2.M.5.5. POVERTY A GOOD NEIGHBOR FOR MISERY
MARIUS liked this candid old man who saw himself gradually
falling into the clutches of indigence, and who came to
feel astonishment, little by little, without, however, being
made melancholy by it. Marius met Courfeyrac and sought
out M. Mabeuf. Very rarely, however; twice a month at
most.
Marius' pleasure consisted in taking long walks alone on
the
outer boulevards, or in the Champs-de-Mars, or in the least
frequented alleys of the Luxembourg. He often spent half a
day in gazing at a market garden, the beds of lettuce, the
chickens on the dung-heap, the horse turning the water-wheel.
The passersby stared at him in surprise, and some of them
thought his attire suspicious and his mien sinister. He
was only a poor young man dreaming in an objectless
way.
It was during one of his strolls that he had hit upon the
Gorbeau house, and, tempted by its isolation and its cheapness,
had taken up his abode there. He was known there only under
the name of M. Marius.
Some of his father's old generals or old comrades had
invited
him to go and see them, when they learned about
him. Marius had not refused their invitations. They afforded
opportunities of talking about his father. Thus he
went from time to time, to Comte Pajol, to General Bellavesne,
to General Fririon, to the Invalides. There was music
and dancing there. On such evenings, Marius put on his
new coat. But he never went to these evening parties or balls
except on days when it was freezing cold, because he could not
afford a carriage, and he did not wish to arrive with boots
otherwise than like mirrors.
He said sometimes, but without bitterness: "Men are so
made that in a drawing-room you may be soiled everywhere
except on your shoes. In order to insure a good reception
there, only one irreproachable thing is asked of you; your
conscience? No, your boots."
All passions except those of the heart are dissipated by
revery. Marius' political fevers vanished thus. The Revolution
of 1830 assisted in the process, by satisfying and calming
him. He remained the same, setting aside his fits of wrath.
He still held the same opinions. Only, they had been tempered.
To speak accurately, he had no longer any opinions, he
had sympathies. To what party did he belong? To the party
of humanity. Out of humanity he chose France; out of the
Nation he chose the people; out of the people he chose the
woman. It was to that point above all, that his pity was
directed.
Now he preferred an idea to a deed, a poet to a hero,
and he admired a book like Job more than an event like
Marengo. And then, when, after a day spent in meditation, he
returned in the evening through the boulevards, and caught
a glimpse through the branches of the trees of the fathomless
space beyond, the nameless gleams, the abyss, the shadow, the
mystery, all that which is only human seemed very pretty indeed
to him.
He thought that he had, and he really had, in fact,
arrived
at the truth of life and of human philosophy, and he had ended
by gazing at nothing but heaven, the only thing which Truth
can perceive from the bottom of her well.
This did not prevent him from multiplying his plans, his
combinations, his scaffoldings, his projects for the future. In
this state of revery, an eye which could have cast a glance into
Marius' interior would have been dazzled with the purity of
that soul. In fact, had it been given to our eyes of the flesh
to gaze into the consciences of others, we should be able to
judge a man much more surely according to what he dreams,
than according to what he thinks. There is will in thought,
there is none in dreams. Revery, which is utterly spontaneous,
takes and keeps, even in the gigantic and the ideal, the form
of our spirit. Nothing proceeds more directly and more sincerely
from the very depth of our soul, than our unpremeditated
and boundless aspirations towards the splendors of destiny.
In these aspirations, much more than in deliberate,
rational coordinated ideas, is the real character of a man to be
found. Our chimeras are the things which the most resemble
us. Each one of us dreams of the unknown and the impossible
in accordance with his nature.
Towards the middle of this year 1831, the old woman who
waited on Marius told him that his neighbors, the wretched
Jondrette family, had been turned out of doors. Marius, who
passed nearly the whole of his days out of the house, hardly
knew that he had any neighbors.
"Why are they turned out?" he asked.
"Because they do not pay their rent; they owe for two
quarters."
"How
much is it?"
"Twenty francs," said the old woman.
Marius had thirty francs saved up in a drawer.
"Here," he said to the old woman, "take these twenty-five
francs. Pay for the poor people and give them five francs, and
do not tell them that it was I."