Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
CHAPTER VI—THE TWO OLD MEN DO EVERYTHING, EACH ONE AFTER HIS OWN
3205 words | Chapter 429
FASHION, TO RENDER COSETTE HAPPY
Everything was made ready for the wedding. The doctor, on being
consulted, declared that it might take place in February. It was then
December. A few ravishing weeks of perfect happiness passed.
The grandfather was not the least happy of them all. He remained for a
quarter of an hour at a time gazing at Cosette.
“The wonderful, beautiful girl!” he exclaimed. “And she has so sweet
and good an air! she is, without exception, the most charming girl that
I have ever seen in my life. Later on, she’ll have virtues with an odor
of violets. How graceful! one cannot live otherwise than nobly with
such a creature. Marius, my boy, you are a Baron, you are rich, don’t
go to pettifogging, I beg of you.”
Cosette and Marius had passed abruptly from the sepulchre to paradise.
The transition had not been softened, and they would have been stunned,
had they not been dazzled by it.
“Do you understand anything about it?” said Marius to Cosette.
“No,” replied Cosette, “but it seems to me that the good God is caring
for us.”
Jean Valjean did everything, smoothed away every difficulty, arranged
everything, made everything easy. He hastened towards Cosette’s
happiness with as much ardor, and, apparently with as much joy, as
Cosette herself.
As he had been a mayor, he understood how to solve that delicate
problem, with the secret of which he alone was acquainted, Cosette’s
civil status. If he were to announce her origin bluntly, it might
prevent the marriage, who knows? He extricated Cosette from all
difficulties. He concocted for her a family of dead people, a sure
means of not encountering any objections. Cosette was the only scion of
an extinct family; Cosette was not his own daughter, but the daughter
of the other Fauchelevent. Two brothers Fauchelevent had been gardeners
to the convent of the Petit-Picpus. Inquiry was made at that convent;
the very best information and the most respectable references abounded;
the good nuns, not very apt and but little inclined to fathom questions
of paternity, and not attaching any importance to the matter, had never
understood exactly of which of the two Fauchelevents Cosette was the
daughter. They said what was wanted and they said it with zeal. An
_acte de notoriété_ was drawn up. Cosette became in the eyes of the
law, Mademoiselle Euphrasie Fauchelevent. She was declared an orphan,
both father and mother being dead. Jean Valjean so arranged it that he
was appointed, under the name of Fauchelevent, as Cosette’s guardian,
with M. Gillenormand as supervising guardian over him.
As for the five hundred and eighty thousand francs, they constituted a
legacy bequeathed to Cosette by a dead person, who desired to remain
unknown. The original legacy had consisted of five hundred and
ninety-four thousand francs; but ten thousand francs had been expended
on the education of Mademoiselle Euphrasie, five thousand francs of
that amount having been paid to the convent. This legacy, deposited in
the hands of a third party, was to be turned over to Cosette at her
majority, or at the date of her marriage. This, taken as a whole, was
very acceptable, as the reader will perceive, especially when the sum
due was half a million. There were some peculiarities here and there,
it is true, but they were not noticed; one of the interested parties
had his eyes blindfolded by love, the others by the six hundred
thousand francs.
Cosette learned that she was not the daughter of that old man whom she
had so long called father. He was merely a kinsman; another
Fauchelevent was her real father. At any other time this would have
broken her heart. But at the ineffable moment which she was then
passing through, it cast but a slight shadow, a faint cloud, and she
was so full of joy that the cloud did not last long. She had Marius.
The young man arrived, the old man was effaced; such is life.
And then, Cosette had, for long years, been habituated to seeing
enigmas around her; every being who has had a mysterious childhood is
always prepared for certain renunciations.
Nevertheless, she continued to call Jean Valjean: Father.
Cosette, happy as the angels, was enthusiastic over Father
Gillenormand. It is true that he overwhelmed her with gallant
compliments and presents. While Jean Valjean was building up for
Cosette a normal situation in society and an unassailable status, M.
Gillenormand was superintending the basket of wedding gifts. Nothing so
amused him as being magnificent. He had given to Cosette a robe of
Binche guipure which had descended to him from his own grandmother.
“These fashions come up again,” said he, “ancient things are the rage,
and the young women of my old age dress like the old women of my
childhood.”
