________________________________________________
_ At this epoch, Marius was twenty years of age. It was three years
since he had left his grandfather. Both parties had remained
on the same terms, without attempting to approach each other,
and without seeking to see each other. Besides, what was the use
of seeing each other? Marius was the brass vase, while Father
Gillenormand was the iron pot.
We admit that Marius was mistaken as to his grandfather's heart.
He had imagined that M. Gillenormand had never loved him,
and that that crusty, harsh, and smiling old fellow who cursed,
shouted, and stormed and brandished his cane, cherished for him,
at the most, only that affection, which is at once slight
and severe, of the dotards of comedy. Marius was in error.
There are fathers who do not love their children; there exists
no grandfather who does not adore his grandson. At bottom,
as we have said, M. Gillenormand idolized Marius. He idolized him
after his own fashion, with an accompaniment of snappishness and
boxes on the ear; but, this child once gone, he felt a black void
in his heart; he would allow no one to mention the child to him,
and all the while secretly regretted that he was so well obeyed.
At first, he hoped that this Buonapartist, this Jacobin, this terrorist,
this Septembrist, would return. But the weeks passed by, years passed;
to M. Gillenormand's great despair, the "blood-drinker" did
not make his appearance. "I could not do otherwise than turn
him out," said the grandfather to himself, and he asked himself:
"If the thing were to do over again, would I do it?" His pride
instantly answered "yes," but his aged head, which he shook
in silence, replied sadly "no." He had his hours of depression.
He missed Marius. Old men need affection as they need the sun.
It is warmth. Strong as his nature was, the absence of Marius
had wrought some change in him. Nothing in the world could have
induced him to take a step towards "that rogue"; but he suffered.
He never inquired about him, but he thought of him incessantly.
He lived in the Marais in a more and more retired manner;
he was still merry and violent as of old, but his merriment
had a convulsive harshness, and his violences always terminated
in a sort of gentle and gloomy dejection. He sometimes said:
"Oh! if he only would return, what a good box on the ear I would
give him!"
As for his aunt, she thought too little to love much; Marius was
no longer for her much more than a vague black form; and she
eventually came to occupy herself with him much less than with the
cat or the paroquet which she probably had. What augmented Father
Gillenormand's 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. _
Read next: VOLUME III: BOOK FIFTH - THE EXCELLENCE OF MISFORTUNE: CHAPTER IV. M. Mabeuf
Read previous: VOLUME III: BOOK FIFTH - THE EXCELLENCE OF MISFORTUNE: CHAPTER II. Marius Poor
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