Les Miserables (Movie Tie-in) (9781101612774)

by Hugo, Victor; Donougher, Christine (TRN)

  The old man paused, but before Marius could reply he burst out:

  ‘So I suppose you’ve got some sort of position. Perhaps you’ve made a fortune. What do you earn as a lawyer?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Marius in a voice of almost savage firmness and defiance.

  ‘Nothing? So all you have to live on are the twelve hundred livres I allow you?’

  Marius made no reply, and Monsieur Gillenormand went on:

  ‘Well then, I take it the girl is rich.’

  ‘No richer than I am.’

  ‘You mean, she won’t have a dowry?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Expectations?’

  ‘I think not.’

  ‘Not a rag to her back! And what does her father do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, what’s her name?’

  ‘Mademoiselle Fauchelevent.’

  ‘Fauche - what?’

  ‘Fauchelevent’

  ‘Pshaw!’ said the old man.

  ‘Monsieur!’ cried Marius.

  Monsieur Gillenormand cut him short, speaking in an aside to himself.

  ‘So that’s it. Twenty-one years old and no position, nothing but twelve hundred livres a year. Madame la Baronne Pontmercy will have to count her sous when she goes to market.’

  ‘Monsieur,’ cried Marius, in the distraction of seeing his last hope vanish, “I beg of you, I beseech you in Heaven’s name on my bended knees, to allow me to marry her!’

  The old man uttered a shrill, anguished laugh which turned into a fit of coughing, then burst again into speech.

  ‘So you said to yourself, “I’ll have to go and see him, that old fossil, that old mountebank. It’s too bad I’m not yet twenty-five. I wouldn’t have to worry about him and his consent. As it is, I’ll go there and crawl to him, and the old fool will be so happy to see me that he won’t care who I marry. I haven’t a sound pair of shoes and she hasn’t a chemise to her back, but no matter. I’m proposing to throw away my career, my prospects, my youth, my whole life and plunge into poverty with a woman round my neck. That’s what I intend to do, I’ll tell him, and I’ll ask his consent. And the old fossil will oblige…” That’s what you think, isn’t it? Well, my lad, you can do what you please. Hamstring yourself, if you must. Marry your Pousselevent or Coupelevent or whatever her name is. But as for my consent, the answer is, never!’

  ‘Grandfather-’

  ‘Never!’

  The tone in which the word was uttered robbed Marius of all hope. He rose and crossed the room slowly, swaying a little, with his head bowed, more like someone in the act of dying than someone merely taking his leave. Monsieur Gillenormand stood watching him, but then, when he was about to open the door, moving with jerky liveliness of a spoilt, imperious old man, he darted after him, seized him by the coat collar, dragged him vigorously back into the room, thrust him into an armchair and said:

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  It was the word ‘grandfather’ that had brought about the change in him. Marius stared in amazement. Monsieur Gillenormand’s expression had become one of coarse, implicit bonhomie. The stern guardian had given way to the grandfather.

  ‘Come on. Tell me all about your love-affairs. Don’t be afraid to talk. Lord, what fools you young fellows are.’

  ‘Grandfather…’ Marius said again, and the old man’s face lighted up.

  ‘That’s it. Don’t forget I’m your grandfather.’

  There was so much bluff, fatherly indulgence in his manner that Marius, now suddenly transported from despair to hope, was quite bewildered. He was seated near the table and the light of the two candles, disclosing the dilapidated state of his attire, caused Monsieur Gillenormand to survey him with astonishment.

  ‘You really are penniless, aren’t you!’ he said. ‘You look like a tramp.’ He pulled open a drawer and got out a purse which he put on the table. ‘Here’s a hundred louis. Buy yourself some clothes.’

