by Victor Hugo
It was of no use for his daughter to say: “Still he is your grandnephew,” it turned out that Monsieur Gillenormand, who was grandfather to the ends of his nails, was not grand-uncle at all.
In reality, as he had good judgment and made the comparison, Théodule only served to increase his regret for Marius.
One evening, it was the 4th of June, which did not prevent Monsieur Gillenormand from having a blazing fire in his fireplace, he had said good-night to his daughter who was sewing in the adjoining room. He was alone in his room with the rural scenery, his feet upon the andirons, half enveloped in his vast coromandel screen with nine folds, leaning upon his table on which two candles were burning under a green shade, buried in his tapes-tried armchair, a book in his hand, but not reading. He was dressed, according to his custom, en incroyable, and resembled an antique portrait of Garat. This would have caused him to be followed in the streets, but his daughter always covered him when he went out, with a huge bishop’s doublet, which hid his dress. At home, except in getting up and going to bed, he never wore a dressing-gown. “It gives an old look,” said he.
Monsieur Gillenormand thought of Marius lovingly and bitterly; and, as usual, the bitterness predominated. An increase of tenderness always ended by boiling over and turning into indignation. He was at that point where we seek to adopt a course, and to accept what rends us. He was just explaining to himself that there was now no longer any reason for Marius to return, that if he had been going to return, he would have done so already, that he must give him up. He endeavoured to bring himself to the idea that it was over with and that he would die without seeing “that gentleman” again. But his whole nature revolted; his old paternity could not consent to it. “What?” said he, this was his sorrowful refrain, “he will not come back!” His bald head had fallen upon his breast, and he was vaguely fixing a lamentable and irritated look upon the embers on his hearth.
In the deepest of this reverie, his old domestic, Basque, came in and asked:
“Can monsieur receive Monsieur Marius?”
The old man straightened up, pallid and like a corpse which rises under a galvanic shock. All his blood had flown back to his heart. He faltered:
“Monsieur Marius what?”
“I don’t know,” answered Basque, intimidated and thrown out of countenance by his master’s appearance. “I have not seen him. Nicolette just told me: There is a young man here, say that it is Monsieur Marius.”
M. Gillenormand stammered out in a whisper:
“Show him in.”
And he remained in the same attitude, his head shaking, his eyes fixed on the door. It opened. A young man entered. It was Marius.
Marius stopped at the door, as if waiting to be asked to come in.
His almost wretched dress was not perceived in the darkness produced by the green shade. Only his face, calm and grave, but strangely sad, could be distinguished.
M. Gillenormand, as if congested with astonishment and joy, sat for some moments without seeing anything but a light, as when one is in the presence of an apparition. He was almost fainting; he perceived Marius through a blinding haze. It was indeed he, it was indeed Marius!
At last! after four years! He seized him, so to speak, all over at a glance. He thought him beautiful, noble, striking, adult, a complete man, with graceful attitude and pleasing air. He would gladly have opened his arms, called him, rushed upon him, his heart melted in rapture, affectionate words welled and overflowed in his breast; indeed, all his tenderness started up and came to his lips, and, through the contrast which was the groundwork of his nature, there came forth a harsh word. He said abruptly:
“What is it you come here for?”
Marius answered with embarrassment:
“Monsieur—”
M. Gillenormand would have had Marius throw himself into his arms. He was displeased with Marius and with himself. He felt that he was rough, and that Marius was cold. It was to the goodman an unbearable and irritating anguish, to feel himself so tender and so much in tears within, while he could only be harsh without. The bitterness returned. He interrupted Marius with a sharp tone:
“Then what do you come for?”
This then signified: If you don’t come to embrace me. Marius looked at his grandfather, whose pallor had changed to marble.
“Monsieur—”
The old man continued, in a stern voice:
“Do you come to ask my pardon? have you seen your fault?”
He thought to put Marius on the track, and that “the child” was going to bend. Marius shuddered; it was the disavowal of his father which was asked of him; he cast down his eyes and answered:
“No, monsieur.”
“And then,” exclaimed the old man impetuously, with a grief which was bitter and full of anger, “what do you want with me?”
Marius clasped his hands, took a step, and said in a feeble and trembling voice:
“Monsieur, have pity on me.”
This word moved M. Gillenormand; spoken sooner, it would have softened him, but it came too late. The grandfather arose; he supported himself upon his cane with both hands, his lips were white, his forehead quivered, but his tall stature commanded the stooping Marius.
