________________________________________________
_ 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-Conte, 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, Theodule,
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. Theodule, 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 Theodule 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 Theodule. 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 Theodule
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,
Theodule 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 revery, 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;
he saw Marius through a dazzling light. It certainly was he,
it certainly was Marius.
At last! After the lapse of four years! He grasped him entire,
so to speak, in a single glance. He found him noble, handsome,
distinguished, well-grown, a complete man, with a suitable
mien and a charming air. He felt a desire to open his arms,
to call him, to fling himself forward; his heart melted with rapture,
affectionate words swelled and overflowed his breast; at length
all his tenderness came to the light and reached his lips, and,
by a contrast which constituted the very foundation of his nature,
what came forth was harshness. He said abruptly:--
"What have you come here for?"
Marius replied with embarrassment:--
"Monsieur--"
M. Gillenormand would have liked to have Marius throw himself
into his arms. He was displeased with Marius and with himself.
He was conscious that he was brusque, and that Marius was cold.
It caused the goodman unendurable and irritating anxiety to feel
so tender and forlorn within, and only to be able to be hard outside.
Bitterness returned. He interrupted Marius in a peevish tone:--
"Then why did you come?"
That "then" signified: If you do not come to embrace me.
Marius looked at his grandfather, whose pallor gave him a face
of marble.
"Monsieur--"
"Have you come to beg my pardon? Do you acknowledge your faults?"
He thought he was putting Marius on the right road, and that "the child"
would yield. Marius shivered; it was the denial of his father
that was required of him; he dropped his eyes and replied:--
"No, sir."
"Then," exclaimed the old man impetuously, with a grief that was
poignant and full of wrath, "what do you want of me?"
Marius clasped his hands, advanced a step, and said in a feeble
and trembling voice:--
"Sir, have pity on me."
These words touched M. Gillenormand; uttered a little sooner,
they would have rendered him tender, but they came too late.
The grandfather rose; he supported himself with both hands on his cane;
his lips were white, his brow wavered, but his lofty form towered
above Marius as he bowed.
"Pity on you, sir! It is youth demanding pity of the old man
of ninety-one! You are entering into life, I am leaving it;
you go to the play, to balls, to the cafe, to the billiard-hall;
you have wit, you please the women, you are a handsome fellow;
as for me, I spit on my brands in the heart of summer; you are rich
with the only riches that are really such, I possess all the poverty
of age; infirmity, isolation! You have your thirty-two teeth,
a good digestion, bright eyes, strength, appetite, health, gayety,
a forest of black hair; I have no longer even white hair,
I have lost my teeth, I am losing my legs, I am losing my memory;
there are three names of streets that I confound incessantly,
the Rue Charlot, the Rue du Chaume, and the Rue Saint-Claude,
that is what I have come to; you have before you the whole future,
full of sunshine, and I am beginning to lose my sight, so far am
I advancing into the night; you are in love, that is a matter
of course, I am beloved by no one in all the world; and you ask pity
of me! Parbleu! Moliere forgot that. If that is the way you jest
at the courthouse, Messieurs the lawyers, I sincerely compliment you.
You are droll."
And the octogenarian went on in a grave and angry voice:--
"Come, now, what do you want of me?"
"Sir," said Marius, "I know that my presence is displeasing to you,
but I have come merely to ask one thing of you, and then I shall go
away immediately."
"You are a fool!" said the old man. "Who said that you were
to go away?"
This was the translation of the tender words which lay at the bottom
of his heart:--
"Ask my pardon! Throw yourself on my neck!"
M. Gillenormand felt that Marius would leave him in a few moments,
that his harsh reception had repelled the lad, that his hardness was
driving him away; he said all this to himself, and it augmented his grief;
and as his grief was straightway converted into wrath, it increased
his harshness. He would have liked to have Marius understand,
and Marius did not understand, which made the goodman furious.
