2.M.3.8. MARBLE AGAINST GRANITE
IT was hither that Marius had come on the first occasion of
his absenting himself from Paris. It was hither that he had
come every time that M. Gillenormand had said: "He is sleeping
out."
Lieutenant Theodule was absolutely put out of countenance
by this unexpected encounter with a sepulchre; he experienced
a singular and disagreeable sensation which he was incapable
of analyzing, and which was composed of respect for the tomb,
mingled with respect for the colonel. He retreated, leaving
Marius alone in the cemetery, and there was discipline in this
retreat. Death appeared to him with large epaulets, and he
almost made the military salute to him. Not knowing what
to write to his aunt, he decided not to write at all; and it is
probable that nothing would have resulted from the discovery
made by Theodule as to the love affairs of Marius, if, by one of
those mysterious arrangements which are so frequent in
chance, the scene at Vernon had not had an almost immediate
counter-shock at Paris.
Marius returned from Vernon on the third day, in the
middle
of the morning, descended at his grandfather's door, and,
wearied by the two nights spent in the diligence, and feeling
the need of repairing his loss of sleep by an hour at the
swimming-school, he mounted rapidly to his chamber, took merely
time enough to throw off his travelling-coat, and the black
ribbon which he wore round his neck, and went off to the
bath.
M.Gillenormand, who had risen betimes like all old men in
good health, had heard his entrance, and had made haste to
climb, as quickly as his old legs permitted, the stairs to the
upper story where Marius lived, in order to embrace him, and
to question him while so doing, and to find out where he had
been.
But the youth had taken less time to descend than the old
man had to ascend, and when Father Gillenormand entered the
attic, Marius was no longer there.
The bed had not been disturbed, and on the bed lay,
outspread,
but not defiantly the great-coat and the black ribbon.
"I like this better," said M. Gillenormand.
And a moment later, he made his entrance into the salon,
where Mademoiselle Gillenormand was already seated, busily
embroidering her cart-wheels.
The entrance was a triumphant one.
M. Gillenormand held in one hand the great-coat, and in
the
other the neck-ribbon, and exclaimed: —
"Victory! We are about to penetrate the mystery! We are
going to learn the most minute details; we are going to lay our
finger on the debaucheries of our sly friend! Here we have the
romance itself. I have the portrait!"
In fact, a case of black shagreen, resembling a medallion
portrait, was suspended from the ribbon.
The old man took this case and gazed at it for some time
without opening it, with that air of enjoyment, rapture, and
wrath, with which a poor hungry fellow beholds an admirable
dinner which is not for him, pass under his very nose.
"For this evidently is a portrait. I know all about such
things. That is worn tenderly on the heart. How stupid they
are! Some abominable fright that will make us shudder, probably!
Young men have such bad taste nowadays!"
"Let us see, father," said the old spinster.
The case opened by the pressure of a spring. They found
in it nothing but a carefully folded paper.
"From the same to the same," said M.
Gillenormand, bursting
with laughter. "I know what it is. A billet-doux."
"Ah! let us read it!" said the aunt.
And she put on her spectacles. They unfolded the paper
and read as follows: —
"For my son. — The Emperor made me a Baron on
the battlefield
of Waterloo. Since the Restoration disputes my right to
this title which I purchased with my blood, my son shall take
it and bear it. That he will be worthy of it is a matter of
course."
The feelings of father and daughter cannot be described.
They felt chilled as by the breath of a death's-head. They did
not exchange a word.
Only, M. Gillenormand said in a low voice and as though
speaking to himself: —
"It is the slasher's handwriting."
The aunt examined the paper, turned it about in all
directions,
then put it back in its case.
At the same moment a little oblong packet, enveloped in
blue paper, fell from one of the pockets of the great-coat.
Mademoiselle Gillenormand picked it up and unfolded the
blue paper.
It contained Marius' hundred cards. She handed one of
them to M. Gillenormand, who read: Le Baron Marius
Pontmercy.
The
old man rang the bell. Nicolette came. M. Gillenormand
took the ribbon, the case, and the coat, flung them all
on the floor in the middle of the room, and said: —
"Carry those duds away."
A full hour passed in the most profound silence. The old
man and the old spinster had seated themselves with their
backs to each other, and were thinking, each on his own account,
the same things, in all probability.
At the expiration of this hour, Aunt Gillenormand said: —
"A pretty state of things!"
A few moments later, Marius made his appearance. He
entered. Even before he had crossed the threshold, he saw his
grandfather holding one of his own cards in his hand, and on
catching sight of him, the latter exclaimed with his air of
bourgeois
and grinning superiority which was something crushing:
—
"Well! well! well! well! well! so you are a baron now. I
present you my compliments. What is the meaning of
this?"
Marius reddened slightly and replied: —
"It means that I am the son of my father."
