Les Miserables (Movie Tie-in) (9781101612774)

by Hugo, Victor; Donougher, Christine (TRN)

  Where Courfeyrac is concerned we might almost leave it at that, simply adding: for Courfeyrac read Tholomyès, the one-time lover of Fantine. He possessed that youthful ardour that may be termed the infernal beauty of the spirit. Later it fades like the grace and beauty of a kitten, becoming, on two legs, a bourgeois, and on four legs a tabby-cat. This is a type of individual that constantly recurs in seats of learning, as though its quality were handed down from generation to generation. Anyone listening to Courfeyrac in 1828 might have been hearing Tholomyès in 1817. Only, Courfeyrac was a decent young man. Despite their superficial resemblance, the difference between them was great. Inwardly they were poles apart. In the heart of Tholomyès there was a pander, in Courfeyrac a paladin.

  Enjolras was the leader, Combeferre the guide and Courfeyrac the centre. The others shed more light, but he shed more warmth. He had, indeed, all the qualities of a centre, both roundness and radiation.

  Bahorel had had a share in the bloody riot of June 1822, occasioned by the funeral of Lallemand, a student who had been killed in a liberal demonstration. Bahorel was a creature of good intentions but a dangerous ally, courageous, spendthrift, generous to the point of prodigality, voluble to the point of eloquence, bold to the point of audacity, the best possible material for the devil to work on, with opinions as crimson as his waistcoats. He was a born agitator: that is to say, he enjoyed nothing more than a quarrel except a rebellion, and nothing more than a rebellion except a revolution. He was always ready to smash a window, strip a street of its cobbles and then overthrow a government, just to see what would come of it – an eleventh-year student. He perceived the right but did not follow it. His motto was, ‘No lawyers’ and his coat-of-arms might have been a bedside table on which was a mortarboard. Whenever he passed the School of Law, which happened seldom, he buttoned his tail-coat, the top-coat having not yet been invented, as a precaution against contamination. He said of the school building, ‘What a handsome old person!’ and of the dean, Monsieur Delvincourt, ‘What a noble monument!’ His courses furnished him with matter for songs and his professors with subjects for caricature. He squandered a fairly large allowance in idleness, something of the order of three thousand francs. His family were farmers whom he had taught to respect their son. He said of them, ‘They’re peasants, not bourgeois. That’s why they’ve got some sense.’

  Bahorel, a creature of whims, frequented a number of cafés. The others had regular habits, he had none. He strolled. To err is human, to stroll is Parisian. But with all this he had an acute mind and was more given to thought than he appeared to be. He served as a link between the ABC Society and other groups, still not fully constituted, which were destined later to take shape.

  In this conclave of youthful heads there was one which was bald.

  The Marquis d’Avaray, whom Louis XVIII made a duke for having helped him into a hired cab on the day of his emigration, has related that when the king disembarked at Calais on his return to France in 1814, a man approached him with a petition. ‘What is it you want?’ the king asked. ‘If it please your Majesty, a post-office’ … ‘What’s your name?’ … ‘My name is L’Aigle.’

  The king frowned, glanced at the written petition and saw that the name was spelt ‘Lesgle’. This un-Napoleonic spelling amused him and he began to smile. ‘The fact is, Sire,’ said the man, ‘that one of my forebears was a dog-minder who was nicknamed Lesgueules (the jowls). That is the origin of my name. Lesgueules has been shortened to Lesgle and corrupted to L’Aigle’ … This caused the king’s smile to widen and later the man got his post-office. Whether by accident or design it was at Meaux (or ‘Mots’).

  The bald member of the group was the son of this Lesgle, and he signed himself Laigle (de Meaux). His comrades rounded off the joke by calling him Bossuet.

