2.M.5.3. MARIUS GROWN UP
AT this epoch, Marius was twenty years of age. It was
three years since he had left his grandfather. Both parties
had remained on the same terms, without attempting to approach
each other, and without seeking to see each other.
Besides, what was the use of seeing each other? Marius was
the brass vase, while Father Gillenormand was the iron pot.
We admit that Marius was mistaken as to his grandfather's
heart. He had imagined that M. Gillenormand had never
loved him, and that that crusty, harsh, and smiling old fellow
who cursed, shouted, and stormed and brandished his cane,
cherished for him, at the most, only that affection, which is
at once slight and severe, of the dotards of comedy. Marius
was in error. There are fathers who do not love their children;
there exists no grandfather who does not adore his
grandson. At bottom, as we have said, M. Gillenormand idolized
Marius. He idolized him after his own fashion, with an
accompaniment of snappishness and boxes on the ear; but, this
child once gone, he felt a black void in his heart; be would
allow no one to mention the child to him, and all the while
secretly regretted that he was so well obeyed. At first, he
hoped that this Buonapartist, this Jacobin, this terrorist, this
Septembrist, would return. But the weeks passed by, years
passed; to M. Gillenormand's great despair, the "blood-drinker"
did not make his appearance. "I could not do otherwise
than turn him out," said the grandfather to himself, and
he asked himself: "If the thing were to do over again, would
I do it?" His pride instantly answered "yes," but his aged
head, which he shook in silence, replied sadly "no." He had
his hours of depression. He missed Marius. Old men need
affection as they need the sun. It is warmth. Strong as his
nature was, the absence of Marius had wrought some change
in him. Nothing in the world could have induced him to take
a step towards "that rogue"; but he suffered. He never inquired
about him, but he thought of him incessantly. He lived
in the Marais in a more and more retired manner; he was still
merry and violent as of old, but his merriment had a convulsive
harshness, and his violences always terminated in a sort
of gentle and gloomy dejection. He sometimes said: "Oh! if
he only would return, what a good box on the ear I would give
him!"
As for his aunt, she thought too little to love much;
Marius
was no longer for her much more than a vague black form;
and she eventually came to occupy herself with him much less
than with the cat or the paroquet which she probably had.
What augmented Father Gillenormand's secret suffering was,
that he locked it all up within his breast, and did not allow its
existence to be divined. His sorrow was like those recently
invented furnaces which consume their own smoke. It sometimes
happened that officious busybodies spoke to him of
Marius, and asked him: "What is your grandson doing?"
"What has become of him?" The old bourgeois replied with
a sigh, that he was a sad case, and giving a fillip to his cuff,
if he wished to appear gay: "Monsieur le Baron de Pontmercy
is practising pettifogging in some corner or other."
While the old man regretted, Marius applauded himself.
As is the case with all good-hearted people, misfortune had
eradicated his bitterness. He only thought of M. Gillenormand
in an amiable light, but he had set his mind on not
receiving anything more from the man who had been unkind
to his father. This was the mitigated translation of his
first
indignation. Moreover, he was happy at having suffered, and
at suffering still. It was for his father's sake. The hardness
of his life satisfied and pleased him. He said to himself with
a sort of joy that — it was certainly the least he could
do; that
it was an expiation; — that, had it not been for that, he would
have been punished in some other way and later on for his impious
indifference towards his father, and such a father! that it
would not have been just that his father should have all the
suffering, and he none of it; and that, in any case, what were
his toils and his destitution compared with the colonel's heroic
life? that, in short, the only way for him to approach his
father and resemble him, was to be brave in the face of
indigence,
as the other had been valiant before the enemy; and
that that was, no doubt, what the colonel had meant to imply
by the words: "He will be worthy of it." Words which Marius
continued to wear, not on his breast, since the colonel's writing
had disappeared, but in his heart.
And then, on the day when his grandfather had turned him
out of doors, he had been only a child, now he was a man.