He began again:--
"What! you deserted me, your grandfather, you left my house to go
no one knows whither, you drove your aunt to despair, you went off,
it is easily guessed, to lead a bachelor life; it's more convenient,
to play the dandy, to come in at all hours, to amuse yourself;
you have given me no signs of life, you have contracted debts without
even telling me to pay them, you have become a smasher of windows
and a blusterer, and, at the end of four years, you come to me,
and that is all you have to say to me!"
This violent fashion of driving a grandson to tenderness was
productive only of silence on the part of Marius. M. Gillenormand
folded his arms; a gesture which with him was peculiarly imperious,
and apostrophized Marius bitterly:--
"Let us make an end of this. You have come to ask something of me,
you say? Well, what? What is it? Speak!"
"Sir," said Marius, with the look of a man who feels that he is falling
over a precipice, "I have come to ask your permission to marry."
M. Gillenormand rang the bell. Basque opened the door half-way.
"Call my daughter."
A second later, the door was opened once more, Mademoiselle Gillenormand
did not enter, but showed herself; Marius was standing, mute, with
pendant arms and the face of a criminal; M. Gillenormand was pacing
back and forth in the room. He turned to his daughter and said to her:--
"Nothing. It is Monsieur Marius. Say good day to him.
Monsieur wishes to marry. That's all. Go away."
The curt, hoarse sound of the old man's voice announced a strange
degree of excitement. The aunt gazed at Marius with a frightened air,
hardly appeared to recognize him, did not allow a gesture or a
syllable to escape her, and disappeared at her father's breath
more swiftly than a straw before the hurricane.
In the meantime, Father Gillenormand had returned and placed his
back against the chimney-piece once more.
"You marry! At one and twenty! You have arranged that! You have
only a permission to ask! a formality. Sit down, sir. Well, you
have had a revolution since I had the honor to see you last.
The Jacobins got the upper hand. You must have been delighted.
Are you not a Republican since you are a Baron? You can make
that agree. The Republic makes a good sauce for the barony.
Are you one of those decorated by July? Have you taken the Louvre
at all, sir? Quite near here, in the Rue Saint-Antoine, opposite
the Rue des Nonamdieres, there is a cannon-ball incrusted in
the wall of the third story of a house with this inscription:
`July 28th, 1830.' Go take a look at that. It produces a good effect.
Ah! those friends of yours do pretty things. By the way, aren't they
erecting a fountain in the place of the monument of M. le Duc de Berry?
So you want to marry? Whom? Can one inquire without indiscretion?"
He paused, and, before Marius had time to answer, he added violently:--
"Come now, you have a profession? A fortune made? How much do you
earn at your trade of lawyer?"
"Nothing," said Marius, with a sort of firmness and resolution
that was almost fierce.
"Nothing? Then all that you have to live upon is the twelve hundred
livres that I allow you?"
Marius did not reply. M. Gillenormand continued:--
"Then I understand the girl is rich?"
"As rich as I am."
"What! No dowry?"
"No."
"Expectations?"
"I think not."
"Utterly naked! What's the father?"
"I don't know."
"And what's her name?"
"Mademoiselle Fauchelevent."
"Fauchewhat?"
"Fauchelevent."
"Pttt!" ejaculated the old gentleman.
"Sir!" exclaimed Marius.
M. Gillenormand interrupted him with the tone of a man who is
speaking to himself:--
"That's right, one and twenty years of age, no profession,
twelve hundred livres a year, Madame la Baronne de Pontmercy will go
and purchase a couple of sous' worth of parsley from the fruiterer."
"Sir," repeated Marius, in the despair at the last hope,
which was vanishing, "I entreat you! I conjure you in the name
of Heaven, with clasped hands, sir, I throw myself at your feet,
permit me to marry her!"
The old man burst into a shout of strident and mournful laughter,
coughing and laughing at the same time.
"Ah! ah! ah! You said to yourself: `Pardine! I'll go hunt up
that old blockhead, that absurd numskull! What a shame that I'm
not twenty-five! How I'd treat him to a nice respectful summons!
