3.V.5.2. MARIUS, EMERGING FROM CIVIL WAR, MAKES READY FOR
DOMESTIC WAR
FOR a long time, Marius was neither dead nor alive. For
many weeks he lay in a fever accompanied by delirium, and
by tolerably grave cerebral symptoms, caused more by the
shocks of the wounds on the head than by the wounds themselves.
He repeated Cosette's name for whole nights in the
melancholy
loquacity of fever, and with the sombre obstinacy of
agony. The extent of some of the lesions presented a serious
danger, the suppuration of large wounds being always liable
to become re-absorbed, and consequently, to kill the sick man,
under certain atmospheric conditions; at every change of
weather, at the slightest storm, the physician was uneasy.
"Above all things," he repeated, "let the wounded man be
subjected to no emotion." The dressing of the wounds was
complicated and difficult, the fixation of apparatus and bandages
by cerecloths not having been invented as yet, at that
epoch. Nicolette used up a sheet "as big as the ceiling," as
she put it, for lint. It was not without difficulty that the
chloruretted lotions and the nitrate of silver overcame the
gangrene. As long as there was any danger, M. Gillenormand,
seated in despair at his grandson's pillow, was, like Marius,
neither alive nor dead.
Every day, sometimes twice a day, a very well dressed
gentleman with white hair, — such was the description given
by the porter, — came to inquire about the wounded man, and
left a large package of lint for the dressings.
Finally, on the 7th of September, four months to a day,
after the sorrowful night when he had been brought back to
his grandfather in a dying condition, the doctor declared that
he would answer for Marius. Convalescence began. But
Marius was forced to remain for two months more stretched
out on a long chair, on account of the results called up by
the fracture of his collar-bone. There always is a last wound
like that which will not close, and which prolongs the
dressings indefinitely, to the great annoyance of the sick
person.
However, this long illness and this long convalescence
saved
him from all pursuit. In France, there is no wrath, not
even of a public character, which six months will not extinguish.
Revolts, in the present state of society, are so much
the fault of every one, that they are followed by a certain
necessity of shutting the eyes.
Let us add, that the inexcusable Gisquet order, which
enjoined
doctors to lodge information against the wounded,
having outraged public opinion, and not opinion alone, but
the King first of all, the wounded were covered and protected
by this indignation; and, with the exception of those who had
been made prisoners in the very act of combat, the councils
of war did not dare to trouble any one. So Marius was left
in peace.
M. Gillenormand first passed through all manner of
anguish,
and then through every form of ecstasy. It was found
difficult to prevent his passing every night beside the wounded
man; he had his big arm-chair carried to Marius' bedside; he
required his daughter to take the finest linen in the house for
compresses and bandages. Mademoiselle Gillenormand, like
a sage and elderly person, contrived to spare the fine linen,
while allowing the grandfather to think that he was obeyed.
M. Gillenormand would not permit any one to explain to him,
that for the preparation of lint batiste is not nearly so good
as coarse linen, nor new linen as old linen. He was present
at all the dressings of the wounds from which Mademoiselle
Gillenormand modestly absented herself. When the dead
flesh was cut away with scissors, he said: "Aie! aie!" Nothing
was more touching than to see him with his gentle, senile
palsy, offer the wounded man a cup of his cooling-draught.
He overwhelmed the doctor with questions. He did not
observe that he asked the same ones over and over again.
On the day when the doctor announced to him that Marius
was out of danger, the good man was in a delirium. He made
his porter a present of three louis. That evening, on his return
to his own chamber, he danced a gavotte, using his thumb
and forefinger as castanets, and he sang the following song:
"Jeanne est nee a Fougere "Amour, tu vis en elle;
Vrai nid d'une bergere; Car c'est dans sa prunelle
J'adore son jupon, Que tu mets ton carquois.
Fripon. Narquois!
"Moi, je la chante, et j'aime,
Plus que Diane meme,
Jeanne et ses durs tetons
Bretons."
Then he knelt upon a chair, and Basque, who was watching
him through the half-open door, made sure that he was
praying.
Up to that time, he had not believed in God.
At each succeeding phase of improvement, which became
more and more pronounced, the grandfather raved. He executed
a multitude of mechanical actions full of joy; he
ascended and descended the stairs, without knowing why. A
pretty female neighbor was amazed one morning at receiving
a big bouquet; it was M. Gillenormand who had sent it to her.
The husband made a jealous scene. M. Gillenormand tried
to draw Nicolette upon his knees. He called Marius, "M. le
Baron." He shouted: "Long live the Republic!"