He rifled his respectable chests of drawers in Coromandel lacquer, with
swelling fronts, which had not been opened for years.—“Let us hear the
confession of these dowagers,” he said, “let us see what they have in
their paunches.” He noisily violated the pot-bellied drawers of all his
wives, of all his mistresses and of all his grandmothers. Pekins,
damasks, lampas, painted moires, robes of shot gros de Tours, India
kerchiefs embroidered in gold that could be washed, dauphines without a
right or wrong side, in the piece, Genoa and Alençon point lace,
parures in antique goldsmith’s work, ivory bon-bon boxes ornamented
with microscopic battles, gewgaws and ribbons—he lavished everything on
Cosette. Cosette, amazed, desperately in love with Marius, and wild
with gratitude towards M. Gillenormand, dreamed of a happiness without
limit clothed in satin and velvet. Her wedding basket seemed to her to
be upheld by seraphim. Her soul flew out into the azure depths, with
wings of Mechlin lace.
The intoxication of the lovers was only equalled, as we have already
said, by the ecstasy of the grandfather. A sort of flourish of trumpets
went on in the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire.
Every morning, a fresh offering of bric-à-brac from the grandfather to
Cosette. All possible knickknacks glittered around her.
One day Marius, who was fond of talking gravely in the midst of his
bliss, said, apropos of I know not what incident:
“The men of the revolution are so great, that they have the prestige of
the ages, like Cato and like Phocion, and each one of them seems to me
an antique memory.”
“Moire antique!” exclaimed the old gentleman. “Thanks, Marius. That is
precisely the idea of which I was in search.”
And on the following day, a magnificent dress of tea-rose colored moire
antique was added to Cosette’s wedding presents.
From these fripperies, the grandfather extracted a bit of wisdom.
“Love is all very well; but there must be something else to go with it.
The useless must be mingled with happiness. Happiness is only the
necessary. Season that enormously with the superfluous for me. A palace
and her heart. Her heart and the Louvre. Her heart and the grand
waterworks of Versailles. Give me my shepherdess and try to make her a
duchess. Fetch me Phyllis crowned with corn-flowers, and add a hundred
thousand francs income. Open for me a bucolic perspective as far as you
can see, beneath a marble colonnade. I consent to the bucolic and also
to the fairy spectacle of marble and gold. Dry happiness resembles dry
bread. One eats, but one does not dine. I want the superfluous, the
useless, the extravagant, excess, that which serves no purpose. I
remember to have seen, in the Cathedral of Strasburg, a clock, as tall
as a three-story house which marked the hours, which had the kindness
to indicate the hour, but which had not the air of being made for that;
and which, after having struck midday, or midnight,—midday, the hour of
the sun, or midnight, the hour of love,—or any other hour that you
like, gave you the moon and the stars, the earth and the sea, birds and
fishes, Phœbus and Phœbe, and a host of things which emerged from a
niche, and the twelve apostles, and the Emperor Charles the Fifth, and
Éponine, and Sabinus, and a throng of little gilded goodmen, who played
on the trumpet to boot. Without reckoning delicious chimes which it
sprinkled through the air, on every occasion, without any one’s knowing
why. Is a petty bald clock-face which merely tells the hour equal to
that? For my part, I am of the opinion of the big clock of Strasburg,
and I prefer it to the cuckoo clock from the Black Forest.”
M. Gillenormand talked nonsense in connection with the wedding, and all
the fripperies of the eighteenth century passed pell-mell through his
dithyrambs.
“You are ignorant of the art of festivals. You do not know how to
organize a day of enjoyment in this age,” he exclaimed. “Your
nineteenth century is weak. It lacks excess. It ignores the rich, it
ignores the noble. In everything it is clean-shaven. Your third estate
is insipid, colorless, odorless, and shapeless. The dreams of your
bourgeois who set up, as they express it: a pretty boudoir freshly
decorated, violet, ebony and calico. Make way! Make way! the Sieur
Curmudgeon is marrying Mademoiselle Clutch-penny. Sumptuousness and
splendor. A louis d’or has been stuck to a candle. There’s the epoch
for you. My demand is that I may flee from it beyond the Sarmatians.