  ‘Oh, grandfather,’ said Marius, ‘if you knew how much I love her. The first time I saw her was in the Luxembourg, she was there every day. I didn’t take much notice of her at first, but then - I don’t know how it was - I fell in love with her. I was terribly unhappy, but in the end - well, now I see her every day at her home - her father doesn’t know - we meet in the garden in the evening - and they’re going away, he’s going to take her to England. So when I heard this I thought to myself, I’ll go and see my grandfather and tell him about it. Because otherwise I’ll get ill, or go mad and throw myself in the river. I’ve got to marry her, I must marry her, or I shall go mad. Well, that’s the whole truth. I don’t think I’ve left anything out. She lives in a house in the Rue Plumet, with a garden and a wrought-iron gate. It’s near the Invalides.’

  Monsieur Gillenormand was seated radiantly beside him, adding zest to his delight in his presence and the sound of his voice with an occasional long pinch of snuff. But at the mention of the Rue Plumet he started, with his fingers to his nose, and let the snuff fall on his knees.

  ‘The Rue Plumet? Wait a minute. Isn’t there a barracks near there? That’s it, your cousin Théodule – you know, the cavalry officer – he told me about her. In the Rue Plumet. It used to be the Rue Blomet. I remember perfectly-a girl in a garden with a wrought-iron gate in the Rue Plumet. Another Pamela. You have good taste, my boy. A pretty wench, from what I hear. I fancy that fool Théodule had his eye on her, but I don’t know how far it went. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, you can’t believe a word he says, he’s always boasting. My dear Marius, I think it entirely right that a young fellow like you should be in love. It’s natural at your age. I’d far sooner have you in love with a wench than with revolution. I’d sooner have you crazy about a dancing partner, or twenty dancing partners, than about Monsieur de Robespierre. I’m bound to say that the only kind of sons-culottes I’ve ever cared for are the ones in skirts. A pretty wench is a pretty wench, and what’s wrong with that? So she lets you in without her father knowing, does she? That’s quite in order. I’ve had that kind of adventure myself, and more than once. But listen, you don’t want to take it too seriously, you mustn’t go asking for trouble – no drama, no talk of marriage or anything of that sort. You’re a gay young blade, but you’ve got a head on your shoulders. You have your fun, but you don’t marry. You come to see your grandfather, who’s not a bad old boy at heart and always has a few louis stuffed away in a drawer, and you ask him to help you out. And grandfather says, “Why, that’s easy!” Youth profits and age provides. I’ve been young, and one day you’ll be old. Here you are, lad, and you’ll pay it back to your own grandson. Two hundred pistoles. Have your fun, and what could be better? That’s how it should be. You don’t marry, but that needn’t stop you – you understand?’

  Marius, too shocked to be capable of speech, shook his head. The old man burst out laughing, winked an aged eyelid, tapped him on the knee and gazing conspiratorially at him said with an indulgent shrug of his shoulders:

  ‘Why, you young nincompoop – make her your steady mistress!’

  Marius turned pale. He had understood nothing of what his grandfather had said. The talk of the Rue Blomet, Pamela, the barracks, and the cavalry officer had been to him a meaningless rigmarole. None of it had anything to do with his lily-white Cosette. The old man had been babbling; but his babbling had ended in an admonition which Marius had understood: ‘Make her your mistress!’ The mere suggestion was an insult to Cosette, and it wounded her high-minded young lover like a swordthrust to his heart.

  He rose, picked up his hat off the floor and walked firmly and resolutely towards the door. Here he turned, bowed deeply to his grandfather, straightened himself and said:

  ‘Five years ago you insulted my father; today you have insulted my future wife. I shall ask nothing more of you, Monsieur. Farewell.’

  Monsieur Gillenormand opened his mouth in stupefaction, reached out an arm and sought to get up from his chair; but before he could say anything the door had clos
ed and Marius was gone.

  The old man stayed motionless for some moments, unable to speak or breathe, as though a hand had clutched him by the throat. Finally he struggled to his feet. He ran to the door, so far as his ninety-one years permitted him to run, opened it and cried:

  ‘Help! Help!’