He felt it. Misery, we repeat, had been good for him. Poverty
in youth, when it succeeds, has this magnificent property
about it, that it turns the whole will towards effort, and the
whole soul towards aspiration. Poverty instantly lays material
life bare and renders it hideous; hence inexpressible bounds
towards the ideal life. The wealthy young man has a hundred
coarse and brilliant distractions, horse races, hunting, dogs,
tobacco, gaming, good repasts, and all the rest of it;
occupations
for the baser side of the soul, at the expense of the loftier
and more delicate sides. The poor young man wins his bread
with difficulty; he eats; when he has eaten, he has nothing
more but meditation. He goes to the spectacles which God
furnishes gratis; he gazes at the sky, space, the stars, flowers,
children, the humanity among which he is suffering, the creation
amid which he beams. He gazes so much on humanity
that he perceives its soul, he gazes upon creation to such an
extent that he beholds God. He dreams, he feels himself
great; he dreams on, and feels himself tender. From the
egotism of the man who suffers he passes to the compassion
of the man who meditates. An admirable sentiment breaks
forth in him, forgetfulness of self and pity for all. As he
thinks of the innumerable enjoyments which nature offers,
gives, and lavishes to souls which stand open, and refuses to
souls that are closed, he comes to pity, he the millionnaire of
the mind, the millionnaire of money. All hatred departs from
his heart, in proportion as light penetrates his spirit. And
is he unhappy? No. The misery of a young man is never
miserable. The first young lad who comes to hand, however
poor he may be, with his strength, his health, his rapid walk,
his brilliant eyes, his warmly circulating blood, his black hair,
his red lips, his white teeth, his pure breath, will always
arouse
the envy of an aged emperor. And then, every morning, he
sets himself afresh to the task of earning his bread; and
while his hands earn his bread, his dorsal column gains pride,
his brain gathers ideas. His task finished, he returns to
ineffable ecstasies, to contemplation, to joys; he beholds his
feet set in afflictions, in obstacles, on the pavement, in the
nettles, sometimes in the mire; his head in the light. He is
firm serene, gentle, peaceful, attentive, serious, content with
little, kindly; and he thanks God for having bestowed on him
those two forms of riches which many a rich man lacks: work,
which makes him free; and thought, which makes him
dignified.
This is what had happened with Marius. To tell the truth,
he inclined a little too much to the side of contemplation.
>From the day when he had succeeded in earning his living
with some approach to certainty, he had stopped, thinking it
good to be poor, and retrenching time from his work to give to
thought; that is to say, he sometimes passed entire days in
meditation, absorbed, engulfed, like a visionary, in the mute
voluptuousness of ecstasy and inward radiance. He had thus
propounded the problem of his life: to toil as little as possible
at material labor, in order to toil as much as possible at the
labor which is impalpable; in other words, to bestow a few
hours on real life, and to cast the rest to the infinite. As he
believed that he lacked nothing, he did not perceive that
contemplation,
thus understood, ends by becoming one of the
forms of idleness; that he was contenting himself with conquering
the first necessities of life, and that he was resting
from his labors too soon.
It was evident that, for this energetic and enthusiastic
nature, this could only be a transitory state, and that, at the
first shock against the inevitable complications of destiny,
Marius would awaken.
In the meantime, although he was a lawyer, and whatever
Father Gillenormand thought about the matter, he was not
practising, he was not even pettifogging. Meditation had
turned him aside from pleading. To haunt attorneys, to
follow the court, to hunt up cases — what a bore! Why should
he do it? He saw no reason for changing the manner of
gaining his livelihood! The obscure and ill-paid publishing
establishment had come to mean for him a sure source of
work which did not involve too much labor, as we have explained,
and which sufficed for his wants.
One of the publishers for whom he worked, M. Magimel, I
think, offered to take him into his own house, to lodge him
well, to furnish him with regular occupation, and to give him
fifteen hundred francs a year. To be well lodged! Fifteen
hundred francs! No doubt. But renounce his liberty! Be
on fixed wages! A sort of hired man of letters! According
to Marius' opinion, if he accepted, his position would become
both better and worse at the same time, he acquired comfort,
and lost his dignity; it was a fine and complete unhappiness
converted into a repulsive and ridiculous state of torture:
something like the case of a blind man who should recover the
sight of one eye. He refused.
Marius dwelt in solitude. Owing to his taste for
remaining
outside of everything, and through having been too much
alarmed, he had not entered decidedly into the group presided
over by Enjolras. They had remained good friends; they were
ready to assist each other on occasion in every possible way;
but nothing more. Marius had two friends: one young, Courfeyrac;
and one old, M. Mabeuf. He inclined more to the old
man. In the first place, he owed to him the revolution which
had taken place within him; to him he was indebted for
having known and loved his father. "He operated on me for
a cataract," he said.
The churchwarden had certainly played a decisive part.
It was not, however, that M. Mabeuf had been anything but
the calm and impassive agent of Providence in this connection.
He had enlightened Marius by chance and without
being aware of the fact, as does a candle which some one
brings; he had been the candle and not the some one.
As for Marius' inward political revolution, M. Mabeuf was
totally incapable of comprehending it, of willing or of directing
it.
As we shall see M. Mabeuf again, later on, a few words
will
not be superfluous.