Ah! in 1787, I predict that all was lost, from the day when I beheld
the Duc de Rohan, Prince de Léon, Duc de Chabot, Duc de Montbazon,
Marquis de Soubise, Vicomte de Thouars, peer of France, go to
Longchamps in a tapecu! That has borne its fruits. In this century, men
attend to business, they gamble on ’Change, they win money, they are
stingy. People take care of their surfaces and varnish them; every one
is dressed as though just out of a bandbox, washed, soaped, scraped,
shaved, combed, waked, smoothed, rubbed, brushed, cleaned on the
outside, irreproachable, polished as a pebble, discreet, neat, and at
the same time, death of my life, in the depths of their consciences
they have dung-heaps and cesspools that are enough to make a cow-herd
who blows his nose in his fingers, recoil. I grant to this age the
device: ‘Dirty Cleanliness.’ Don’t be vexed, Marius, give me permission
to speak; I say no evil of the people as you see, I am always harping
on your people, but do look favorably on my dealing a bit of a slap to
the bourgeoisie. I belong to it. He who loves well lashes well.
Thereupon, I say plainly, that nowadays people marry, but that they no
longer know how to marry. Ah! it is true, I regret the grace of the
ancient manners. I regret everything about them, their elegance, their
chivalry, those courteous and delicate ways, that joyous luxury which
every one possessed, music forming part of the wedding, a symphony
above stairs, a beating of drums below stairs, the dances, the joyous
faces round the table, the fine-spun gallant compliments, the songs,
the fireworks, the frank laughter, the devil’s own row, the huge knots
of ribbon. I regret the bride’s garter. The bride’s garter is cousin to
the girdle of Venus. On what does the war of Troy turn? On Helen’s
garter, parbleu! Why did they fight, why did Diomed the divine break
over the head of Meriones that great brazen helmet of ten points? why
did Achilles and Hector hew each other up with vast blows of their
lances? Because Helen allowed Paris to take her garter. With Cosette’s
garter, Homer would construct the _Iliad_. He would put in his poem, a
loquacious old fellow, like me, and he would call him Nestor. My
friends, in bygone days, in those amiable days of yore, people married
wisely; they had a good contract, and then they had a good carouse. As
soon as Cujas had taken his departure, Gamacho entered. But, in sooth!
the stomach is an agreeable beast which demands its due, and which
wants to have its wedding also. People supped well, and had at table a
beautiful neighbor without a guimpe so that her throat was only
moderately concealed. Oh! the large laughing mouths, and how gay we
were in those days! youth was a bouquet; every young man terminated in
a branch of lilacs or a tuft of roses; whether he was a shepherd or a
warrior; and if, by chance, one was a captain of dragoons, one found
means to call oneself Florian. People thought much of looking well.
They embroidered and tinted themselves. A bourgeois had the air of a
flower, a Marquis had the air of a precious stone. People had no straps
to their boots, they had no boots. They were spruce, shining, waved,
lustrous, fluttering, dainty, coquettish, which did not at all prevent
their wearing swords by their sides. The humming-bird has beak and
claws. That was the day of the _Galland Indies_. One of the sides of
that century was delicate, the other was magnificent; and by the green
cabbages! people amused themselves. To-day, people are serious. The
bourgeois is avaricious, the bourgeoise is a prude; your century is
unfortunate. People would drive away the Graces as being too low in the
neck. Alas! beauty is concealed as though it were ugliness. Since the
revolution, everything, including the ballet-dancers, has had its
trousers; a mountebank dancer must be grave; your rigadoons are
doctrinarian. It is necessary to be majestic. People would be greatly
annoyed if they did not carry their chins in their cravats. The ideal
of an urchin of twenty when he marries, is to resemble M.
