Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
1794. Pontmercy fought at Spire, at Worms, at Neustadt, at Turkheim, at
1969 words | Chapter 246
Alzey, at Mayence, where he was one of the two hundred who formed
Houchard’s rearguard. It was the twelfth to hold its ground against the
corps of the Prince of Hesse, behind the old rampart of Andernach, and
only rejoined the main body of the army when the enemy’s cannon had
opened a breach from the cord of the parapet to the foot of the glacis.
He was under Kléber at Marchiennes and at the battle of Mont-Palissel,
where a ball from a biscaïen broke his arm. Then he passed to the
frontier of Italy, and was one of the thirty grenadiers who defended
the Col de Tende with Joubert. Joubert was appointed its
adjutant-general, and Pontmercy sub-lieutenant. Pontmercy was by
Berthier’s side in the midst of the grape-shot of that day at Lodi
which caused Bonaparte to say: “Berthier has been cannoneer, cavalier,
and grenadier.” He beheld his old general, Joubert, fall at Novi, at
the moment when, with uplifted sabre, he was shouting: “Forward!”
Having been embarked with his company in the exigencies of the
campaign, on board a pinnace which was proceeding from Genoa to some
obscure port on the coast, he fell into a wasps’-nest of seven or eight
English vessels. The Genoese commander wanted to throw his cannon into
the sea, to hide the soldiers between decks, and to slip along in the
dark as a merchant vessel. Pontmercy had the colors hoisted to the
peak, and sailed proudly past under the guns of the British frigates.
Twenty leagues further on, his audacity having increased, he attacked
with his pinnace, and captured a large English transport which was
carrying troops to Sicily, and which was so loaded down with men and
horses that the vessel was sunk to the level of the sea. In 1805 he was
in that Malher division which took Günzberg from the Archduke
Ferdinand. At Weltingen he received into his arms, beneath a storm of
bullets, Colonel Maupetit, mortally wounded at the head of the 9th
Dragoons. He distinguished himself at Austerlitz in that admirable
march in echelons effected under the enemy’s fire. When the cavalry of
the Imperial Russian Guard crushed a battalion of the 4th of the line,
Pontmercy was one of those who took their revenge and overthrew the
Guard. The Emperor gave him the cross. Pontmercy saw Wurmser at Mantua,
Mélas, and Alexandria, Mack at Ulm, made prisoners in succession. He
formed a part of the eighth corps of the grand army which Mortier
commanded, and which captured Hamburg. Then he was transferred to the
55th of the line, which was the old regiment of Flanders. At Eylau he
was in the cemetery where, for the space of two hours, the heroic
Captain Louis Hugo, the uncle of the author of this book, sustained
alone with his company of eighty-three men every effort of the hostile
army. Pontmercy was one of the three who emerged alive from that
cemetery. He was at Friedland. Then he saw Moscow. Then La Bérésina,
then Lutzen, Bautzen, Dresden, Wachau, Leipzig, and the defiles of
Gelenhausen; then Montmirail, Château-Thierry, Craon, the banks of the
Marne, the banks of the Aisne, and the redoubtable position of Laon. At
Arnay-Le-Duc, being then a captain, he put ten Cossacks to the sword,
and saved, not his general, but his corporal. He was well slashed up on
this occasion, and twenty-seven splinters were extracted from his left
arm alone. Eight days before the capitulation of Paris he had just
exchanged with a comrade and entered the cavalry. He had what was
called under the old regime, _the double hand_, that is to say, an
equal aptitude for handling the sabre or the musket as a soldier, or a
squadron or a battalion as an officer. It is from this aptitude,
perfected by a military education, which certain special branches of
the service arise, the dragoons, for example, who are both cavalry-men
and infantry at one and the same time. He accompanied Napoleon to the
Island of Elba. At Waterloo, he was chief of a squadron of cuirassiers,
in Dubois’ brigade. It was he who captured the standard of the
Lunenburg battalion. He came and cast the flag at the Emperor’s feet.
He was covered with blood. While tearing down the banner he had
received a sword-cut across his face. The Emperor, greatly pleased,
shouted to him: “You are a colonel, you are a baron, you are an officer
of the Legion of Honor!” Pontmercy replied: “Sire, I thank you for my
widow.” An hour later, he fell in the ravine of Ohain. Now, who was
this Georges Pontmercy? He was this same “brigand of the Loire.”
We have already seen something of his history. After Waterloo,
Pontmercy, who had been pulled out of the hollow road of Ohain, as it
will be remembered, had succeeded in joining the army, and had dragged
himself from ambulance to ambulance as far as the cantonments of the
Loire.