  His daughter appeared, followed by the servants. He croaked pitifully:

  ‘After him! Catch him! What have I done to him? He must be mad. He’s going away again. Oh, my God, my God, this time he’ll never come back!’

  He ran to the window looking on to the street, opened it with aged, trembling hands and leaned out while Basque and Nicolette held him from behind.

  ‘Marius!’ he called. ‘Marius! Marius!’

  But Marius, turning the corner of the Rue Saint-Louis, was already out of earshot.

  Monsieur Gillenormand clasped his hands to his head and with an anguished expression withdrew from the window. He sank into an armchair, breathless, speechless, and tearless, wagging his head and soundlessly moving his lips, with nothing more in his eyes or his heart than a blankness like the coming of night.

  Book Nine

  Where Are They Going?

  I

  Jean Valjean

  AT ABOUT four o’clock on the afternoon of that same day, Jean Valjean had been seated alone on the shady side of one of the more isolated slopes of the Champ de Mars. From caution, from the desire for solitude, or simply because of one of those unconscious changes of habit which occur in all our lives, he now seldom went out with Cosette. He was wearing his workman’s smock, grey linen trousers, and the long-peaked cap which hid his face. He was again on easy and happy terms with Cosette, his earlier anxieties having been put to rest; but during the past week or so other things had occurred to trouble him. One day as he walked along the boulevard he had seen Thénardier. Thanks to his disguise the latter had not recognized him, but since then he had seen him several times, often enough to convince him that Thénardier was now frequenting that part of the town. This had prompted him to take a major decision. Thénardier was the embodiment of all the dangers that threatened him.

  Besides which, Paris was in an unsettled state, and for anyone with something to hide the present political unrest had the disadvantage that the police had become more than usually obtrusive, and might, in their search for agitators, light upon someone like Jean Valjean.

  All these considerations troubled him. And something else had occurred to add to his unease, an unaccountable circumstance of which he had become aware only that morning. Rising early, before Cosette’s shutters were opened, he had gone out into the garden and had suddenly noticed an address scratched on the wall, apparently with a nail - 16, Rue de la Verrerie.

  It was evidently recent. The letters stood out white against the dingy plaster, and there was fresh dust on the weeds at the foot of the wall. It might well have been done the previous night. Was it intended as a message for some third party, or was it a warning to himself? In any case it was certain that the garden had been broken into. Valjean was reminded of the other curious incidents that had disturbed the household. He pondered these matters, but said nothing to Cosette about this latest development, not wishing to alarm her.

  The upshot was that, after due consideration, Jean Valjean had decided to leave Paris, and even France, and go to England. He had warned Cosette that he wanted to leave within a week. And now he sat on the grass in the Champ de Mars turning it all over in his mind - Thénardier, the police, the letters scratched on the wall, their prospective journey, and the difficulty of procuring a passport.

  While he was thus engaged he saw, by the shadow cast by the sun, that someone was standing on the ridge of the slope at his back. He was about to turn when a scrap of folded paper fell on his knee, seeming to have been tossed over his head. Unfolding it, he read two words, pencilled in capital letters:

  ‘CLEAR OUT.’

  He got up quickly, but now there was no one on the slope. Looking about him he saw a queer figure, too tall for a child but too slight for a man, clad in a grey smock and drab-coloured corduroy trousers, scramble over the parapet and drop into the ditch encircling the Champ de Mars.

  Valjean went home at once, his mind much exercised.

  II

  Marius

  Marius dejectedly left his grandfather’s house. He had gone there with only a gleam of hope; he left in utter despair.

  The mention of a cavalry officer, his strutting cousin, Théodule, had made no impression on him, none whatever, as any student of the youthful human heart will readily understand. A playwright might have evolved complications arising out of this blunt disclosure from grandfather to grandson, but what the drama would have gained the truth would have lost. Marius was at the age when, in the matter of evil, we believe nothing; there comes a later age when we believe everything. Suspicions are nothing but wrinkles. Youth does not possess them. What overwhelms Othello leaves Candide untouched. As for suspecting Cosette, there were countless crimes which Marius could more easily have committed.