How nicely I'd get along without him! It's nothing to me,
I'd say to him: "You're only too happy to see me, you old idiot,
I want to marry, I desire to wed Mamselle No-matter-whom, daughter
of Monsieur No-matter-what, I have no shoes, she has no chemise,
that just suits; I want to throw my career, my future, my youth,
my life to the dogs; I wish to take a plunge into wretchedness with
a woman around my neck, that's an idea, and you must consent to it!"
and the old fossil will consent.' Go, my lad, do as you like,
attach your paving-stone, marry your Pousselevent, your Coupelevent--
Never, sir, never!"
"Father--"
"Never!"
At the tone in which that "never" was uttered, Marius lost all hope.
He traversed the chamber with slow steps, with bowed head, tottering and
more like a dying man than like one merely taking his departure.
M. Gillenormand followed him with his eyes, and at the moment
when the door opened, and Marius was on the point of going out,
he advanced four paces, with the senile vivacity of impetuous and
spoiled old gentlemen, seized Marius by the collar, brought him back
energetically into the room, flung him into an armchair and said
to him:--
"Tell me all about it!"
"It was that single word "father" which had effected this revolution.
Marius stared at him in bewilderment. M. Gillenormand's mobile
face was no longer expressive of anything but rough and ineffable
good-nature. The grandsire had given way before the grandfather.
"Come, see here, speak, tell me about your love affairs, jabber,
tell me everything! Sapristi! how stupid young folks are!"
"Father--" repeated Marius.
The old man's entire countenance lighted up with indescribable radiance.
"Yes, that's right, call me father, and you'll see!"
There was now something so kind, so gentle, so openhearted,
and so paternal in this brusqueness, that Marius, in the sudden
transition from discouragement to hope, was stunned and intoxicated
by it, as it were. He was seated near the table, the light
from the candles brought out the dilapidation of his costume,
which Father Gillenormand regarded with amazement.
"Well, father--" said Marius.
"Ah, by the way," interrupted M. Gillenormand, "you really have
not a penny then? You are dressed like a pickpocket."
He rummaged in a drawer, drew forth a purse, which he laid
on the table: "Here are a hundred louis, buy yourself a hat."
"Father," pursued Marius, "my good father, if you only knew! I love her.
You cannot imagine it; the first time I saw her was at the Luxembourg,
she came there; in the beginning, I did not pay much heed to her,
and then, I don't know how it came about, I fell in love with her.
Oh! how unhappy that made me! Now, at last, I see her every day,
at her own home, her father does not know it, just fancy, they are
going away, it is in the garden that we meet, in the evening,
her father means to take her to England, then I said to myself:
`I'll go and see my grandfather and tell him all about the affair.
I should go mad first, I should die, I should fall ill, I should
throw myself into the water. I absolutely must marry her,
since I should go mad otherwise.' This is the whole truth, and I
do not think that I have omitted anything. She lives in a garden
with an iron fence, in the Rue Plumet. It is in the neighborhood of
the Invalides."
Father Gillenormand had seated himself, with a beaming countenance,
beside Marius. As he listened to him and drank in the sound of
his voice, he enjoyed at the same time a protracted pinch of snuff.
At the words "Rue Plumet" he interrupted his inhalation and allowed
the remainder of his snuff to fall upon his knees.
"The Rue Plumet, the Rue Plumet, did you say?--Let us see!--Are there
not barracks in that vicinity?--Why, yes, that's it. Your cousin
Theodule has spoken to me about it. The lancer, the officer.
A gay girl, my good friend, a gay girl!--Pardieu, yes, the Rue Plumet.
It is what used to be called the Rue Blomet.--It all comes back
to me now. I have heard of that little girl of the iron railing
in the Rue Plumet. In a garden, a Pamela. Your taste is not bad.
She is said to be a very tidy creature. Between ourselves,
I think that simpleton of a lancer has been courting her a bit.
I don't know where he did it. However, that's not to the purpose.