Royer-Collard. And do you know what one arrives at with that majesty?
at being petty. Learn this: joy is not only joyous; it is great. But be
in love gayly then, what the deuce! marry, when you marry, with fever
and giddiness, and tumult, and the uproar of happiness! Be grave in
church, well and good. But, as soon as the mass is finished, sarpejou!
you must make a dream whirl around the bride. A marriage should be
royal and chimerical; it should promenade its ceremony from the
cathedral of Rheims to the pagoda of Chanteloup. I have a horror of a
paltry wedding. Ventregoulette! be in Olympus for that one day, at
least. Be one of the gods. Ah! people might be sylphs. Games and
Laughter, argiraspides; they are stupids. My friends, every recently
made bridegroom ought to be Prince Aldobrandini. Profit by that unique
minute in life to soar away to the empyrean with the swans and the
eagles, even if you do have to fall back on the morrow into the
bourgeoisie of the frogs. Don’t economize on the nuptials, do not prune
them of their splendors; don’t scrimp on the day when you beam. The
wedding is not the housekeeping. Oh! if I were to carry out my fancy,
it would be gallant, violins would be heard under the trees. Here is my
programme: sky-blue and silver. I would mingle with the festival the
rural divinities, I would convoke the Dryads and the Nereids. The
nuptials of Amphitrite, a rosy cloud, nymphs with well dressed locks
and entirely naked, an Academician offering quatrains to the goddess, a
chariot drawn by marine monsters.
“Triton trottait devant, et tirait de sa conque
Des sons si ravissants qu’il ravissait quiconque!”65
—there’s a festive programme, there’s a good one, or else I know
nothing of such matters, deuce take it!”
While the grandfather, in full lyrical effusion, was listening to
himself, Cosette and Marius grew intoxicated as they gazed freely at
each other.
Aunt Gillenormand surveyed all this with her imperturbable placidity.
Within the last five or six months she had experienced a certain amount
of emotions. Marius returned, Marius brought back bleeding, Marius
brought back from a barricade, Marius dead, then living, Marius
reconciled, Marius betrothed, Marius wedding a poor girl, Marius
wedding a millionairess. The six hundred thousand francs had been her
last surprise. Then, her indifference of a girl taking her first
communion returned to her. She went regularly to service, told her
beads, read her euchology, mumbled _Aves_ in one corner of the house,
while _I love you_ was being whispered in the other, and she beheld
Marius and Cosette in a vague way, like two shadows. The shadow was
herself.
There is a certain state of inert asceticism in which the soul,
neutralized by torpor, a stranger to that which may be designated as
the business of living, receives no impressions, either human, or
pleasant or painful, with the exception of earthquakes and
catastrophes. This devotion, as Father Gillenormand said to his
daughter, corresponds to a cold in the head. You smell nothing of life.
Neither any bad, nor any good odor.
Moreover, the six hundred thousand francs had settled the elderly
spinster’s indecision. Her father had acquired the habit of taking her
so little into account, that he had not consulted her in the matter of
consent to Marius’ marriage. He had acted impetuously, according to his
wont, having, a despot-turned slave, but a single thought,—to satisfy
Marius. As for the aunt,—it had not even occurred to him that the aunt
existed, and that she could have an opinion of her own, and, sheep as
she was, this had vexed her. Somewhat resentful in her inmost soul, but
impassible externally, she had said to herself: “My father has settled
the question of the marriage without reference to me; I shall settle
the question of the inheritance without consulting him.” She was rich,
in fact, and her father was not. She had reserved her decision on this
point. It is probable that, had the match been a poor one, she would
have left him poor. “So much the worse for my nephew! he is wedding a
beggar, let him be a beggar himself!” But Cosette’s half-million
pleased the aunt, and altered her inward situation so far as this pair
of lovers were concerned. One owes some consideration to six hundred
thousand francs, and it was evident that she could not do otherwise
than leave her fortune to these young people, since they did not need
it.
It was arranged that the couple should live with the grandfather—M.
Gillenormand insisted on resigning to them his chamber, the finest in
the house. “That will make me young again,” he said. “It’s an old plan
of mine. I have always entertained the idea of having a wedding in my
chamber.”
He furnished this chamber with a multitude of elegant trifles. He had
the ceiling and walls hung with an extraordinary stuff, which he had by
him in the piece, and which he believed to have emanated from Utrecht
with a buttercup-colored satin ground, covered with velvet auricula
blossoms.—“It was with that stuff,” said he, “that the bed of the
Duchesse d’Anville at la Roche-Guyon was draped.”—On the chimney-piece,
he set a little figure in Saxe porcelain, carrying a muff against her
nude stomach.
M. Gillenormand’s library became the lawyer’s study, which Marius
needed; a study, it will be remembered, being required by the council
of the order.
Reading Tips
Use arrow keys to navigate
Press 'N' for next chapter
Press 'P' for previous chapter