The Restoration had placed him on half-pay, then had sent him into
residence, that is to say, under surveillance, at Vernon. King Louis
XVIII., regarding all that which had taken place during the Hundred
Days as not having occurred at all, did not recognize his quality as an
officer of the Legion of Honor, nor his grade of colonel, nor his title
of baron. He, on his side, neglected no occasion of signing himself
“Colonel Baron Pontmercy.” He had only an old blue coat, and he never
went out without fastening to it his rosette as an officer of the
Legion of Honor. The Attorney for the Crown had him warned that the
authorities would prosecute him for “illegal” wearing of this
decoration. When this notice was conveyed to him through an officious
intermediary, Pontmercy retorted with a bitter smile: “I do not know
whether I no longer understand French, or whether you no longer speak
it; but the fact is that I do not understand.” Then he went out for
eight successive days with his rosette. They dared not interfere with
him. Two or three times the Minister of War and the general in command
of the department wrote to him with the following address: _“A Monsieur
le Commandant Pontmercy.” _ He sent back the letters with the seals
unbroken. At the same moment, Napoleon at Saint Helena was treating in
the same fashion the missives of Sir Hudson Lowe addressed to _General
Bonaparte_. Pontmercy had ended, may we be pardoned the expression, by
having in his mouth the same saliva as his Emperor.
In the same way, there were at Rome Carthaginian prisoners who refused
to salute Flaminius, and who had a little of Hannibal’s spirit.
One day he encountered the district-attorney in one of the streets of
Vernon, stepped up to him, and said: “Mr. Crown Attorney, am I
permitted to wear my scar?”
He had nothing save his meagre half-pay as chief of squadron. He had
hired the smallest house which he could find at Vernon. He lived there
alone, we have just seen how. Under the Empire, between two wars, he
had found time to marry Mademoiselle Gillenormand. The old bourgeois,
thoroughly indignant at bottom, had given his consent with a sigh,
saying: “The greatest families are forced into it.” In 1815, Madame
Pontmercy, an admirable woman in every sense, by the way, lofty in
sentiment and rare, and worthy of her husband, died, leaving a child.
This child had been the colonel’s joy in his solitude; but the
grandfather had imperatively claimed his grandson, declaring that if
the child were not given to him he would disinherit him. The father had
yielded in the little one’s interest, and had transferred his love to
flowers.
Moreover, he had renounced everything, and neither stirred up mischief
nor conspired. He shared his thoughts between the innocent things which
he was then doing and the great things which he had done. He passed his
time in expecting a pink or in recalling Austerlitz.
M. Gillenormand kept up no relations with his son-in-law. The colonel
was “a bandit” to him. M. Gillenormand never mentioned the colonel,
except when he occasionally made mocking allusions to “his Baronship.”
It had been expressly agreed that Pontmercy should never attempt to see
his son nor to speak to him, under penalty of having the latter handed
over to him disowned and disinherited. For the Gillenormands, Pontmercy
was a man afflicted with the plague. They intended to bring up the
child in their own way. Perhaps the colonel was wrong to accept these
conditions, but he submitted to them, thinking that he was doing right
and sacrificing no one but himself.
The inheritance of Father Gillenormand did not amount to much; but the
inheritance of Mademoiselle Gillenormand the elder was considerable.
This aunt, who had remained unmarried, was very rich on the maternal
side, and her sister’s son was her natural heir. The boy, whose name
was Marius, knew that he had a father, but nothing more. No one opened
his mouth to him about it. Nevertheless, in the society into which his
grandfather took him, whispers, innuendoes, and winks, had eventually
enlightened the little boy’s mind; he had finally understood something
of the case, and as he naturally took in the ideas and opinions which
were, so to speak, the air he breathed, by a sort of infiltration and
slow penetration, he gradually came to think of his father only with
shame and with a pain at his heart.
While he was growing up in this fashion, the colonel slipped away every
two or three months, came to Paris on the sly, like a criminal breaking
his ban, and went and posted himself at Saint-Sulpice, at the hour when
Aunt Gillenormand led Marius to the mass. There, trembling lest the
aunt should turn round, concealed behind a pillar, motionless, not
daring to breathe, he gazed at his child. The scarred veteran was
afraid of that old spinster.
From this had arisen his connection with the curé of Vernon, M. l’Abbé
Mabeuf.
That worthy priest was the brother of a warden of Saint-Sulpice, who
had often observed this man gazing at his child, and the scar on his
cheek, and the large tears in his eyes. That man, who had so manly an
air, yet who was weeping like a woman, had struck the warden. That face
had clung to his mind. One day, having gone to Vernon to see his
brother, he had encountered Colonel Pontmercy on the bridge, and had
recognized the man of Saint-Sulpice. The warden had mentioned the
circumstance to the curé, and both had paid the colonel a visit, on
some pretext or other. This visit led to others. The colonel, who had
been extremely reserved at first, ended by opening his heart, and the
curé and the warden finally came to know the whole history, and how
Pontmercy was sacrificing his happiness to his child’s future. This
caused the curé to regard him with veneration and tenderness, and the
colonel, on his side, became fond of the curé. And moreover, when both
are sincere and good, no men so penetrate each other, and so amalgamate
with each other, as an old priest and an old soldier. At bottom, the
man is the same. The one has devoted his life to his country here
below, the other to his country on high; that is the only difference.
Twice a year, on the first of January and on St. George’s day, Marius
wrote duty letters to his father, which were dictated by his aunt, and
which one would have pronounced to be copied from some formula; this
was all that M. Gillenormand tolerated; and the father answered them
with very tender letters which the grandfather thrust into his pocket
unread.
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