Les Miserables (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Victor Hugo

  In 1827, Marius had just attained his eighteenth year. On coming in one evening, he saw his grandfather with a letter in his hand.

  “Marius,” said M. Gillenormand, “you will set out tomorrow for Vernon.”

  “What for?” said Marius.

  “To see your father.”

  Marius shuddered. He had thought of everything but this, that a day might come, when he would have to see his father. Nothing could have been more unlooked for, more surprising, and, we must say, more disagreeable. It was aversion compelled to intimacy. It was not affliction; no, it was pure drudgery.

  Marius, besides his feelings of political antipathy, was convinced that his father, the bloodthirsty brute, as M. Gillenormand called him in the gentler moments, did not love him; that was clear, since he had abandoned him and left him to others. Feeling that he was not loved at all, he had no love. Nothing more natural, said he to himself.

  He was so astounded that he did not question M. Gillenormand. The grandfather continued:

  “It appears that he is sick. He is asking for you.”

  And after a moment of silence he added:

  “Start to-morrow morning. I think there is at the Cour des Fontaines a coach which starts at six o‘clock and arrives at night. Take it. He says it’s urgent.”

  Then he crumpled up the letter and put it in his pocket. Marius could have started that evening and been with his father the next morning. A stagecoach then made the trip to Rouen from the Rue du Bouloi by night passing through Vernon. Neither M. Gillenormand nor Marius thought of inquiring.

  The next day at dusk, Marius arrived at Vernon. Candles were just beginning to be lighted. He asked the first person he met for the house of Monsieur Pontmercy. For in his feelings he agreed with the Restoration, and he, too, recognised his father neither as baron nor as colonel.

  The house was pointed out to him. He rang; a woman came and opened the door with a small lamp in her hand.

  “Monsieur Pontmercy?” said Marius.

  The woman remained motionless.

  “Is it here?” asked Marius.

  The woman gave an affirmative nod of the head.

  “Can I speak with him?”

  The woman gave a negative sign.

  “But I am his son!” resumed Marius. “He expects me.”

  “He expects you no longer,” said the woman.

  Then he perceived that she was in tears.

  She pointed to the door of a low room; he entered.

  In this room, which was lighted by a tallow candle on the mantel, there were three men, one of them standing, one on his knees, and one stripped to his shirt and lying at full length upon the floor. The one upon the floor was the colonel.

  The two others were a physician and a priest who was praying.

  The colonel had been three days before attacked with a brain fever. At the beginning of the sickness, having a presentiment of ill, he had written to Monsieur Gillenormand to ask for his son. He had grown worse. On the very evening of Marius’ arrival at Vernon, the colonel had had a fit of delirium; he sprang out of his bed in spite of the servant, crying: “My son has not come! I am going to meet him!”Then he had gone out of his room and fallen upon the floor of the hall. He had just died.

  The doctor and the curé had been sent for. The doctor had come too late, the cure had come too late. The son also had come too late.

  By the dim light of the candle, they could distinguish upon the cheek of the pale and prostrate colonel a big tear which had fallen from his death-stricken eye. The eye was glazed, but the tear was not dry. This tear was for his son’s delay.

  Marius looked upon this man, whom he saw for the first time, and for the last—this venerable and manly face, these open eyes which saw not, this white hair, these robust limbs upon which he distinguished here and there brown lines which were sabre-cuts, and a species of red stars which were bullet-holes. He looked upon that gigantic scar which imprinted heroism upon this face on which God had impressed goodness. He thought that this man was his father and that this man was dead, and he remained unmoved.

  The sorrow which he experienced was the sorrow which he would have felt before any other man whom he might have seen stretched out in death.

  Mourning, bitter mourning was in that room. The servant was lamenting by herself in a corner, the cure was praying, and his sobs were heard; the doctor was wiping his eyes; the corpse itself wept.