Besides, he is not to be believed. He brags, Marius! I think
it quite proper that a young man like you should be in love.
It's the right thing at your age. I like you better as a lover
than as a Jacobin. I like you better in love with a petticoat,
sapristi! with twenty petticoats, than with M. de Robespierre.
For my part, I will do myself the justice to say, that in the line
of sans-culottes, I have never loved any one but women. Pretty girls
are pretty girls, the deuce! There's no objection to that. As for
the little one, she receives you without her father's knowledge.
That's in the established order of things. I have had adventures of
that same sort myself. More than one. Do you know what is done then?
One does not take the matter ferociously; one does not precipitate
himself into the tragic; one does not make one's mind to marriage
and M. le Maire with his scarf. One simply behaves like a fellow
of spirit. One shows good sense. Slip along, mortals; don't marry.
You come and look up your grandfather, who is a good-natured fellow
at bottom, and who always has a few rolls of louis in an old drawer;
you say to him: `See here, grandfather.' And the grandfather says:
`That's a simple matter. Youth must amuse itself, and old age
must wear out. I have been young, you will be old. Come, my boy,
you shall pass it on to your grandson. Here are two hundred pistoles.
Amuse yourself, deuce take it!' Nothing better! That's the way the
affair should be treated. You don't marry, but that does no harm.
You understand me?"
Marius, petrified and incapable of uttering a syllable, made a sign
with his head that he did not.
The old man burst out laughing, winked his aged eye, gave him
a slap on the knee, stared him full in the face with a mysterious
and beaming air, and said to him, with the tenderest of shrugs
of the shoulder:--
"Booby! make her your mistress."
Marius turned pale. He had understood nothing of what his grandfather
had just said. This twaddle about the Rue Blomet, Pamela, the barracks,
the lancer, had passed before Marius like a dissolving view.
Nothing of all that could bear any reference to Cosette, who was
a lily. The good man was wandering in his mind. But this wandering
terminated in words which Marius did understand, and which were
a mortal insult to Cosette. Those words, "make her your mistress,"
entered the heart of the strict young man like a sword.
He rose, picked up his hat which lay on the floor, and walked
to the door with a firm, assured step. There he turned round,
bowed deeply to his grandfather, raised his head erect again,
and said:--
"Five years ago you insulted my father; to-day you have insulted
my wife. I ask nothing more of you, sir. Farewell."
Father Gillenormand, utterly confounded, opened his mouth,
extended his arms, tried to rise, and before he could utter a word,
the door closed once more, and Marius had disappeared.
The old man remained for several minutes motionless and as though
struck by lightning, without the power to speak or breathe, as though
a clenched fist grasped his throat. At last he tore himself from his
arm-chair, ran, so far as a man can run at ninety-one, to the door,
opened it, and cried:--
"Help! Help!"
His daughter made her appearance, then the domestics. He began again,
with a pitiful rattle: "Run after him! Bring him back! What have I
done to him? He is mad! He is going away! Ah! my God! Ah! my God!
This time he will not come back!"
He went to the window which looked out on the street, threw it open
with his aged and palsied hands, leaned out more than half-way,
while Basque and Nicolette held him behind, and shouted:--
"Marius! Marius! Marius! Marius!"
But Marius could no longer hear him, for at that moment he was
turning the corner of the Rue Saint-Louis.
The octogenarian raised his hands to his temples two or three times
with an expression of anguish, recoiled tottering, and fell back
into an arm-chair, pulseless, voiceless, tearless, with quivering
head and lips which moved with a stupid air, with nothing in his eyes
and nothing any longer in his heart except a gloomy and profound
something which resembled night. _
Read next: VOLUME IV: BOOK NINTH - WHITHER ARE THEY GOING?: CHAPTER I. Jean Valjean
Read previous: VOLUME IV: BOOK EIGHTH - ENCHANTMENTS AND DESOLATIONS: CHAPTER VI. Marius becomes Practical once more to the Extent of Giving Cosette his Address
Table of content of Les Miserables
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
