Les Misérables, v. 3/5: Marius

by Victor Hugo

  CHAPTER VI.

  MAGNON AND HER TWO LITTLE ONES.

  In Gillenormand sorrow was translated into choler; he was furious atbeing in despair. He had every prejudice and took every license. Oneof the things of which he composed his external relief and internalsatisfaction was, as we have indicated, having remained a gay fellow,and passing energetically for such. He called this having a "royalrenown," but this renown at times brought him into singular scrapes.One day a big baby, wrapped in rags and crying lustily, was broughtto him in a basket, which a maid-servant, discharged six monthspreviously, attributed to him. M. Gillenormand was at that time pasthis eighty-fourth year, and people around him became indignant andclamorous. "Does the impudent wench expect to make anybody believethis? What audacity! What an abominable calumny!" M. Gillenormand,however, did not feel at all angry. He looked at the brat with theamiable smile of a man flattered by the calumny, and said to thecompany, "Well, what is the matter? Is there anything so wonderfulin it, that you should stand there like stuck pigs and display yourignorance? M. le Duc d'Angoulême, bastard of his Majesty Charles IX.,married at the age of eighty-five a girl of fifteen; Monsieur Virginal,Marquis d'Alleuze, and brother of Cardinal de Sourdis, Archbishop ofBordeaux, had at the age of eighty-three by the lady's-maid of MadameJacquin, the President's wife, a genuine love-child, who was a Knightof Malta, and Member of the Privy Council. One of the great men ofthis age, Abbé Tabaraud, is the son of a man of eighty-seven years ofage. These things are common enough. And then take the Bible! Afterthis, I declare that this little gentleman is none of mine; but takecare of him, for it is not his fault." The creature, the aforesaidMagnon, sent him a second parcel the next year, also a boy, and M.Gillenormand thought it time to capitulate. He sent the two brats totheir mother, agreeing to pay eighty francs a month for their support,but on condition that the mother was not to begin again. He added, "Iexpect that the mother will treat them well, and I shall go and seethem now and then," which he did. He had a brother, a priest, who wasfor three-and-thirty years Rector of the Poitiers academy, and diedat the age of seventy-nine. "I lost him when quite young," he wouldsay. This brother, who is not much remembered, was a great miser, who,as he was a priest, thought himself bound to give alms to the poor hemet, but he never gave them aught but bad or called-in money, thusfinding means of going to Hades by the road to Paradise. As for M.Gillenormand the elder, he gave alms readily and handsomely; he wasbenevolent, brusque, and charitable, and had he been rich his downfallwould have been magnificent. He liked everything that concerned himto be done grandly; even when he was swindled one day, having beenplundered in the matter of an inheritance by a man of business in aclumsy and obvious manner, he made the solemn remark, "Sir, that wasdone very awkwardly, and I feel ashamed of such clumsiness. Everythinghas degenerated in this age, even the swindlers. Morbleu! a man ofmy stamp ought not to be robbed in that way; I was plundered as if Iwere in a wood, but badly plundered, _sylvœ sint consule dignœ!_" Hehad married twice, as we said; by his first wife he had a girl, whoremained an old maid, and by the second another girl, who died at theage of thirty, and who married through love, or chance, or otherwise, asoldier of fortune who had served in the armies of the Republic and theEmpire, won the cross at Austerlitz, and his colonel's commission atWaterloo. "He is the disgrace of my family," the old gentleman used tosay. He took a great dial of snuff, and had a peculiarly graceful wayof shaking his shirt-frill with the back of his hand. He believed verylittle in God.

  CHAPTER VII

  RULE: NO ONE RECEIVED UNTIL EVENING.

  Such was M. Luc Esprit Gillenormand, who had not lost his hair,which was rather gray than white, and always wore it in dog'sears,--altogether venerable. He was a man of the 18th century,frivolous and great. In 1814, and the early years of theRestoration, M. Gillenormand, who was still a youth,--he was onlyseventy-four,--resided in the Rue Sirvandoni, Faubourg St. Germain.He only retired to the Marais on leaving society, that is to say,long after his eightieth year, and on leaving the world he immuredhimself in his habits; the chief one, and in that he was invariable,was to keep his door closed by day and receive nobody, no matter thenature of his business, till night. He dined at five, and then hisdoor was thrown open; it was the fashion of his century, and he didnot like to give it up. "Day is low," he would say, "and only deservesclosed shutters." People of fashion light up their wit when the zenithillumines its stars, and he barricaded himself against everybody, evenhad it been the King; such was old-time elegance.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  TWO DO NOT MAKE A PAIR.