  This doctor, this priest, and this woman, looked at Marius through their affliction without saying a word; it was he who was the stranger. Marius, too little moved, felt ashamed and embarrassed at his attitude; he had his hat in his hand, he let it fall to the floor, to make them believe that grief deprived him of strength to hold it.

  At the same time he felt something like remorse, and he despised himself for acting thus. But was it his fault? He did not love his father, indeed!

  The colonel left nothing. The sale of his furniture hardly paid for his burial. The servant found a scrap of paper which she handed to Marius. It contained this, in the handwriting of the colonel:

  “For my Son.—The emperor made me a baron upon the battlefield of Waterloo. Since the Restoration contests this title which I have bought with my blood, my son will take it and bear it. I need not say that he will be worthy of it.” On the back, the colonel had added: “At this same battle of Waterloo, a sergeant saved my life. This man’s name is Thénardier. Not long ago, I believe he was keeping a little tavern in a village in the suburbs of Paris, at Chelles or at Montfermeil. If my son meets him, he will do Thénardier all the service he can.”

  Not from duty towards his father, but on account of that vague respect for death which is always so imperious in the heart of man, Marius took this paper and pressed it.

  No trace remained of the colonel. Monsieur Gillenormand had his sword and uniform sold to a second-hand dealer. The neighbours stripped the garden and carried off the rare flowers. The other plants became briery and scraggy, and died.

  Marius remained only forty-eight hours at Vernon. After the burial, he returned to Paris and went back to his law, thinking no more of his father than if he had never lived. In two days the colonel had been buried, and in three days forgotten. Marius wore crape on his hat. That was all.

  4 (5)

  THE USEFULNESS OF GOING TO MASS TO BECOME A REVOLUTIONARY

  MARIUS had preserved the religious habits of his childhood. One Sunday he had gone to hear mass at Saint Sulpice, at this same chapel of the Virgin to which his aunt took him when he was a little boy, and being that day more absent-minded and dreamy than usual, he took his place behind a pillar and knelt down, without noticing it, before a Utrecht velvet chair, on the back of which this name was written: Monsieur Mabeuf, churchwarden. The mass had hardly commenced when an old man presented himself and said to Marius:

  “Monsieur, this is my place.”

  Marius moved away readily, and the old man took his chair.

  After mass, Marius remained absorbed in thought a few steps distant; the old man approached him again and said: “I beg your pardon, monsieur, for having disturbed you a little while ago, and for disturbing you again now; but you must have thought me impertinent, and I must explain myself.”

  “Monsieur,” said Marius, “it is unnecessary.”

  “Yes!” resumed the old man; “I do not wish you to have a bad opinion of me. You see I think a great deal of that place. It seems to me that the mass is better there. Why? I will tell you. To that place I have seen for ten years, regularly, every two or three months, a poor, brave father come, who had no other opportunity and no other way of seeing his child, being prevented through some family arrangements. He came at the hour when he knew his son was brought to mass. The little one never suspected that his father was here. He did not even know, perhaps, that he had a father, the innocent boy! The father, for his part, kept behind a pillar, so that nobody should see him. He looked at his child, and wept. This poor man worshipped this little boy. I saw that. T
his place has become sanctified, as it were, for me, and I have acquired the habit of coming here to hear mass. I prefer it to the bench, where I have a right to be as a warden. I was even acquainted slightly with this unfortunate gentleman. He had a father-in-law, a rich aunt, relatives, I do not remember exactly, who threatened to disinherit the child if he, the father, should see him. He had sacrificed himself that his son might some day be rich and happy. They were separated by political opinions. Certainly I approve of political opinions, but there are people who do not know where to stop. Bless me! because a man was at Waterloo he is not a monster; a father is not separated from his child for that. He was one of Bonaparte’s colonels. He is dead, I believe. He lived at Vernon, where my brother is curé, and his name is something like Pontmarie, Montpercy. He had a handsome sabre cut.”

  “Pontmercy,” said Marius, turning pale.

  “Exactly; Pontmercy. Did you know him?”

  “Monsieur,” said Marius, “he was my father.”

