Les Misérables by Victor Hugo (early reader books txt) 📕

of the tender words which lay at the bottom of his heart:—

“Ask my pardon! Throw yourself on my neck!”

M. Gillenormand felt that Marius would leave him in a few moments, that his harsh reception had repelled the lad, that his hardness was driving him away; he said all this to himself, and it augmented his grief; and as his grief was straightway converted into wrath, it increased his harshness. He would have liked to have Marius understand, and Marius did not understand, which made the goodman furious.

He began again:—

“What! you deserted me, your grandfather, you left my house to go no one knows whither, you drove your aunt to despair, you went off, it is easily guessed, to lead a bachelor life; it’s more convenient, to play the dandy, to come in at all hours, to amuse yourself; you have given me no signs of life, you have contracted debts without even telling me to pay them, you have become a smasher of windows and a blusterer, and, at the end of four years, you come to me, and that is all you have to say to me!”

This violent fashion of driving a grandson to tenderness was productive only of silence on the part of Marius. M. Gillenormand folded his arms; a gesture which with him was peculiarly imperious, and apostrophized Marius bitterly:—

“Let us make an end of this. You have come to ask something of me, you say? Well, what? What is it? Speak!”

“Sir,” said Marius, with the look of a man who feels that he is falling over a precipice, “I have come to ask your permission to marry.”

M. Gillenormand rang the bell. Basque opened the door half-way.

“Call my daughter.”

A second later, the door was opened once more, Mademoiselle Gillenormand did not enter, but showed herself; Marius was standing, mute, with pendant arms and the face of a criminal; M. Gillenormand was pacing back and forth in the room. He turned to his daughter and said to her:—

“Nothing. It is Monsieur Marius. Say good day to him. Monsieur wishes to marry. That’s all. Go away.”

The curt, hoarse sound of the old man’s voice announced a strange degree of excitement. The aunt gazed at Marius with a frightened air, hardly appeared to recognize him, did not allow a gesture or a syllable to escape her, and disappeared at her father’s breath more swiftly than a straw before the hurricane.

In the meantime, Father Gillenormand had returned and placed his back against the chimney-piece once more.

“You marry! At one and twenty! You have arranged that! You have only a permission to ask! a formality. Sit down, sir. Well, you have had a revolution since I had the honor to see you last. The Jacobins got the upper hand. You must have been delighted. Are you not a Republican since you are a Baron? You can make that agree. The Republic makes a good sauce for the barony. Are you one of those decorated by July? Have you taken the Louvre at all, sir? Quite near here, in the Rue Saint-Antoine, opposite the Rue des Nonamdières, there is a cannon-ball incrusted in the wall of the third story of a house with this inscription: ‘July 28th, 1830.’ Go take a look at that. It produces a good effect. Ah! those friends of yours do pretty things. By the way, aren’t they erecting a fountain in the place of the monument of M. le Duc de Berry? So you want to marry? Whom? Can one inquire without indiscretion?”

He paused, and, before Marius had time to answer, he added violently:—

“Come now, you have a profession? A fortune made? How much do you earn at your trade of lawyer?”

“Nothing,” said Marius, with a sort of firmness and resolution that was almost fierce.

“Nothing? Then all that you have to live upon is the twelve hundred livres that I allow you?”

Marius did not reply. M. Gillenormand continued:—

“Then I understand the girl is rich?”

“As rich as I am.”

“What! No dowry?”

“No.”

“Expectations?”

“I think not.”

“Utterly naked! What’s the father?”

“I don’t know.”

“And what’s her name?”

“Mademoiselle Fauchelevent.”

“Fauchewhat?”

“Fauchelevent.”

“Pttt!” ejaculated the old gentleman.

“Sir!” exclaimed Marius.

M. Gillenormand interrupted him with the tone of a man who is speaking to himself:—

“That’s right, one and twenty years of age, no profession, twelve hundred livres a year, Madame la Baronne de Pontmercy will go and purchase a couple of sous’ worth of parsley from the fruiterer.”

“Sir,” repeated Marius, in the despair at the last hope, which was vanishing, “I entreat you! I conjure you in the name of Heaven, with clasped hands, sir, I throw myself at your feet, permit me to marry her!”

The old man burst into a shout of strident and mournful laughter, coughing and laughing at the same time.

“Ah! ah! ah! You said to yourself: ‘Pardine! I’ll go hunt up that old blockhead, that absurd numskull! What a shame that I’m not twenty-five! How I’d treat him to a nice respectful summons! How nicely I’d get along without him! It’s nothing to me, I’d say to him: “You’re only too happy to see me, you old idiot, I want to marry, I desire to wed Mamselle No-matter-whom, daughter of Monsieur No-matter-what, I have no shoes, she has no chemise, that just suits; I want to throw my career, my future, my youth, my life to the dogs; I wish to take a plunge into wretchedness with a woman around my neck, that’s an idea, and you must consent to it!” and the old fossil will consent.’ Go, my lad, do as you like, attach your paving-stone, marry your Pousselevent, your Coupelevent—Never, sir, never!”

“Father—”

“Never!”

At the tone in which that “never” was uttered, Marius lost all hope. He traversed the chamber with slow steps, with bowed head, tottering and more like a dying man than like one merely taking his departure. M. Gillenormand followed him with his eyes, and at the moment when the door opened, and Marius was on the point of going out, he advanced four paces, with the senile vivacity of impetuous and spoiled old gentlemen, seized Marius by the collar, brought him back energetically into the room, flung him into an armchair and said to him:—

“Tell me all about it!”