  Bossuet was a cheerful but unlucky young man, notable for the fact that he succeeded in nothing. On the other hand, he laughed at everything. He was bald at the age of twenty-five. His father had wound up with a house and land, but the son had promptly lost both in an ill-advised speculation. Nothing of his inheritance remained. He possessed learning and wit, but both miscarried. Nothing went right for him, everything failed him, all his undertakings went awry. If he tried to split logs he split his finger. If he acquired a mistress he rapidly discovered that he also had a new male friend. He was the constant victim of mischance, hence his merriment. He said, ‘I spend my life walking under ladders.’ Nothing surprised him, for he took these accidents for granted, smiling at the mockery of fate like someone who joins in the joke. He was poor, but his store of good humour was inexhaustible. He was always down to his last penny, but never to his last laugh. He greeted adversity like an old friend, patted disaster on the back, and was on first-name terms with fatality – ‘Well, Old Man of the Sea!’ This constant harassing had made him inventive. He was endlessly resourceful. Although he had no money he found the means, when he was in the mood, to squander ‘fantastic sums’. On one occasion, so he said, he spent ‘a hundred francs’ on supper with a streetwalker, and at the height of the orgy delivered himself of the resounding phrase, ‘Daughter of five crowns, pull off my boots!’

  Bossuet was slowly heading for the legal profession – reading law, that is to say, in the fashion of Bahorel. He had little in the way of lodging, sometimes none at all; he roosted with one friend or another but most often with Joly, a medical student two years younger than Bossuet.

  Joly was a youthful malade imaginaire. Such medicine as he had learned had made him more a patient than a doctor. At twenty-three he considered himself a chronic invalid and he spent his life inspecting his tongue in the mirror. He maintained that man was subject to magnetism like a compass-needle, and placed his bed with its head pointing north and its feet south so that his circulation might not be affected by the attraction of the poles. He felt his pulse in thundery weather. For the rest, he was the gayest of them all. His youthful inconsistencies, exaggerated, morbid but light-hearted, blended harmoniously together to make an eccentric, agreeable young man to whom his comrades applied the English word ‘jolly’. Joly had a habit of rubbing his nose with the knob of his cane, the sign of a sagacious mind.

  All these young men, so diverse but who, when all is said, deserved to be taken seriously, had a religion in common: Progress. All were the direct descendants of the French Revolution, and even the most frivolous became serious at the mention of the year 1789. Their fathers in the flesh had been royalists, feuillants, doctrinaires of all kinds, but it made no odds. Those earlier contradictions meant nothing to this younger generation with the pure blood of principle coursing through its veins. They stood, without having passed through any intermediary stages, for uncompromising right and absolute duty. United and initiated, they were the underground portrayal of the ideal.

  But amid these hot-blooded and passionate believers there was one sceptic, attracted to them, it would seem, by force of contrast. This was Grantaire, who ordinarily signed himself with the letter R – a play on the pronunciation of his name, grand R [or ‘capital R’]. Grantaire was a young man who made a point of believing in nothing. He was, however, one of those students who acquire a wide diversity of knowledge during their time in Paris. He knew that the best coffee was to be had at Lemblin’s, that the best billiard-room was at the Café Voltaire, that the best rolls and nicest girls were to be found at the Ermitage on the Boulevard du Maine, excellent chicken at Mère Saguet’s, bouillabaisse at the Barrière de la Cunette and a particularly good little white wine at the Barrière du Combat. He knew the best places for everything, besides being a boxer, gymnast and dancer, and skilled in the use of the singlestick. A great drinker into the bargain. He was astonishingly ugly, so much so that the prettiest boot-embroiderer of the day, Irma Boissy, was so revolted by his looks as to declare him to be impossible. But this in no way discouraged Grantaire, who gazed tenderly and fixedly at all women with an air of saying, ‘If I chose’, and strove to persuade his comrades that he was univ
ersally sought after.

  Such words and phrases as ‘rights of the people’, ‘rights of man’, ‘the social contract’, ‘the French Revolution’, republic, democracy, humanity, civilization, religion, progress, came very near to meaning nothing whatever to Grantaire, who merely smiled at them. Scepticism, that dry-rot of the intellect, had left him without a whole thought in his head. He lived in irony, and his motto was, ‘The only certainty is a full glass.’ He was scornful of allegiance to any cause, as derisive of brother as of father, of the young Robespierre as of Loizerolles – ‘A fat lot of good it did them, getting killed.’ He said of the crucifix, ‘Well, that’s one gallows that worked.’ Womanizer, gambler, profligate and often drunk, he annoyed that circle of young dreamers by constantly humming a ditty in praise of Henri IV, which also extolled women and wine.

