________________________________________________
_ For a long time, Marius was neither dead nor alive. For many
weeks he lay in a fever accompanied by delirium, and by tolerably
grave cerebral symptoms, caused more by the shocks of the wounds
on the head than by the wounds themselves.
He repeated Cosette's name for whole nights in the melancholy loquacity
of fever, and with the sombre obstinacy of agony. The extent of some
of the lesions presented a serious danger, the suppuration of large
wounds being always liable to become re-absorbed, and consequently,
to kill the sick man, under certain atmospheric conditions; at every
change of weather, at the slightest storm, the physician was uneasy.
"Above all things," he repeated, "let the wounded man be subjected
to no emotion." The dressing of the wounds was complicated
and difficult, the fixation of apparatus and bandages by
cerecloths not having been invented as yet, at that epoch.
Nicolette used up a sheet "as big as the ceiling," as she put it,
for lint. It was not without difficulty that the chloruretted
lotions and the nitrate of silver overcame the gangrene.
As long as there was any danger, M. Gillenormand, seated in despair
at his grandson's pillow, was, like Marius, neither alive nor dead.
Every day, sometimes twice a day, a very well dressed gentleman
with white hair,--such was the description given by the porter,--
came to inquire about the wounded man, and left a large package
of lint for the dressings.
Finally, on the 7th of September, four months to a day, after the
sorrowful night when he had been brought back to his grandfather
in a dying condition, the doctor declared that he would answer
for Marius. Convalescence began. But Marius was forced to remain
for two months more stretched out on a long chair, on account of the
results called up by the fracture of his collar-bone. There always
is a last wound like that which will not close, and which prolongs
the dressings indefinitely, to the great annoyance of the sick person.
However, this long illness and this long convalescence saved him
from all pursuit. In France, there is no wrath, not even of a
public character, which six months will not extinguish. Revolts,
in the present state of society, are so much the fault of every one,
that they are followed by a certain necessity of shutting the eyes.
Let us add, that the inexcusable Gisquet order, which enjoined
doctors to lodge information against the wounded, having outraged
public opinion, and not opinion alone, but the King first of all,
the wounded were covered and protected by this indignation; and,
with the exception of those who had been made prisoners in the very
act of combat, the councils of war did not dare to trouble any one.
So Marius was left in peace.
M. Gillenormand first passed through all manner of anguish, and then
through every form of ecstasy. It was found difficult to prevent
his passing every night beside the wounded man; he had his big
arm-chair 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: "Aie! aie!"
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 nee a Fougere "Amour, tu vis en elle;
Vrai nid d'une bergere; 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 meme,
Jeanne et ses durs tetons
Bretons."[61]
[61] "Jeanne was born at Fougere, a true shepherd's nest; I adore
her petticoat, the rogue.
"Love, thou dwellest in her; For 'tis in her eyes that thou placest
thy quiver, sly scamp!
"As for me, I sing her, and I love, more than Diana herself,
Jeanne and her firm Breton breasts."
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, Eponine, Gavroche, Mabeuf,
the Thenardiers, 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. _
Read next: VOLUME V: BOOK FIFTH - GRANDSON AND GRANDFATHER: CHAPTER III. Marius Attacked
Read previous: VOLUME V: BOOK FIFTH - GRANDSON AND GRANDFATHER: CHAPTER I. In Which the Tree with the Zinc Plaster Appears Again
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