“Pity on you, monsieur! The youth asks pity from the old man of ninety-one! You are entering life, I am leaving it; you go to the theatre, the ball, the café, the billiard-room; you have wit, you please the women, you are a handsome fellow, while I cannot leave my chimney corner in midsummer; you are rich, with the only riches there are, while I have all the poverties of old age; infirmity, isolation. You have your thirty-two teeth, a good stomach, a keen eye, strength, appetite, health, cheerfulness, a forest of black hair, while I have not even white hair left; I have lost my teeth, I am losing my legs, I am losing my memory, there are three names of streets which I am always confounding, the Rue Chariot, the Rue du Chaume, and the Rue Saint Claude, there is where I am; you have the whole future before you full of sunshine, while I am beginning not to see another drop of it, so deep am I getting into the night; you are in love, of course, I am not loved by anybody in the world; and you ask pity of me. Zounds, Molière forgot this. If that is the way you jest at the Palais, Messieurs Lawyers, I offer you my sincere compliments. You are funny fellows.”
And the old man resumed in an angry and stern voice:
“Come now, what do you want of me?”
“Monsieur,” said Marius, “I know that my presence is displeasing to you, but I come only to ask one thing of you, and then I will go away immediately.”
“You are a fool!” said the old man. “Who’s telling you to go away?”
This was the translation of those loving words which he had deep in his heart: Come, ask my pardon now! Throw yourself on my neck! M. Gillenormand felt that Marius was going to leave him in a few moments, that his unkind reception repelled him, that his harshness was driving him away; he said all this to himself, and his anguish increased; and as his anguish immediately turned into anger, his harshness augmented. He would have had Marius comprehend, and Marius did not comprehend; which rendered the goodman furious. He continued:
“What! you have left me! me, your grandfather, you have left my house to go nobody knows where; you have afflicted your aunt, you have been, that is clear, it is more pleasant, leading the life of a bachelor, playing the elegant, going home at all hours, amusing yourself; you have not given me a sign of life; you have contracted debts without even telling me to pay them; you have made yourself a breaker of windows and a rioter, and, at the end of four years, you come to my house, and have nothing to say but that!”
This violent method of pushing the grandson to tenderness produced only silence on the part of Marius. M. Gillenormand folded his arms, a posture which with him was particularly imperious, and apostrophised Marius bitterly.
“Let us make an end of it. You have come to ask something of me, say you? Well what? what is it? speak!”
“Monsieur,” said Marius, with the
look of a man who feels that he is about to fall into an abyss, “I come to ask your permission to marry.”
M. Gillenormand rang. Basque half opened the door.
“Send my daughter in.”
A second later—the door opened again. Mademoiselle Gillenormand did not come in, but showed herself. Marius was standing mute, his arms hanging down, with the look of a criminal. M. Gillenormand was coming and going up and down the room. He turned towards his daughter and said to her:
“Nothing. It is Monsieur Marius. Bid him good evening. Monsieur wishes to marry. That is all. Go.”
The crisp, harsh tones of the old man’s voice announced a strange fulness of feeling. The aunt looked at Marius with a bewildered air, appeared hardly to recognise him, allowed neither a motion nor a syllable to escape her, and disappeared at a breath from her father, quicker than a dry leaf before a hurricane.
Meanwhile Grandfather Gillenormand had returned and stood with his back to the fireplace.
“You marry! at twenty-one! You have arranged that! You have nothing but a permission to ask! a formality. Sit down, monsieur. Well, you have had a revolution since I had the honour to see you. The Jacobins have had the upper hand. You ought to be satisfied. You are a republican, are you not, since you are a baron? You arrange that. The republic is sauce to the barony. Are you decorated by July?—did you take a bit of the Louvre, monsieur? There is close by here, in the Rue Saint Antoine, opposite the Rue des Nonaindières, a cannonball embedded in the wall of the fourth story of a house with this inscription: July 28th, 1830. Go and see that. That produces a good effect. Ah! Pretty things those friends of yours do. By the way, are they not making a fountain in the square of the monument of M. the Duke de Berry? So you want to marry? Whom? can the question be asked without indiscretion?”
He stopped, and, before Marius had had time to answer, he added violently:
“Come now, you have a business? your fortune made? how much do you earn at your lawyer’s trade?”
“Nothing,” said Marius, with a firmness and resolution which were almost savage.
“Nothing? you have nothing to live on but the twelve hundred livres which I send you?”
Marius made no answer. M. Gillenormand continued:
“Then I understand the girl is rich?”
“As I am.”
“What! no dowry?”
“No.”
“Some expectations?”
“I believe not.”
“With nothing to her back! and what is the father?”
“I do not know.”
“What is her name?”
“Mademoiselle Fauchelevent.”
“Fauchewhat?”
“Fauchelevent.”
“Pttt!” said the old man.
“Monsieur!” exclaimed Marius.
M. Gillenormand interrupted him with the tone of a man who is talking to himself.
“That is it, twenty-one, no business, twelve hundred livres a year, Madame the Baroness Pontmercy will go to the market to buy two sous’ worth of parsley.”
“Monsieur,” said Marius, in the desperation of the last vanishing hope, “I supplicate you! I conjure you, in the name of heaven, with clasped hands, monsieur, I throw myself at your feet, allow me to marry her!”
The old man burst into a shrill, dreary laugh, through which he coughed and spoke.