  But, sceptic that he was, he had one fanatical devotion, not for an idea, a creed, an art or a science, but for a man – for Enjolras. Grantaire admired, loved, and venerated Enjolras. The anarchic questioner of all beliefs had attached himself to the most absolute of all that circle of believers. Enjolras had conquered him not by any force of reason but by character. It is a not uncommon phenomenon. The sceptic clinging to a believer is something as elementary as the law of complementary colours. We are drawn to what we lack. No one loves daylight more than a blind man. The dwarf adores the drum-major. The toad has its eyes upturned to Heaven, and for what? – to watch the flight of birds. Grantaire, earthbound in doubt, loved to watch Enjolras soaring in the upper air of faith. He needed Enjolras. Without being fully aware of it, or seeking to account for it to himself, he was charmed by that chaste, upright, inflexible, and candid nature. Instinctively he was attracted to his opposite. His flabby, incoherent, and shapeless thinking attached itself to Enjolras as to a spinal column. He was in any case a compound of apparently incompatible elements, at once ironical and friendly, affectionate beneath his seeming indifference. His mind could do without faith, but his heart could not do without friendship: a profound contradiction, for affection in itself is faith. Such was his nature. There are men who seem born to be two-sided. They are Pollux, Patrocles, Nisus, Ephestion. They can live only in union with the other who is their reverse side; their name is one of a pair, always preceded by the conjunction ‘and’; their lives are not their own; they are the other side of a destiny which is not theirs. Grantaire was one of those, the reverse side of Enjolras. Truly the satellite of Enjolras, he formed one of that circle of young men, went everywhere with, them and was only happy in their company. His delight was to see those figures moving amid the mists of wine, and they bore with him because of his good humour.

  Enjolras, the believer, despised the sceptic and soberly deplored the drunkard. His attitude towards him was one of pitying disdain. Grantaire was an unwelcome Ephestion. But, roughly treated though he was by Enjolras, harshly repulsed and rejected, he always came back, saying of him: ‘What a splendid statue!’

  II

  A funeral oration

  On a certain afternoon which, as will be seen, has its bearing on the events previously related, Laigle de Meaux stood voluptuously propped in the dorway of the Café Musain, looking like a caryatid on holiday, idle except for his thoughts. He was gazing over the Place Saint-Michel. To stand with one’s back against something upright is a manner of dozing on one’s feet which is not displeasing to dreamers. Laigle de Meaux was musing without sorrow over a trifling misadventure which had befallen him two days previously at the School of Law, modifying his plans for the future, which were in any case sufficiently vague.

  A state of reverie does not prevent a cab from passing or the dreamer from observing it. Through the mists of his meditations, Laigle de Meaux drowsily perceived a two-wheeled vehicle moving slowly round the Place as though uncertain of its destination. What was it looking for? Seated in the cab was a young man with a bulky travelling bag to which was affixed a card bearing in large black letters the name MARIUS PONTMERCY.

  The sight of this name aroused Laigle. He straightened himself and called:

  ‘Monsieur Marius Pontmercy?’

  The cab stopped. The young man, who seemed also to have been plunged in thought, looked up.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You are Monsieur Marius Pontmercy?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  I’ve been looking for you,’ said Laigle de Meaux.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Marius, who had just left his grandfather’s house and was now staring at someone he had never seen before. ‘I don’t know you.’

  ‘I don’t know you either,’ said Laigle.

  Marius frowned, thinking he had encountered a practical joker. He was not at that moment in the best of humours or prepared to put up with this kind of pleasantry in the open street. Laigle de Meaux was unabashed.

  ‘Weren’t you at Law School the day before yesterday?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘You certainly were.’

  ‘Are you a student?’ asked Marius.

  ‘Yes, monsieur, I am a student like yourself, and the day before yesterday I chanced to drop in at the school. One has these whims. The professor was calling the roll. As you know, they’re particularly tiresome on these occasions. If you fail to answer after your name has been called three times it is struck off the list, and that means sixty francs down the drain.’