  The old churchwarden clasped his hands, and exclaimed—

  “Ah! you are the child! Yes, that is it; he ought to be a man now. Well! poor child, you can say that you had a father who loved you well.”

  Marius offered his arm to the old man, and walked with him to his house. Next day he said to Monsieur Gillenormand:—

  “We have arranged a hunting party with a few friends. Will you permit me to be absent for three days?”

  “Four,” answered the grandfather; “go; amuse yourself.”

  And, with a wink he whispered to his daughter—

  “Some love affair!”

  5 (6)

  WHAT IT IS TO HAVE MET A CHURCHWARDEN

  WHERE MARIUS WENT we shall see a little further on.

  Marius was absent three days, then he returned to Paris, went straight to the library of the law-school, and asked for the file of the Moniteur.

  He read the Moniteur; he read all the histories of the republic and the empire; the Memorial de Sainte-Hélène; all the memoirs, journals, bulletins, proclamations; he devoured everything. The first time he met his father’s name in the bulletins of the grand army he had a fever for a whole week. He went to see the generals under whom George Pontmercy had served—among others, Count H. The churchwarden, Mabeuf, whom he had gone to see again, gave him an account of the life at Vernon, the colonel’s retreat, his flowers and his solitude. Marius came to understand fully this rare, sublime, and gentle man, this sort of lion-lamb who was his father.

  In the meantime, engrossed in this study, which took up all his time, as well as all his thoughts, he hardly saw the Gillenormands more. At the hours of meals he appeared; then when they looked for him, he was gone. The aunt grumbled. The grandfather smiled. “Poh, poh! it is the age for the lasses!” Sometimes the old man added: “The devil! I thought that it was some flirtation. It seems to be a passion.”

  It was a passion, indeed. Marius was on the way to adoration for his father.

  The republic, the empire, had been to him, till then, nothing but monstrous words. The republic, a guillotine in a twilight; the empire, a sabre in the night. He had looked into them, and there, where he expected to find only a chaos of darkness, he had seen, with a sort of astounding surprise, mingled with fear and joy, stars shining, Mirabeau, Vergniaud, Saint-Just, Robespierre, Camille Desmoulins, Danton, and a sun rising, Napoleon. He knew not where he was. He recoiled blinded by the splendours. Little by little, the astonishment passed away, he accustomed himself to this radiance; he looked upon acts without dizziness, he examined personages without error; the revolution and the empire set themselves in luminous perspective before his straining eyes; he saw each of these two groups of events and men arrange themselves into two enormous facts: the republic into the sovereignty of the civic right restored to the masses, the empire into the sovereignty of the French idea imposed upon Europe; he saw spring out of the revolution the grand figure of the people, and out of the empire the grand figure of France. He declared to himself that all that had been good.

  He perceived then that up to that time he had comprehended his country no more than he had his father. He had known neither one nor the other, and he had had a sort of voluntary night over his eyes. He now saw, and on the one hand he admired, on the other he worshipped.

  He was full of regret and remorse and he thought with despair that all he had in his soul he could say now only to a tomb. Oh! if his father were living, if he had had him still, if God in his mercy and in his goodness had permitted that his father might be still alive, how he would have run, how he would have plunged headlong, how he would have cried to his father: “Father! I am here! it is I! my heart is the same as yours! I am your son!” How he would have embraced his white head, wet his hair with tears, gazed upon his scar, pressed his hands, worshipped his garments, kissed his feet! oh! why had this father died so soon, before the maturation, before the justice, before the love of his son! Marius had a continual sob in his heart which said at every moment: “Alas!” At the same time he became more truly serious, more truly grave, surer of his faith and his thought. Gleams of the true came at every instant to complete his reasoning. It was like an interior growth. He felt a sort of natural aggrandisement which these two new things, his father and his country, brought to him.