Every moment, he kept asking the doctor: "Is he no longer
in danger?" He gazed upon Marius with the eyes of a grandmother.
He brooded over him while he ate. He no longer
knew himself, he no longer rendered himself an account of
himself. Marius was the master of the house, there was
abdication
in his joy, he was the grandson of his grandson.
In the state of joy in which he then was, he was the most
venerable of children. In his fear lest he might fatigue or
annoy the convalescent, he stepped behind him to smile. He
was content, joyous, delighted, charming, young. His white
locks added a gentle majesty to the gay radiance of his visage.
When grace is mingled with wrinkles, it is adorable. There
is an indescribable aurora in beaming old age.
As for Marius, as he allowed them to dress his wounds and
care for him, he had but one fixed idea: Cosette.
After the fever and delirium had left him, he did not
again
pronounce her name, and it might have been supposed that he
no longer thought of her. He held his peace, precisely because
his soul was there.
He did not know what had become of Cosette; the whole
affair of the Rue de la Chanvrerie was like a cloud in his
memory; shadows that were almost indistinct, floated through
his mind, Eponine, Gavroche, Mabeuf, the Thenardiers, all his
friends gloomily intermingled with the smoke of the barricade;
the strange passage of M. Fauchelevent through that
adventure produced on him the effect of a puzzle in a tempest;
he understood nothing connected with his own life, he did not
know how nor by whom he had been saved, and no one of those
around him knew this; all that they had been able to tell him
was, that he had been brought home at night in a hackney-coach,
to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire; past, present, future
were nothing more to him than the mist of a vague idea; but
in that fog there was one immovable point, one clear and precise
outline, something made of granite, a resolution, a will; to
find Cosette once more. For him, the idea of life was not
distinct
from the idea of Cosette. He had decreed in his heart
that he would not accept the one without the other, and he
was immovably resolved to exact of any person whatever, who
should desire to force him to live, — from his grandfather,
from fate, from hell, — the restitution of his vanished
Eden.
He did not conceal from himself the fact that obstacles
existed.
Let us here emphasize one detail, he was not won over and
was but little softened by all the solicitude and tenderness of
his grandfather. In the first place, he was not in the secret;
then, in his reveries of an invalid, which were still feverish,
possibly, he distrusted this tenderness as a strange and novel
thing, which had for its object his conquest. He remained
cold. The grandfather absolutely wasted his poor old smile.
Marius said to himself that it was all right so long as he,
Marius, did not speak, and let things take their course; but
that when it became a question of Cosette, he would find
another face, and that his grandfather's true attitude would be
unmasked. Then there would be an unpleasant scene; a
recrudescence
of family questions, a confrontation of positions,
every sort of sarcasm and all manner of objections at one and
the same time, Fauchelevent, Coupelevent, fortune, poverty,
a stone about his neck, the future. Violent resistance;
conclusion:
a refusal. Marius stiffened himself in advance.
And then, in proportion as he regained life, the old
ulcers
of his memory opened once more, he reflected again on the
past, Colonel Pontmercy placed himself once more between
M. Gillenormand and him, Marius, he told himself that he had
no true kindness to expect from a person who had been so
unjust and so hard to his father. And with health, there
returned
to him a sort of harshness towards his grandfather.
The old man was gently pained by this. M. Gillenormand,
without however allowing it to appear, observed that Marius,
ever since the latter had been brought back to him and had
regained consciousness, had not once called him father. It is
true that he did not say "monsieur" to him; but he contrived
not to say either the one or the other, by means of a certain
way of turning his phrases. Obviously, a crisis was approaching.
As almost always happens in such cases, Marius skirmished
before giving battle, by way of proving himself. This is
called "feeling the ground." One morning it came to pass
that M. Gillenormand spoke slightingly of the Convention,
apropos of a newspaper which had fallen into his hands, and
gave vent to a Royalist harangue on Danton, Saint-Juste and
Robespierre. — "The men of '93 were giants," said Marius
with severity. The old man held his peace, and uttered not a
sound during the remainder of that day.
Marius, who had always present to his mind the inflexible
grandfather of his early years, interpreted this silence as a
profound concentration of wrath, augured from it a hot conflict,
and augmented his preparations for the fray in the inmost
recesses of his mind.
He decided that, in case of a refusal, he would tear off
his
bandages, dislocate his collar-bone, that he would lay bare all
the wounds which he had left, and would reject all food. His
wounds were his munitions of war. He would have Cosette
or die.
He awaited the propitious moment with the crafty patience
of the sick.
That moment arrived.