M. Gillenormand ceased to laugh, and said harshly: —
"I am your father."
"My father," retorted Marius, with downcast eyes and a
severe air, "was a humble and heroic man, who served the
Republic and France gloriously, who was great in the greatest
history that men have ever made, who lived in the bivouac for
a quarter of a century, beneath grape-shot and bullets, in snow
and mud by day, beneath rain at night, who captured two flags,
who received twenty wounds, who died forgotten and abandoned,
and who never committed but one mistake, which was
to love too fondly two,ingrates, his country and myself."
This was more than M. Gillenormand could bear to hear.
At the word republic, he rose, or, to speak more
correctly, be
sprang to his feet. Every word that Marius had just uttered
produced on the visage of the old Royalist the effect of the
puffs of air from a forge upon a blazing brand. From a dull
hue he had turned red, from red, purple, and from purple,
flame-colored.
"Marius!" he cried. "Abominable child! I do not know
what your father was! I do not wish to know! I know nothing
about that, and I do not know him! But what I do know
is, that there never was anything but scoundrels among those
men! They were all rascals, assassins, red-caps, thieves! I
say all! I say all! I know not one! I say all! Do you hear
me, Marius! See here, you are no more a baron than my slipper
is! They were all bandits in the service of Robespierre!
All who served B-u-o-naparte were brigands! They were all
traitors who betrayed, betrayed, betrayed their legitimate king!
All cowards who fled before the Prussians and the English at
Waterloo! That is what I do know! Whether Monsieur your
father comes in that category, I do not know! I am sorry for
it, so much the worse, your humble servant!"
In his turn, it was Marius who was the firebrand and M.
Gillenormand who was the bellows. Marius quivered in every
limb, he did not know what would happen next, his brain was
on fire. He was the priest who beholds all his sacred wafers
cast to the winds, the fakir who beholds a passer-by spit upon
his idol. It could not be that such things had been uttered in
his presence. What was he to do? His father had just been
trampled under foot and stamped upon in his presence, but by
whom? By his grandfather. How was he to avenge the one
without outraging the other? It was impossible for him to insult
his grandfather and it was equally impossible for him to
leave his father unavenged. On the one hand was a sacred
grave, on the other hoary locks.
He stood there for several moments, staggering as though
intoxicated, with all this whirlwind dashing through his head;
then he raised his eyes, gazed fixedly at his grandfather, and
cried in a voice of thunder: —
"Down with the Bourbons, and that great hog of a Louis
XVIII.!"
Louis XVIII. had been dead for four years; but it was all
the same to him.
The old man, who had been crimson, turned whiter than his
hair. He wheeled round towards a bust of M. le Duc de Berry,
which stood on the chimney-piece, and made a profound bow,
with a sort of peculiar majesty. Then he paced twice, slowly
and in silence, from the fireplace to the window and from the
window to the fireplace, traversing the whole length of the
room, and making the polished floor creak as though he had
been a stone statue walking.
On his second turn, he bent over his daughter, who was
watching this encounter with the stupefied air of an antiquated
lamb, and said to her with a smile that was almost calm: "A
baron like this gentleman, and a bourgeois like myself cannot
remain under the same roof."
And drawing himself up, all at once, pallid, trembling,
terrible,
with his brow rendered more lofty by the terrible radiance
of wrath, he extended his arm towards Marius and
shouted to him: —
"Be off!"
Marius left the house.
On the following day, M. Gillenormand said to his
daughter:
"You will send sixty pistoles every six months to that
blood-drinker, and you will never mention his name to me."
Having an immense reserve fund of wrath to get rid of, and
not knowing what to do with it, he continued to address his
daughter as you instead of thou for the next
three months.
Marius, on his side, had gone forth in indignation. There
was one circumstance which, it must be admitted, aggravated
his exasperation. There are always petty fatalities of the sort
which complicate domestic dramas. They augment the grievances
in such cases, although, in reality, the wrongs are not
increased by them. While carrying Marius' "duds" precipitately
to his chamber, at his grandfather's command, Nicolette
had, inadvertently, let fall, probably, on the attic staircase,
which was dark, that medallion of black shagreen which contained
the paper penned by the colonel. Neither paper nor
case could afterwards be found. Marius was convinced that
"Monsieur Gillenormand" — from that day forth he never
alluded to him otherwise — had flung "his father's testament"
in the fire. He knew by heart the few lines which the colonel
had written, and, consequently, nothing was lost. But the
paper, the writing, that sacred relic, — all that was his very
heart. What had been done with it?
Marius had taken his departure without saying whither he
was going, and without knowing where, with thirty francs, his
watch, and a few clothes in a hand-bag. He had entered a
hackney-coach, had engaged it by the hour, and had directed
his course at hap-hazard towards the Latin quarter.
What was to become of Marius?