“Ha, ha, ha! you said to yourself, ‘The devil! I will go and find that old wig, that silly dolt! What a pity that I am not twenty-five! how I would toss him a good respectful notice! how I would give him the go-by. Never mind, I will say to him: Old idiot, you are too happy to see me, I desire to marry, I desire to espouse mamselle no matter whom, daughter of monsieur no matter what, I have no shoes, she has no chemise, all right; I desire to throw to the dogs my career, my future, my youth, my life; I desire to make a plunge into misery with a wife at my neck, that is my idea, you must consent to it! and the old fossil will consent.’ Go, my boy, as you like, tie your stone to yourself, espouse your Pousselevent, your Couplevent—Never, monsieur! never!”
“Father!”
“Never!”
At the tone in which this “never” was pronounced Marius lost all hope. He walked the room with slow steps, his head bowed down, tottering, more like a man who is dying than like one who is going away. M. Gillenormand followed him with his eyes, and, at the moment the door opened and Marius was going out, he took four steps with the senile vivacity of impetuous and self-willed old men, seized Marius by the collar, drew him back forcibly into the room, threw him into an armchair, and said to him:
“Tell me about it!”
It was that single word, father, dropped by Marius, which had caused this revolution.
Marius looked at him in bewilderment. The changing countenance of M. Gillenormand expressed nothing now but a rough and ineffable good-nature. The guardian had given place to the grandfather.
“Come, let us see, speak, tell me about your love scrapes, jabber, tell me all! Lord! how foolish these young folks are!”
“Father,” resumed Marius—
The old man’s whole face shone with an unspeakable radiance.
“Yes! that is it! call me father, and you shall see!”
There was now something so kind, so sweet, so open, so paternal in this abruptness, that Marius, in this sudden passage from discouragement to hope, was, as it were, intoxicated, stupefied. He was sitting near the tables, the light of the candle made the wretchedness of his dress apparent, and the grandfather gazed at it in astonishment.
“Well, father,” said Marius—
“Come now,” interrupted M. Gillenormand, “then you really haven’t a sou? you are dressed like a robber.”
He fumbled in a drawer and took out a purse, which he laid upon the table:
“Here, there is a hundred louis, buy yourself a hat.”
“Father,” pursued Marius, “my good father, if you knew. I love her. You don’t realise it; the first time that I saw her was at the Luxembourg Gardens, she came there; in the beginning I did not pay much attention to her, and then I do not know how it came about, I fell in love with her. Oh! how wretched it has made me! Now at last I see her every day, at her own house, her father does not know it, only think that they are going away, we see each other in the garden in the evening, her father wants to take her to England, then I said to myself: I will go and see my grandfather and tell him about it. I should go crazy in the first place, I should die, I should make myself sick, I should throw myself into the river. I must marry her because I should go crazy. Now, that is the whole truth, I do not believe that I have forgotten anything. She lives in a garden where there is a railing, in the Rue Plumet. It is near the Invalides.”
Grandfather Gillenormand, radiant with joy, had sat down by Marius’ side. While listening to him and enjoying the sound of his voice, he enjoyed at the same time a long pinch of snuff. At that word, Rue Plumet, he checked his inspiration and let the rest of his snuff fall on his knees.
“Rue Plumet!—you say Rue Plumet?—Let us see now!—Are there not some barracks down there? Why yes, that is it. Your cousin Théodule has told me about her. The lancer, the officer.—A lassie, my good friend, a lassie!—Lord yes, Rue Plumet. That is what used to be called Rue Blomet. It comes back to me now. I have heard tell about this little girl of the grating in the Rue Plumet. In a garden, a Pamela. Your taste is not bad. They say she is nice. Between ourselves, I believe that ninny of a lancer has paid his court to her a little. I do not know how far it went. After all that does not amount to anything. And then, we must not believe him. He is a boaster. Marius! I think it is very well for a young man like you to be in love. It belongs to your age. I like you better in love than as a Jacobin. I like you better taken by a petticoat, Lord! by twenty petticoats, than by Monsieur de Robespierre. For my part, I do myself this justice that in the matter of sansculottes, I have never liked anything but women. Pretty women are pretty women, the devil! there is no objection to that. As to
the little girl, she receives you unknown to papa. That is all right. I have had adventures like that myself. More than one. Do you know how we do? we don’t take the thing ferociously; we don’t rush into the tragic; we don’t conclude with marriage and with Monsieur the Mayor and his scarf. We are altogether a shrewd fellow. We have good sense. Glide over it, mortals, don’t marry. We come and find grandfather who is a goodman at heart, and who almost always has a few rolls of louis in an old drawer; we say to him: ‘Grandfather, that’s how it is.’ And grandfather says: ‘That is all natural. Youth must fare and old age must wear. I have been young, you will be old. Go on, my boy, you will repay this to your grandson. There are two hundred pistoles. Amuse yourself, roundly! Nothing better! that is the way the thing should be done. We don’t marry, but that doesn’t hinder.’ You understand me?”
