Taking with him his Flora, his plates, his dried grasses, books and portfolios, he removed to a small cottage near the Salpêtrière, in what was then the village of Austerlitz. Here, for fifty crowns, he acquired three rooms and a garden with a well, enclosed by a hedge. At the same time he sold the bulk of his furniture. On the day when he took up residence he was particularly cheerful and himself drove in the nails on which to hang his engravings and grasses. He spent the rest of the day digging the garden, and in the evening, seeing the look of gloom on Mère Plutarque’s face, he patted her on the shoulder and said, smiling, ‘Cheer up! We still have the indigo.’
Only two visitors, the bookseller from the Porte Saint-Jacques and Marius, ever called at his Austerlitz cottage – a name, be it said, of which the warlike flavour by no means pleased him.
In general, as we have already suggested, minds absorbed in wisdom or in folly, or in both at once as often happens, are little affected by the vicissitudes of daily life. Their personal destiny is a thing remote from them. Such detachment creates a state of acquiescence which, if it were the outcome of reflection, might be termed philosophical. But they submit to losses and reverses, even to physical decay, without being much aware of them. It is true that in the end there is an awakening, but it is late in coming. In the meantime they stand as it were aloof from the play of personal fortune and misfortune, pawns in a game of which they are detached spectators.
Thus it was that with the shadows deepening about him, with his hopes fading one after another, Monsieur Mabeuf had remained serene, rather childishly but profoundly so. His spiritual states resembled the swing of a pendulum. Once set in motion by an illusion, the swing continued for a long time, even after the illusion had vanished. A clock does not stop the moment one loses the key.
Monsieur Mabeuf had innocent pleasures, inexpensive and unexpected, bestowed on him by trifles. One day Mère Plutarque was reading a novel in a corner of the room. She read aloud, finding it easier in this way to understand what she was reading. To read aloud is to assure oneself that one is reading, and there are persons who read very loudly indeed, as though positively proclaiming the fact. She was reading in this fashion and Monsieur Mabeuf was half-listening but not really attending. The tale had to do with a dragoon officer and a village beauty, and she read:
‘The beauty pouted and the dragoon …’ The French words Were ‘bouda’ and ‘dragon’.
Here she paused to wipe her glasses, and Monsieur Mabeuf, looking up, repeated:
‘Buddha and the dragon … Well, there is said to have been a dragon which lived in a cave and poured such torrents of flame from its nostrils that it scorched the sky. It had even set several stars on fire, and moreover it had tiger’s claws. Buddha boldly entered its cave and converted it. That is a good book that you are reading, Mère Plutarque. There is no more charming legend.’
And he fell into a delicious abstraction.
V
Poverty and pennilessness
Marius had an affection for the simple-minded old man who was drifting by degrees into utter poverty, with a growing sense of perplexity but still with no feeling of dismay. He saw Courfeyrac from time to time, and he called on Monsieur Mabeuf; but only on rare occasions, once or twice a month.
Marius enjoyed going for long walks – along the outer boulevards or the Champ de Mars, or in the less frequented streets round the Luxembourg. He would spend long periods contemplating the market gardens – vegetable plots, poultry scratching amid the dung, a horse turning the wheel of a hoist. Strangers looked at him with surprise, and sometimes even with suspicion. But it was only an impecunious young man dreaming the hours away.
It was during one of these walks that he had discovered the Gorbeau tenement and, attracted by its cheapness and isolation, had rented a room there. He was known there only as Monsieur Marius.
A few retired officers, former comrades of his father, one or two generals among them, having learned of his existence occasionally invited him to their homes. He did not refuse these invitations, which gave him a chance to talk about his father. So from time to time he visited Comte Pajol, General Bellavesne, and General Fririon, at the Invalides. There was music and dancing. On these occasions he wore his better suit. But he went only on nights when the streets were dry, because he could not afford a cab and refused to show himself except with boots shining like mirrors. He sometimes remarked, but without bitterness: ‘That is how things are. You may go to a polite salon with muddy garments but not with muddy boots. That is the sole requirement, the one thing that must be irreproachable – not your conscience.’
All passions except those of the heart are dissolved by reverie. Marius’s political ardours had vanished, helped by the 1830 revolution, which had calmed and appeased him. He was the same young man, but without the fire, holding the same opinions but less vehemently. To be exact, he no longer had opinions, but only sympathies. The only party he belonged to was that of humanity. Among nations he preferred the French, within the nation he preferred the masses, and of the masses he preferred the women. It was they, above all, whom he pitied. He had come to prefer books to events and poets to heroes; and most particularly he preferred a book like Job to an event like Marengo. When after a day spent in meditation he returned home by the evening light of the boulevards, and saw through the branches of the trees the measureless space of the infinite, the nameless lights, the darkness and mystery, it seemed to him that all things that were not simply human were of very little account. He believed, and perhaps he was right, that he had penetrated to the heart of life and human philosophy, and he came to pay little attention to anything except the sky, which is the only thing that Truth can see from the bottom of her well.
