompanied mine. I have had an idea, ever since you
have been better, of simply planting her at your bedside, but it is
only in romances that young girls are brought to the bedsides of
handsome young wounded men who interest them. It is not done. What
would your aunt have said to it? You were nude three quarters of the
time, my good fellow. Ask Nicolette, who has not left you for a moment,
if there was any possibility of having a woman here. And then, what
would the doctor have said? A pretty girl does not cure a man of fever.
In short, it’s all right, let us say no more about it, all’s said,
all’s done, it’s all settled, take her. Such is my ferocity. You see, I
perceived that you did not love me. I said to myself: ‘Here now, I have
my little Cosette right under my hand, I’m going to give her to him, he
will be obliged to love me a little then, or he must tell the reason
why.’ Ah! so you thought that the old man was going to storm, to put on
a big voice, to shout no, and to lift his cane at all that aurora. Not
a bit of it. Cosette, so be it; love, so be it; I ask nothing better.
Pray take the trouble of getting married, sir. Be happy, my
well-beloved child.”
That said, the old man burst forth into sobs.
And he seized Marius’ head, and pressed it with both arms against his
breast, and both fell to weeping. This is one of the forms of supreme
happiness.
“Father!” cried Marius.
“Ah, so you love me!” said the old man.
An ineffable moment ensued. They were choking and could not speak.
At length the old man stammered:
“Come! his mouth is unstopped at last. He has said: ‘Father’ to me.”