  As for M. Gillenormand's two daughters, they were born at an intervalof ten years. In their youth they had been very little alike, andboth in character and face were as little sisters as was possible.The younger was a charming creature, who turned to the light, lovedflowers, poetry, and music, was enthusiastic, ethereal, and mentallybetrothed from her youth up to some heroic figure. The elder had herchimera too; she saw in the azure an army-contractor, some fat andvery rich man, a splendidly stupid husband, a million converted intoa man, or else a prefect; the reception at the prefecture, an usherin the ante-room with a chain round his neck, the official balls, theaddresses at the mansion-house to be "Madame la Prefête,"--all thisbuzzed in her imagination. The two sisters wandered each in her ownreverie, at the period when they were girls, and both had wings,--theone those of an angel, the other those of a goose.

  No ambition is fully realized, at least not in this nether world, andno paradise becomes earthly in our age. The younger married the man ofher dreams, but she was dead, while the elder did not marry. At theperiod when she enters into our narrative, she was an old virtue, anincombustible prude, with one of the most acute noses and most obtuseintellects imaginable. It is a characteristic fact that, beyond herfamily, no one had ever known her family name; she was called Mlle.Gillenormand the elder. In the matter of cant, Mlle. Gillenormand couldhave given points to a Miss. It was modesty pushed to the verge of theimpure. She had one frightful reminiscence in her life,--one day a mansaw her garter.

  Age had only heightened this pitiless modesty,--her chemisette wasnever sufficiently opaque, and never was high enough. She multipliedbrooches and pins at places where no one dreamed of looking. Thepeculiarity of prudery is to station the more sentries the less thefortress is menaced. Still, let who will explain these old mysteries ofinnocence, she allowed herself to be kissed without displeasure by anofficer in the Lancers, who was her grand-nephew, and Théodule by name.In spite of this favored Lancer, however, the ticket of "Prude," whichwe have set upon her, suited her exactly. Mlle. Gillenormand's was aspecies of twilight soul, and prudery is a semi-virtue and a semi-vice.She added to prudery the congenial lining of bigotry; she belonged tothe Sisterhood of the Virgin, wore a white veil on certain saints'days, muttered special orisons, revered "the holy blood," venerated"the sacred heart," remained for hours in contemplation before arococo-Jesuit altar in a closed chapel, and allowed her soul to soaramong the little marble clouds and through the large beams of giltwood.

  She had a chapel friend, an old maid like herself, of the name of Mlle.Vaubois, absolutely imbecile, and by whose side Mlle. Gillenormand hadthe pleasure of being an eagle. Beyond Agnus Deis and Ave Marias, Mlle.Vaubois knew nothing except the different ways of making preserves.Perfect of her kind, she was the ermine of stupidity, without a singlespot of intelligence. We must add that Mlle. Gillenormand rathergained than lost by growing old. She had never been wicked, which is arelative goodness; and then years abrade angles, and time had softenedher. She had an obscure melancholy, of which she did not herselfpossess the secret, and about her entire person there was the stuporof a finished life which has not begun. She kept house for her father;such families, consisting of an old man and an old maid, are not rare,and have the ever-touching appearance of two weaknesses supporting eachother.

  There was also in this house a child,--a little boy,--who was alwaystrembling and dumb in the old gentleman's presence. M. Gillenormandnever spoke t
o this boy except with a stern voice, and at times withupraised cane. "Come here, sir,--scamp, scoundrel, come here,--answerme, fellow,--let me see you, vagabond!" etc., etc. He adored him; itwas his grandson, and we shall meet him again.

  Book III.

  GRANDFATHER AND GRANDSON.

  CHAPTER I.

  AN OLD DRAWING--BOOM.