But this did not prevent him from devising countless plans and projects for the future. A person able to look into Marius’s heart, during that period of dreaming, would have marvelled at its purity. Indeed, if our earthly eyes possessed this power of seeing into the hearts of others, we would judge men far more surely by their dreams than by their thoughts. Thought must always contain an element of desire, but there is none in dreaming. The dream, which is wholly spontaneous, adopts and preserves, even in our utmost flights of fancy, the pattern of our spirit; nothing comes more truly from the very depths of the soul than those unconsidered and uncontrolled aspirations to the splendours of destiny. It is in these, much more than in our reasoned thoughts, that a man’s true nature is to be found. Our imaginings are what most resemble us. Each of us dreams of the unknown and the impossible in his own way.
About halfway through that year of 1831 the old woman who ran errands for Marius told him that his neighbours in the tenement, a wretchedly poor family named Jondrette, were to be evicted. Marius, who spent so much of his time elsewhere, had scarcely realized that he had any neighbours.
‘Why are they being turned out?’ he asked.
‘Because they’re behind with their rent. They owe two quarters.’
‘How much does it come to?’
‘Twenty francs.’
Marius kept a reserve of thirty francs in a drawer.
‘Here are twenty-five francs,’ he said to the old woman. ‘Pay the back rent and give the poor souls five francs for themselves. But don’t tell them that the money comes from me.’
VI
The substitute
It so happened that Lieutenant Théodule’s regiment was transferred to garrison duties in Paris, and the circumstance inspired Aunt Gillenormand with another idea. Her first idea had been to ask Théodule to spy on Marius; her second was to make him Marius’s successor.
In any event, and more especially if Monsieur Gillenormand should feel the need of a young face about the house, these rays of morning light being grateful to old ruins, it was expedient that Marius should be replaced. ‘It amounts to no more than changing a name in a book,’ she reflected. For Marius read Théodule. A great-nephew was near enough to a grandson, and a lancer was surely as acceptable as a lawyer.
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One morning when Monsieur Gillenormand was engaged in reading some such journal as La Quotidienne, his daughter entered the room and said in the mellowest of voices, for she was talking about her favourite:
‘Father, Théodule is calling this morning to pay his respects.’
‘And who is Théodule?’
‘Your great-nephew.’
‘Aha.’
The old gentleman returned to his reading, dismissing this unimportant great-nephew from his mind, and, as so often happened when he read the newspaper, was soon simmering with fury. The paper, which, it goes without saying, was of the royalist persuasion, announced without comment that on the following day one of those events was to take place which were then of daily occurrence in the life of Paris. The students from the faculties of Law and Medicine were to hold a meeting at twelve o’clock in the Place du Panthéon – ‘for the purpose of discussion’. The subject of the meeting was one of the questions of the hour: that of the artillery of the Garde Nationale, and the dispute that had arisen between the Ministry of War and the Civil Militia over the guns parked in the courtyard of the Louvre. The students were having the temerity to debate this matter in public. It was nearly enough to bring Monsieur Gillenormand to boiling-point.
And Marius, being a student, would no doubt be taking part in the proceedings on the Place du Panthéon!
It was as the old gentleman was digesting this painful thought that Théodule, who had had the prudence to wear civilian clothes, was tactfully ushered in by Mlle Gillenormand. The lancer had reasoned as follows: ‘The old druid hasn’t put all his money into an annuity. It’s worth dressing up from time to time, just to humour him.’
‘Father,’ said Mlle Gillenormand, ‘here is your great-nephew Théodule.’ And she murmured to the young man, ‘Mind you agree with everything he says.’
She then withdrew. The lieutenant, unaccustomed to meeting persons of such antiquity, mumbled a greeting and performed an awkward gesture which started automatically as an army salute and finished up as a civilian bow.
‘So it’s you, is it? Well, sit down,’ said the old man.
Having said this he forgot all about the visitor and resumed his train of thought. As Théodule seated himself he rose from his chair and began to pace the room, talking in a loud voice and fiddling with the watches in his two waistcoat pockets.
‘That riff-raff holding a meeting in the Place du Panthéon! A bunch of young scallywags, God save us, only just out of the nursery! If you gave their noses a tweak milk would come out. And they’re to debate in public! In God’s name, what’s the country coming to? Everything’s going to the dogs! Civil militia! Civilians armed with cannon! And they’ll be airing their views on the Garde Nationale! That’s what Jacobinism leads to. And who else will be there, I ask you? I’ll bet you a million to one there’ll be no one else there except fugitives from justice and discharged convicts – republicans and gaolbirds, they’re one and the same thing. Carnot asked, “Where do you want me to go, traitor?” and Fouché answered, “Wherever you like, imbecile!” That’s the republicans for you!’
‘Quite right,’ said Théodule.