  Marius was now listening with interest. Laigle proceeded:

  ‘The professor was Blondeau. You know what he’s like, with his pointed nose and spiteful nature. He delights in spotting absentees. He had craftily begun the roll-call at the letter P, and I wasn’t paying attention because that isn’t my initial. It was going quite well, no defaulters, all present and correct. But then he called “Marius Pontmercy” and there was no reply. He repeated it more loudly, looking hopeful, and when there was still no reply he picked up his pen. But I, monsieur, have bowels of compassion. I thought to myself, here is a good man about to be struck off, a living, breathing fellow-mortal who is unpunctual. Not a good student. Not a lead-bottomed student who studies, a Simon Pure pedant, bursting with art and letters, theology and erudition, cut and dried to the pattern prescribed by the Faculty. Here is a noble idler who enjoys life, who plays truant, who chases girls, who may at this very moment be in bed with my mistress. He must be saved! Down with Blondeau! And so, when Blondeau, having dipped his pen in the ink and gazing with beady eyes round the assembly repeated for the third time, “Marius Pontmercy,” I answered, “Present!” In consequence of which you were not struck off.’

  ‘Monsieur, I -’ began Marius.

  ‘But I was,’ said Laigle de Meaux.

  ‘But why?’ asked Marius.

  ‘It’s quite simple. I had answered from near the podium, and then I moved towards the door to slip away. But he was staring fixedly at me, and with a diabolical cunning he switched back to the letter L, which is my initial. I come from Meaux and my name is Lesgle.’

  ‘L’Aigle!’ exclaimed Marius.’ The Eagle! What a splendid name.’

  ‘So Blondeau called out the splendid name and I answered, “Present!” upon which, looking at me with a tigerish satisfaction, he smiled and said, “If you are Pontmercy you cannot be Lesgle,” a remark uncomplimentary to yourself but grievous only to me. Having said which, he struck me off.’

  ‘I’m mortified,’ said Marius.

  ‘Before going further,’ said Laigle, ‘I insist upon burying Blondeau with a few well-chosen phrases. We will suppose him to be dead. It would call for no great alteration in his skinniness, his pallor, his coldness, his stiffness or his smell. I pronounce the words, Frudimini qui judicatis terram – take note, oh judges of earth. Here lies Blondeau, Blondeau the nose, the willing ox of discipline, the slave of order, the destroying angel of the roll-call, who was upright, square, punctilious, inflexible, honest, and hideous. After which God will remove his name as he removed mine.’

  ‘I’m most distressed …’ said Marius.

  ‘Young man
,’ said Laigle de Meaux, ‘let this be a warning to you. In future be punctual.’

  ‘I owe you a thousand apologies.’

  ‘Do not expose your fellows to the risk of being struck off.’

  ‘I’m really extremely sorry -’

  Laigle burst out laughing.

  ‘And I’m delighted. I was in danger of becoming a lawyer and this has saved me. After all, I shall not defend the widow or attack the orphan. No gown and no rostrum. I have been thrown out, and I owe it to you, Monsieur Pontmercy. I would like to pay you a visit of gratitude. Where do you live?’

  ‘In this cab,’ said Marius.

  ‘A sign of wealth,’ said Laigle calmly. ‘I congratulate you. You have a lodging worth nine thousand francs a year.’

  At this moment Courfeyrac emerged from the café. Marius was smiling sadly.

  ‘I have had it for two hours and I would like to get out of it. The fact is, I don’t know where to go.’

  ‘Monsieur,’ said Courfeyrac, ‘come to the place where I live.’

  ‘I should have the priority,’ said Laigle, ‘but I don’t live anywhere.’

  ‘Dry up, Bossuet,’ said Courfeyrac

  ‘Bossuet?’ said Marius, ‘I thought your name was Laigle.’

  ‘A jest,’ said Laigle. ‘The eagle of words. They call me Bossuet.’

  Courfeyrac got into the cab and directed the driver to the Hôtel de la Porte Saint-Jacques. By the evening Marius was installed in that hotel, in a room next to Courfeyrac’s own.

  III

  Astonishment of Marius

  Within a few days Marius and Courfeyrac were friends. Youth is a time of quick resilience and the rapid healing of wounds. Marius found that in company with Courfeyrac he could breathe freely, a sufficiently novel experience. Courfeyrac asked no questions, nor even thought of doing so. At that age the face tells everything and words are unnecessary. One can say of a young man that he has a speaking countenance. A single look, and we know him.