  As when one has a key, everything opened; he explained to himself what he had hated, he penetrated what he had abhorred; he saw clearly henceforth the providential, divine, and human meaning of the great things which he had been taught to detest, and the great men whom he had been instructed to curse. When he thought of his former opinions, which were only of yesterday, but which seemed so ancient to him already, he became indignant at himself, and he smiled. From the rehabilitation of his father he had naturally passed to the rehabilitation of Napoleon.

  This, however, we must say, was not accomplished without labour.

  From childhood he had been imbued with the judgment of the party of 1814 in regard to Bonaparte. Now, all the prejudices of the Restoration, all its interests, all its instincts, tended to the disfigurement of Napoleon. It execrated him still more than it did Robespierre. It made skilful use of the fatigue of the nation and the hatred of mothers [who had lost their sons in war]. Bonaparte had become a sort of monster almost fabulous, and to depict him to the imagination of the people, which, as we have already said, resembles the imagination of children, the party of 1814 revealed in succession every terrifying mask, from that which is terrible, while yet it is grand, to that which is terrible in the grotesque, from Tiberius to Bugaboo. Thus, in speaking of Bonaparte, you might either weep, or burst with laughter, provided hatred was the basis. Marius had never had—about that man, as he was called—any other ideas in his mind. They had grown together with the tenacity of his nature. There was in him a complete little man who was devoted to hatred of Napoleon.

  On reading his history, especially in studying it in documents and other materials, the veil which covered Napoleon from Marius’ eyes gradually fell away. He perceived something immense, and suspected that he had been deceiving himself up to that moment about Bonaparte as well as about everything else; each day he saw more clearly; and he began to mount slowly, step by step, in the beginning almost with regret, afterwards with rapture, and as if drawn by an irresistible fascination, at first the sombre stages, then the dimly lighted stages, finally the luminous and splendid stages of enthusiasm.

  The emperor had been to his father only the beloved captain, whom one admires, and for whom one devotes himself; to Marius he was something more. He was the predestined constructor of the French group, succeeding the Roman group in the mastery of the world. He was the stupendous architect of a downfall, the successor of Charlemagne, of Louis XI, of Henry IV, of Richelieu, of Louis XIV, and of the Committee of Public Safety, having doubtless his blemishes, his faults, and even his crimes, that is to say being man; but august in his faults, brilliant in his blemishes, mighty in his crimes.

  He was the man foreordained to force all nati
ons to say: the Grand Nation. He was better still; he was the very incarnation of France, conquering Europe by the sword which he held, and the world by the light which he shed. Marius saw in Bonaparte the flashing spectre which will always rise upon the frontier, and which will guard the future. Despot, but dictator; despot resulting from a republic and summing up a revolution. Napoleon became to him the people-man as Jesus is the God-man.1

  We see that, as for all converts to a religion, his conversion intoxicated him, he plunged headlong into adhesion, and he went too far. His nature was such; once on a slope it was almost impossible for him to hold back. Fanaticism for the sword took possession of him, and became complicated in his mind with enthusiasm for the idea. He did not perceive that along with genius, and indiscriminately, he was admiring force, that is to say that he was installing in the two compartments of his idolatry, on one side what is divine, and on the other what is brutal. In several respects he began to deceive himself in other matters. He accepted everything. There is a way of meeting error while on the road of truth. He had a sort of wilful implicit faith which swallowed everything en masse. On the new path upon which he had entered, in judging the crimes of the ancient regime as well as in measuring the glory of Napoleon, he neglected the extenuating circumstances.

  However this might be, a great step had been taken. Where he had formerly seen the fall of the monarchy, he now saw the advent of France. His pole-star was changed. What had been the setting, was now the rising of the sun. He had turned around.

  All these revolutions were accomplished in him without a suspicion of it in his family.

  When, in this mysterious labour, he had entirely cast off his old Bourbon and ultra skin, when he had shed the aristocrat, the jacobite, and the royalist, when he was fully revolutionary, thoroughly democratic, and almost republican, he went to an engraver on the Quai des Orfévres, and ordered a hundred cards bearing this name: Baron Marius Pontmercy.