Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
CHAPTER VIII—MARBLE AGAINST GRANITE
1933 words | Chapter 253
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 Théodule 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
Théodule 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-naparté 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?
BOOK FOURTH—THE FRIENDS OF THE A B C
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