________________________________________________
_ 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 Theodule 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 Theodule 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.
And she put on her spectacles. They unfolded the paper and read
as follows:--
"For my son.--The Emperor made me a Baron on the battlefield
of Waterloo. Since the Restoration disputes my right to this title
which I purchased with my blood, my son shall take it and bear it.
That he will be worthy of it is a matter of course."
The feelings of father and daughter cannot be described. They felt
chilled as by the breath of a death's-head. They did not exchange
a word.
Only, M. Gillenormand said in a low voice and as though speaking
to himself:--
"It is the slasher's handwriting."
The aunt examined the paper, turned it about in all directions,
then put it back in its case.
At the same moment a little oblong packet, enveloped in blue paper,
fell from one of the pockets of the great-coat. Mademoiselle
Gillenormand picked it up and unfolded the blue paper.
It contained Marius' hundred cards. She handed one of them
to M. Gillenormand, who read: Le Baron Marius Pontmercy.
The old man rang the bell. Nicolette came. M. Gillenormand took
the ribbon, the case, and the coat, flung them all on the floor
in the middle of the room, and said:--
"Carry those duds away."
A full hour passed in the most profound silence. The old man and the
old spinster had seated themselves with their backs to each other,
and were thinking, each on his own account, the same things,
in all probability.
At the expiration of this hour, Aunt Gillenormand said:--"A pretty
state of things!"
A few moments later, Marius made his appearance. He entered.
Even before he had crossed the threshold, he saw his grandfather
holding one of his own cards in his hand, and on catching sight
of him, the latter exclaimed with his air of bourgeois and grinning
superiority which was something crushing:--
"Well! well! well! well! well! so you are a baron now. I present
you my compliments. What is the meaning of this?"
Marius reddened slightly and replied:--
"It means that I am the son of my father."
M. Gillenormand ceased to laugh, and said harshly:--
"I am your father."
"My father," retorted Marius, with downcast eyes and a severe air,
"was a humble and heroic man, who served the Republic and France
gloriously, who was great in the greatest history that men have
ever made, who lived in the bivouac for a quarter of a century,
beneath grape-shot and bullets, in snow and mud by day, beneath rain
at night, who captured two flags, who received twenty wounds, who died
forgotten and abandoned, and who never committed but one mistake,
which was to love too fondly two ingrates, his country and myself."
This was more than M. Gillenormand could bear to hear. At the
word republic, he rose, or, to speak more correctly, he sprang
to his feet. Every word that Marius had just uttered produced on
the visage of the old Royalist the effect of the puffs of air from
a forge upon a blazing brand. From a dull hue he had turned red,
from red, purple, and from purple, flame-colored.
"Marius!" he cried. "Abominable child! I do not know what your
father was! I do not wish to know! I know nothing about that,
and I do not know him! But what I do know is, that there
never was anything but scoundrels among those men! They were
all rascals, assassins, red-caps, thieves! I say all! I say all!
I know not one! I say all! Do you hear me, Marius! See here,
you are no more a baron than my slipper is! They were all bandits
in the service of Robespierre! All who served B-u-o-naparte
were brigands! They were all traitors who betrayed, betrayed,
betrayed their legitimate king! All cowards who fled before the
Prussians and the English at Waterloo! That is what I do know!
Whether Monsieur your father comes in that category, I do not know!
I am sorry for it, so much the worse, your humble servant!"
In his turn, it was Marius who was the firebrand and M. Gillenormand
who was the bellows. Marius quivered in every limb, he did
not know what would happen next, his brain was on fire. He was
the priest who beholds all his sacred wafers cast to the winds,
the fakir who beholds a passer-by spit upon his idol. It could
not be that such things had been uttered in his presence.
What was he to do? His father had just been trampled under foot
and stamped upon in his presence, but by whom? By his grandfather.
How was he to avenge the one without outraging the other?
It was impossible for him to insult his grandfather and it
was equally impossible for him to leave his father unavenged.
On the one hand was a sacred grave, on the other hoary locks.
He stood there for several moments, staggering as though intoxicated,
with all this whirlwind dashing through his head; then he raised
his eyes, gazed fixedly at his grandfather, and cried in a voice
of thunder:--
"Down with the Bourbons, and that great hog of a Louis XVIII.!"
Louis XVIII. had been dead for four years; but it was all the same
to him.
The old man, who had been crimson, turned whiter than his hair.
He wheeled round towards a bust of M. le Duc de Berry, which stood
on the chimney-piece, and made a profound bow, with a sort of
peculiar majesty. Then he paced twice, slowly and in silence,
from the fireplace to the window and from the window to the fireplace,
traversing the whole length of the room, and making the polished
floor creak as though he had been a stone statue walking.
On his second turn, he bent over his daughter, who was watching this
encounter with the stupefied air of an antiquated lamb, and said to
her with a smile that was almost calm: "A baron like this gentleman,
and a bourgeois like myself cannot remain under the same roof."
And drawing himself up, all at once, pallid, trembling, terrible,
with his brow rendered more lofty by the terrible radiance of wrath,
he extended his arm towards Marius and shouted to him:--
"Be off!"
Marius left the house.
On the following day, M. Gillenormand said to his daughter:
"You will send sixty pistoles every six months to that blood-drinker,
and you will never mention his name to me."
Having an immense reserve fund of wrath to get rid of, and not
knowing what to do with it, he continued to address his daughter
as you instead of thou for the next three months.
Marius, on his side, had gone forth in indignation. There was one
circumstance which, it must be admitted, aggravated his exasperation.
There are always petty fatalities of the sort which complicate
domestic dramas. They augment the grievances in such cases,
although, in reality, the wrongs are not increased by them.
While carrying Marius' "duds" precipitately to his chamber, at his
grandfather's command, Nicolette had, inadvertently, let fall,
probably, on the attic staircase, which was dark, that medallion
of black shagreen which contained the paper penned by the colonel.
Neither paper nor case could afterwards be found. Marius was
convinced that "Monsieur Gillenormand"--from that day forth he
never alluded to him otherwise--had flung "his father's testament"
in the fire. He knew by heart the few lines which the colonel
had written, and, consequently, nothing was lost. But the paper,
the writing, that sacred relic,--all that was his very heart.
What had been done with it?
Marius had taken his departure without saying whither he was going,
and without knowing where, with thirty francs, his watch, and a few
clothes in a hand-bag. He had entered a hackney-coach, had engaged
it by the hour, and had directed his course at hap-hazard towards
the Latin quarter.
What was to become of Marius? _
Read next: VOLUME III: BOOK FOURTH - THE FRIENDS OF THE ABC: CHAPTER I. A Group which barely missed becoming Historic
Read previous: VOLUME III: BOOK THIRD - THE GRANDFATHER AND THE GRANDSON: CHAPTER VII. Some Petticoat
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