  When M. Gillenormand lived in the Rue Servandoni, he frequentedseveral very good and highly noble salons. Although a bourgeois, M.Gillenormand was welcome in them, and as he had a two-fold stockof wit, namely, that which he had, and that attributed to him, hewas sought after and made much of. There are some people who desireinfluence and to be talked about, no matter what price they pay;and when they cannot be oracles, they make themselves buffoons.M. Gillenormand was not of that nature; and his domination in theRoyalist drawing-rooms which he frequented did not cost him any of hisself-respect. He was an oracle everywhere; and at times he held his ownagainst M. de Bonald, and even M. Bengy-Puy-Vallée.

  About 1817, he invariably spent two afternoons a week at the house ofthe Baronne de T----, a worthy and respectable person whose husbandhad been, under Louis XVI., Ambassador to Berlin. The Baron de T----,who, when alive, was passionately devoted to magnetic ecstasies andvisions, died abroad a ruined man, leaving as his sole fortune tenMS. volumes bound in red Morocco and gilt-edged, which contained verycurious memoirs about Mesmer and his trough. Madame de T---- did notpublish these memoirs through dignity, and lived on a small annuity,which survived no one knew how. Madame de T---- lived away from Court,"which was a very mixed society," as she said, in noble, proud, andpoor isolation. Some friends collected twice a week round her widow'sfire, and this constituted a pure Royalist salon. Tea was drunk,and people uttered there, according as the wind blew to elegiacs ordithyrambics, groans or cries of horror about the age, the charter, theBuonapartists, the prostitution of the Cordon Bleu to untitled persons,and the Jacobinism of Louis XVIII.; and they also whispered about thehopes which Monsieur, afterwards Charles X., produced.

  Low songs, in which Napoleon was called Nicholas, were greeted herewith transports of delight. Duchesses, the most charming and delicateof ladies, went into ecstasies there about couplets like the following,which were addressed to the "Federals":

  "Renfoncez dans vos culottes Le bout d'chemise qui vous pend. Qu'on n'dis pas qu'les patriotes Ont arboré l'drapeau blanc!"

  They amused themselves with puns which they fancied tremendous, withinnocent jokes which they supposed venomous, with quatrains and evendistichs; here is one on the Dessolles Ministry, the moderate cabinetof which Mons. Decazes and Deserre formed part:--

  "Pour raffermir le trône ébranlé sur sa base, Il faut changer de sol, et de serre et de case;"

  or else they played upon the list of the House of Peers, "an abominablyJacobin chamber," and combined names on this list so as to form, forinstance, phrases like the following: "Damas, Sabran, Gouvion de St.Cyr." In this society the Revolution was parodied, and they had somedesire to sharpen the same passions in the contrary sense, and sangtheir _ça, ira_.

  "Ah! ça ira! ça ira! ça ira! Les buonapartist' à la lanterne!"

  Songs are like the guillotine,--they cut off indiscriminately to-daythis head, and to-morrow that. It is only a variation. In the Fualdèsaffair, which belongs to this period (1816), they sided with Bastideand Jansion, because Fualdès was "buonapartiste," They called theLiberals friends and brothers, and that was the last degree of insult.Like some church-steeples, the salon of the Baronne de T---- hadtwo cocks: one was M. Gillenormand, the other the Comte de LamotheValois, of whom they whispered with a species of respect,--"You know?the Lamothe of the necklace business,"--parties have these singularamnesties.

  Let us add this; in the bourgeoisie, honored situations are lessened bytoo facile relations, and care must be taken as to who is admitted.In the same way as there is a loss of caloric in the vicinity ofcold persons, there is a diminution of respect on the approach ofdespised persons. The old high society held itself above this law,as above all others; Marigny, brother of the Pompadour, visited thePrince de Soubise, not although, but because, he was her brother. DuBarry, godfather of the Vaubernier, is most welcome at the house ofthe Maréchal de Richelieu. That world is Olympus, and Mercury and thePrince de Guemenée are at home in it. A robber is admitted to it,provided he be a god.

  The Comte de Lamothe, who, in 1815, was seventy-five years of age, hadnothing remarkable about him beyond his silent and sententious air, hisangular and cold face, his perfectly polite manners, his coat buttonedup to the chin, and his constantly crossed legs, covered with trousersof the color of burnt Sienna. His face was the same color as histrousers. This M. de Lamothe was esteemed in this salon on account ofhis "celebrity," and, strange to say, but true, on account of his nameof Valois.