  Taking refuge in the resource of the sore in heart, he wandered aimlessly through the streets, thinking of nothing that he could afterwards remember. At two in the morning he returned to Courfeyrac’s lodging and flung himself fully dressed on his mattress. It was daylight before he fell into that state of troubled slumber in which the mind goes on working, and when he awoke he found that Courfeyrac, Enjolras, Feuilly, and Combeferre were all in the room, dressed for the street and seeming very agitated.

  Courfeyrac asked him:

  ‘Are you coming to the funeral of General Lamarque?’

  For all they meant to him, the words might have been Chinese.

  He went out some time after them, having put in his pocket the pistols Javert had loaned him on the occasion of the affair in February, which he had never returned. They were still loaded. It would be difficult to say what thought at the back of his mind prompted him to do this.

  He roamed about all that day without knowing where he went. There were one or two showers of rain, but he did not notice them. He bought a roll at a baker’s shop, thrust it in his pocket and forgot to eat it. It seems, even, that he bathed in the Seine without knowing that he did so. There are times when the head is on fire, and Marius was in that condition. He neither hoped for anything nor feared anything; this was what he had come to since the previous evening. He was waiting feverishly for the present evening, having only one clear thought in his mind, that at nine o’clock he would see Cosette. This last brief happiness was all that the future held for him; beyond it lay darkness. At moments, as he strayed along the frequented boulevards, it struck him that there was a strange hubbub in the town, and he emerged from his preoccupations to wonder, ‘Are people fighting?’

  At nightfall, at nine o’clock precisely in accordance with his promise, he was in the Rue Plumet, and as he drew near the wrought-iron gate he forgot all else. It was forty-eight hours since he had seen Cosette and now he was to see her again; all other thoughts were dispelled by this present rapture. Those minutes in which we live through centuries have the sovereign and admirable quality that at the time of their passing they wholly fill our hearts.

  Marius slipped through the gate and hurried into the garden. Cosette was not in the place where ordinarily she awaited him. He crossed through the shrubbery and made for the recess by the steps. ‘She’ll be there,’ he thought - but she was not there. Looking up he saw that all the shutters were closed. He explored the garden and found it empty. Returning to the house, half-crazed with love and grief and terror, like a householder returning home at an unpropitious moment, he banged with his fists on the shutters. He banged and banged again, regardless of the risk that a window might open to reveal the scowling face of her father demanding to know what he was about. This meant nothing to him compared with what he feared. He gave up banging and began to shout, ‘Cosette! Cosette, where are you?’ There was no reply. There was no one in the house or garden, no one any
where.

  Marius stared up with despairing eyes at the mournful dwelling, as dark and silent but more empty than a tomb. He looked at the stone bench where with Cosette he had passed so many enchanted hours. Finally he sat down on the steps, his heart swelling with tenderness and resolve. He blessed his love from the depths of his being, and said to himself that, now she was gone, there was nothing for him to do but die.

  Suddenly he heard a voice calling through the trees, apparently from the street.

  ‘Monsieur Marius!’

  He looked up.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Is that you, Monsieur Marius?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Monsieur Marius, your friends are waiting for you at the barricade in the Rue de la Chanvrerie.’

  The voice was not quite unfamiliar; it resembled the coarse, husky croak of Éponine. Marius ran to the gate, shifted the loose bar and, thrusting his head through, saw someone who looked like a youth vanish at a run into the darkness.

  III

  Monsieur Mabeuf

  Jean Valjean’s purse was of no service to Monsieur Mabeuf. His aged, childlike austerity had never encouraged gifts from Heaven nor was he disposed to admit that the stars could be transformed into louis d’or. Not knowing where the purse came from he took it to the local police post and left it there as an item of lost property to await a claimant. Needless to say, it was never claimed and did Monsieur Mabeuf no good.