“It was that single word “father” which had effected this revolution.

Marius stared at him in bewilderment. M. Gillenormand’s mobile face was no longer expressive of anything but rough and ineffable good-nature. The grandsire had given way before the grandfather.

“Come, see here, speak, tell me about your love affairs, jabber, tell me everything! Sapristi! how stupid young folks are!”

“Father—” repeated Marius.

The old man’s entire countenance lighted up with indescribable radiance.

“Yes, that’s right, call me father, and you’ll see!”

There was now something so kind, so gentle, so openhearted, and so paternal in this brusqueness, that Marius, in the sudden transition from discouragement to hope, was stunned and intoxicated by it, as it were. He was seated near the table, the light from the candles brought out the dilapidation of his costume, which Father Gillenormand regarded with amazement.

“Well, father—” said Marius.

“Ah, by the way,” interrupted M. Gillenormand, “you really have not a penny then? You are dressed like a pickpocket.”

He rummaged in a drawer, drew forth a purse, which he laid on the table: “Here are a hundred louis, buy yourself a hat.”

“Father,” pursued Marius, “my good father, if you only knew! I love her. You cannot imagine it; the first time I saw her was at the Luxembourg, she came there; in the beginning, I did not pay much heed to her, and then, I don’t know how it came about, I fell in love with her. Oh! how unhappy that made me! Now, at last, I see her every day, at her own home, her father does not know it, just fancy, they are going away, it is in the garden that we meet, in the evening, her father means to take her to England, then I said to myself: ‘I’ll go and see my grandfather and tell him all about the affair. I should go mad first, I should die, I should fall ill, I should throw myself into the water. I absolutely must marry her, since I should go mad otherwise.’ This is the whole truth, and I do not think that I have omitted anything. She lives in a garden with an iron fence, in the Rue Plumet. It is in the neighborhood of the Invalides.”

Father Gillenormand had seated himself, with a beaming countenance, beside Marius. As he listened to him and drank in the sound of his voice, he enjoyed at the same time a protracted pinch of snuff. At the words “Rue Plumet” he interrupted his inhalation and allowed the remainder of his snuff to fall upon his knees.

“The Rue Plumet, the Rue Plumet, did you say?—Let us see!—Are there not barracks in that vicinity?—Why, yes, that’s it. Your cousin Théodule has spoken to me about it. The lancer, the officer. A gay girl, my good friend, a gay girl!—Pardieu, yes, the Rue Plumet. It is what used to be called the Rue Blomet.—It all comes back to me now. I have heard of that little girl of the iron railing in the Rue Plumet. In a garden, a Pamela. Your taste is not bad. She is said to be a very tidy creature. Between ourselves, I think that simpleton of a lancer has been courting her a bit. I don’t know where he did it. However, that’s not to the purpose. Besides, he is not to be believed. He brags, Marius! I think it quite proper that a young man like you should be in love. It’s the right thing at your age. I like you better as a lover than as a Jacobin. I like you better in love with a petticoat, sapristi! with twenty petticoats, than with M. de Robespierre. For my part, I will do myself the justice to say, that in the line of sans-culottes, I have never loved any one but women. Pretty girls are pretty girls, the deuce! There’s no objection to that. As for the little one, she receives you without her father’s knowledge. That’s in the established order of things. I have had adventures of that same sort myself. More than one. Do you know what is done then? One does not take the matter ferociously; one does not precipitate himself into the tragic; one does not make one’s mind to marriage and M. le Maire with his scarf. One simply behaves like a fellow of spirit. One shows good sense. Slip along, mortals; don’t marry. You come and look up your grandfather, who is a good-natured fellow at bottom, and who always has a few rolls of louis in an old drawer; you say to him: ‘See here, grandfather.’ And the grandfather says: ‘That’s a simple matter. Youth must amuse itself, and old age must wear out. I have been young, you will be old. Come, my boy, you shall pass it on to your grandson. Here are two hundred pistoles. Amuse yourself, deuce take it!’ Nothing better! That’s the way the affair should be treated. You don’t marry, but that does no harm. You understand me?”

Marius, petrified and incapable of uttering a syllable, made a sign with his head that he did not.

The old man burst out laughing, winked his aged eye, gave him a slap on the knee, stared him full in the face with a mysterious and beaming air, and said to him, with the tenderest of shrugs of the shoulder:—

“Booby! make her your mistress.”

Marius turned pale. He had understood nothing of what his grandfather had just said. This twaddle about the Rue Blomet, Pamela, the barracks, the lancer, had passed before Marius like a dissolving view. Nothing of all that could bear any reference to Cosette, who was a lily. The good man was wandering in his mind. But this wandering terminated in words which Marius did understand, and which were a mortal insult to Cosette. Those words, “make her your mistress,” entered the heart of the strict young man like a sword.

He rose, picked up his hat which lay on the floor, and walked to the door with a firm, assured step. There he turned round, bowed deeply to his grandfather, raised his head erect again, and said:—

“Five years ago you insulted my father; to-day you have insulted my wife. I ask nothing more of you, sir. Farewell.”

Father Gillenormand, utterly confounded, opened his mouth, extended his arms, tried to rise, and before he could utter a word, the door closed once more, and Marius had disappeared.

The old man remained for several minutes motionless and as though struck by lightning, without the power to speak or breathe, as though a clenched fist grasped his throat. At last he tore himself from his armchair, ran, so far as a man can run at ninety-one, to the door,