  As for M. Gillenormand, the respect felt for him was of perfectlygood alloy. He was an authority; in spite of his levity, he had acertain imposing, worthy, honest, and haughty manner, which did notat all injure his gayety, and his great age added to it. A man is nota century with impunity, and years eventually form a venerable fencearound a head. He made remarks, too, which had all the sparkle of theold régime. Thus, when the King of Prussia, after restoring LouisXVIII., paid him a visit under the name of the Comte de Ruppin, hewas received by the descendant of Louis XIV. somewhat as if he wereMarquis de Brandebourg, and with the most delicate impertinence. M.Gillenormand approved of it. "All kings who are not King of France,"he said, "are provincial kings." One day the following question wasasked, and answer given in his presence,--"What has been done about theeditor of the _Courrier Français?"_ "He is to be changed." "There's a_c_ too much," M. Gillenormand dryly observed. At an anniversary TeDeum for the return of the Bourbons, on seeing M. de Talleyrand pass,he said,--"There's his Excellency the Devil."

  M. Gillenormand was generally accompanied by his daughter, a tall younglady, who at that time was forty and looked fifty; and by a pretty boyof nine years of age, red and white, fresh, with happy, confident eyes,who never appeared in this drawing-room without hearing all the voicesbuzz around him,--"How pretty he is! What a pity, poor boy!" This ladwas the one to whom we referred just now, and he was called "poor boy"because he had for father "a brigand of the Loire." This brigand wasthat son-in-law of M. Gillenormand, who has already been mentioned, andwhom the old gentleman called the "disgrace of his family."

  CHAPTER II.

  A RED SPECTRE OF THAT DAY.

  Any one who had passed at that period through the little town ofVernon, and walked on the handsome stone bridge, which, let us hope,will soon be succeeded by some hideous wire bridge, would have noticed,on looking over the parapet, a man of about fifty, wearing a leatherncap, and trousers and jacket of coarse gray cloth, to which somethingyellow, which had been a red ribbon, was sewn, with a face tanned bythe sun, and almost black, and hair almost white, with a large scar onhis forehead and running down his cheek, bowed and prematurely aged,walking almost every day, spade and pick in hand, in one of the walledenclosures near the bridge, which border, like a belt of terraces, theleft bank of the Seine. There are delicious enclosures full of flowers,of which you might say, were they much larger, "They are gardens,"and if they were a little smaller, "They are bouquets." All theseenclosures join the river at one end and a house at the other. Theman in the jacket and wooden shoes, to whom we have alluded, occupiedin 1817 the narrowest of these enclosures and the smallest of thesehouses. He lived there alone and solitary, silently and poorly, with awoman who was neither young nor old, neither pretty nor ugly, neitherpeasant nor bourgeoise, who waited on him. The square of land whichhe called his garden was celebrated in the town for the beauty of theflowers he cultivated, and they were his occupation.

  Through his toil, perseverance, attention, and watering-pot, he hadsucceeded in creating after the Creator; and he had invented sundrytulips and dahlias which seemed to have been forgotten by nature. Hewas ingenious, and preceded Soulange Bodin
in the formation of smallpatches of peat-soil for the growth of the rare and precious shrubsof America and China. From daybreak in summer he was in his walks,pricking out, clipping, hoeing, watering, or moving among his flowers,with an air of kindness, sorrow, and gentleness. At times he wouldstand thoughtful and motionless for hours, listening to the song ofa bird in a tree, the prattle of a child in a house, or else gazingat a drop of dew on a blade of grass, which the sun converted into acarbuncle. He lived very poorly, and drank more milk than wine: a childmade him give way, and his servant scolded him. He was timid to such anextent that he seemed stern, went out rarely, and saw no one but thepoor, who tapped at his window, and his curé, Abbé Mabœuf, a good oldman. Still, if the inhabitants of the town or strangers, curious to seehis roses or tulips, came and tapped at his little door, he opened itwith a smile. He was the brigand of the Loire.