Monsieur Gillenormand gave him a glance and continued:
‘To think that that wretched youth should have had the impudence to join the rebels! Why did he leave my house? To become a republican. But in the first place the people don’t want his republic, they don’t want it, they’ve got enough sense to know that there have always been kings, and always will be, and that the people are simply the people. They laugh at his republic, the young idiot Can there be any more horrible notion? To fall in love with Père Duchêne, think fondly of the guillotine, serenade the men of ’93 – the young of today are so stupid one wants to spit on them! And they’re all alike, no exceptions. You have only to breathe the air in the streets to be driven half insane. This nineteenth century is poisonous, full of young apes who think they amount to something because they’ve grown a goat’s beard and left their parents in the lurch. If it’s republican it’s romantic. And what is this romanticism all about? I will tell you. It is about every imaginable lunacy. Last year they were all going to that play Hernani.* Hernani – I ask you! A mass of contradictions and abominations, and not even written in decent French. And cannons in the Louvre! That’s the sort of thing that goes on nowadays.’
‘You’re perfectly right, uncle,’ said Théodule.
‘Cannons in the courtyard of a museum! Will you tell me what they’re for? Do you want to bombard the Belvedere Apollo or blow up the Venus de Medici? The young men of today are all rascals, as useless as their Benjamin Constant. And when they’re not scoundrels they’re hobbledehoys. They do their best to make themselves unattractive, they dress badly, they’re scared of women, they shy away from petticoats in a way that makes the girls laugh. Upon my word, I believe the poor little fools are afraid of love! They’re uncouth, and on top of that they’re stupid. They repeat music-hall jokes. They wear sack-coats, stableboys’ waistcoats, coarse linen shirts, homespun trousers and boots of rough leather, and their talk is as coarse as their clothes. You could use their jargon to sole their slippers. And then they presume to have political opinions! They want to invent new systems, re-shape society, abolish the monarchy, do away with the law, rebuild the universe, turn everything upside down and inside-out, and their idea of excitement is a sneaking glance at a washerwoman’s legs as she’s climbing on to her cart! Oh, Marius, Marius, poor young idiot! To be holding forth in public places, discussing, debating, taking measures! They call that “measures”, God save us! Disorder reverting to childishness. Schoolboys debating on the Garde Nationale – you wouldn’t get that among the Ojibways or the Cherokees. Those naked savages with heads like shuttlecocks, brandishing their tomahawks, are a lot less brutish than our young bachelors of arts. Rapscallions without two sous to rub together posing as men of learning and competence, propounding and arguing! It’s the end of this wretched terrestrial globe. One final belch was needed and France has produced it. All right, my lads, go on debating! This state of affairs will continue as long as they can stand reading the papers under the arcade at the Odéon. It costs them one sou, and it robs them of whatever good sense and intelligence they possess, and of their heart and soul and spirit. They soak up that stuff, and good-bye to home and family. All the newspapers are a plague, even the Drapeau blanc. So there it is, my boy, and you can pride yourself on having plunged your old grandfather in despair!’
‘Hear, hear!’ said Théodule. Taking advantage of the pause while Monsieur Gillenormand got his breath, he added pontifically: ‘All newspapers should be banned except the Moniteur and all books except the Army List.’
Monsieur Gillenormand proceeded:
‘Like their man Sieyès, a regicide who ended up a senator, the way they all do. They start by calling everybody “citizen” and end up being called Monsieur le Comte. Pot-bellied counts who were once murderers! The philosopher Sieyès! In justice to myself I may say that I have never rated all their philosophizing any more highly than a clown’s bladder. I once saw the senators going along the Quai Malaquais, in purple velvet cloaks embroidered with bees, and Henry IV hats. They were a dreadful sight, like a flock of monkeys in tiger-skins. I tell you, Citizens, that what you call progress is madness, your humanity a dream, your revolution a crime, your republic a monster, and that your young, virginal France comes out of a brothel. I say it to all of you, whether you’re publicists, economists, jurists or greater experts in liberty, equality and fraternity than the blades of the guillotine. That’s what I have to say to you, my good fellows!’
‘Splendid!’ cried the lieutenant. ‘Every word of it is true!’
Monsieur Gillenormand paused on the verge of a gesture, turned, looked hard at the young man and said:
‘You’re a damned fool.’
Book Six
Conjunction of Two Stars
I
Birth of a nickname
MARIUS AT this time was
a handsome young man with thick, very dark hair, a high, intelligent forehead, wide, sensitive nostrils, a frank, composed bearing and an expression that was at once high-minded, thoughtful, and ingenuous. His face, of which all the contours were rounded but still firm, had something of that German mildness that has invaded the French physiognomy by way of Alsace and Lorraine, and that absence of angles that set the Sicambri apart from other Romans, distinguishing the race of the lion from the race of the eagle. He had reached the time of life when the mind of a young man given to reflection is divided in almost equal proportions between depth and innocence. Faced by a difficult situation, he was likely to behave stupidly; but in a real emergency he could become magnificent. His manner was coolly courteous, reserved, and unforthcoming; but since his mouth was charming, with red lips and very white teeth, this air of aloofness was quite altered when he smiled. At moments, indeed, there was a striking contrast between the purity of his forehead and the sensual warmth of his smile. He had small but far-seeing eyes.
At the time of his utmost poverty he had seen girls look round at him as he passed and had fled from them in despair, believing that they were laughing at his shabby clothes, whereas the truth was that they were attracted by his good looks. This misconception had made him excessively shy. He had no girl of his own for the simple reason that he ran away from them all. Thus he continued to live in solitude – absurdly, as Courfeyrac said.
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