  Any one who, at the same time, read military memoirs and biographies,the _Moniteur_ and the bulletins of the great army, might have beenstruck by a name which pretty often turns up, that of George Pontmercy.When quite a lad this Pontmercy was a private in the Saintongeregiment, and when the Revolution broke out, this regiment formedpart of the army of the Rhine, for the regiments of the Monarchy kepttheir provincial names even after the fall of the Monarchy, and werenot brigaded till 1794. Pontmercy fought at Spires, Worms, Neustadt,Turkheim, Alzey, and at Mayence, where he was one of the two hundredwho formed Houchard's rear-guard. He, with eleven others, held outagainst the corps of the Prince of Hesse behind the old rampart ofAndernach, and did not fall back on the main body until the enemy'sguns had opened a breach from the parapet to the talus. He was underKléber at Marchiennes, and at the fight of Mont Palissel, where hisarm was broken by a rifle-ball; then he went to the frontier of Italy,and was one of the thirty who defended the Col de Tenda with Joubert.Joubert was appointed adjutant-general, and Pontmercy sub-lieutenant;he was by Berthier's side amid the grape-shot on that day of Lodi whichmade Bonaparte say, "Berthier was gunner, trooper, and grenadier." Hesaw his old general Joubert fall at Novi at the moment when he wasshouting, with uplifted sabre, "Forward!" Having embarked with hiscompany on board a cutter which sailed from Genoa to some little portof the coast, he fell into a wasps' nest of seven or eight Englishsail. The Genoese commandant wished to throw his guns into the sea,hide the soldiers in the hold, and pass like a merchant vessel; butPontmercy had the tricolor flag hoisted at the peak, and proudlypassed under the guns of the British frigates. Twenty leagues fartheron, his audacity increasing, he attacked and captured a large Englishtransport conveying troops to Sicily, and so laden with men and horsesthat the vessel's deck was almost flush with the sea. In 1805 hebelonged to Malher's division, which took Gunzbourg from the ArchdukeFerdinand, and at Wettingen he caught in his arms, amid a shower ofbullets, Colonel Maupilet, who was mortally wounded at the head ofthe 9th Dragoons. He distinguished himself at Austerlitz in thatadmirable march in columns of companies performed under the enemy'sfire; and when the Russian Imperial Horse Guards destroyed one of thebattalions of the 4th line Infantry, Pontmercy was among those whotook their revenge, and drove back these Guards. For this the Emperorgave him the Cross. Pontmercy saw in turn Wurmser made prisoner atMantua, Mélas at Alessandria, and Mack at Ulm, and he belonged tothe 8th corps of the grand army which Mortier commanded, and whichtook Hamburg. Then he joined the 55th regiment of the line, which wasthe old regiment of Flanders; at Eylau, he was in the cemetery wherethe heroic Captain Louis Hugo, uncle of the author of this book,withstood, with his company of eighty-three men, for two hours, thewhole effort of the enemy's army. Pontmercy was one of the three wholeft this cemetery alive. He was at Friedland; then he saw Moscow, theBeresina, Lutzen, Bautzen, Dresden, Wacha, Leipsic, and the defilesof Gelnhausen; then at Montmereil, Château-Thierry, Craon, the banksof the Marne, the banks of the Aisne, and the formidable positionof Laon. At Arnay le Duc, as captain, he sabred ten Cossacks, andsaved not his general, but his corporal; he was cut to pieces on thisoccasion, and seven-and-twenty splinters were taken out of his left armalone. Eight days before the capitulation of Paris he exchanged witha comrade and entered the cavalry; for he had what was called underthe old régime a "double hand;" that is to say, an equal aptitude inhandling, as private, a sabre or musket, as officer, a squadron or acompany. From this aptitude, improved by military education, specialarms sprang, for instance, the dragoons, who are at once cavalry andinfantry. He accompanied Napoleon to Elba, and at Waterloo was a Majorof cuirassiers in Dubois' brigade. It was he who took the colors of theLimburg battalion, and himself threw them at the Emperor's feet. He wascovered with blood; for, on seizing the colors, he received a sabre-cutacross the face. The Emperor, who was pleased, cried out to him, "Youare a Colonel, a Baron, and officer of the Legion of Honor!" Pontmercyanswered,--"Sire, I thank you on behalf of my widow." An hour later hefell into the ravine of Ohain. And now who was this George Pontmercy?He was the same brigand of the Loire.