3.V.5.6. THE TWO OLD MEN DO EVERYTHING, EACH ONE AFTER HIS
OWN FASHION, TO RENDER COSETTE HAPPY
EVERYTHING was made ready for the wedding. The doctor,
on being consulted, declared that it might take place in
February.
It was then December. A few ravishing weeks of
perfect happiness passed.
The grandfather was not the least happy of them all. He
remained for a quarter of an hour at a time gazing at Cosette.
"The wonderful, beautiful girl!" he exclaimed. "And she
has so sweet and good an air! she is, without exception, the
most charming girl that I have ever seen in my life. Later
on, she'll have virtues with an odor of violets. How graceful!
one cannot live otherwise than nobly with such a creature.
Marius, my boy, you are a Baron, you are rich, don't go to
pettifogging, I beg of you."
Cosette and Marius had passed abruptly from the sepulchre
to paradise. The transition had not been softened, and they
would have been stunned, had they not been dazzled by it.
"Do you understand anything about it?" said Marius to
Cosette.
"No," replied Cosette, "but it seems to me that the good
God is caring for us."
Jean Valjean did everything, smoothed away every
difficulty,
arranged everything, made everything easy. He hastened
towards Cosette's happiness with as much ardor, and,
apparently with as much joy, as Cosette herself.
As he had been a mayor, he understood bow to solve that
delicate problem, with the secret of which he alone was
acquainted,
Cosette's civil status. If he were to announce her
origin bluntly, it might prevent the marriage, who knows?
He extricated Cosette from all difficulties. He concocted for
her a family of dead people, a sure means of not encountering
any objections. Cosette was the only scion of an extinct
family; Cosette was not his own daughter, but the daughter
of the other Fauchelevent. Two brothers Fauchelevent had
been gardeners to the convent of the Petit-Picpus. Inquiry
was made at that convent; the very best information and
the most respectable references abounded; the good nuns, not
very apt and but little inclined to fathom questions of
paternity,
and not attaching any importance to the matter, had
never understood exactly of which of the two Fauchelevents
Cosette was the daughter. They said what was wanted and
they said it with zeal. An acte de notoriete was drawn
up.
Cosette became in the eyes of the law, Mademoiselle Euphrasie
Fauchelevent. She was declared an orphan, both father
and mother being dead. Jean Valjean so arranged it that he
was appointed, under the name of Fauchelevent, as Cosette's
guardian, with M. Gillenormand as supervising guardian over
him.
As for the five hundred and eighty thousand francs, they
constituted a legacy bequeathed to Cosette by a dead person,
who desired to remain unknown. The original legacy had
consisted of five hundred and ninety-four thousand francs;
but ten thousand francs had been expended on the education of
Mademoiselle Euphrasie, five thousand francs of that amount
having been paid to the convent. This legacy, deposited in
the hands of a third party, was to be turned over to Cosette
at her majority, or at the date of her marriage. This, taken
as a whole, was very acceptable, as the reader will perceive,
especially when the sum due was half a million. There were
some peculiarities here and there, it is true, but they were
not noticed; one of the interested parties had his eyes
blindfolded
by love, the others by the six hundred thousand francs.
Cosette learned that she was not the daughter of that old
man whom she had so long called father. He was merely a
kinsman; another Fauchelevent was her real father. At any
other time this would have broken her heart. But at the
ineffable moment which she was then passing through, it cast
but a slight shadow, a faint cloud, and she was so full of joy
that the cloud did not last long. She had Marius. The young
man arrived, the old man was effaced; such is life.
And then, Cosette had, for long years, been habituated to
seeing enigmas around her; every being who has had a mysterious
childhood is always prepared for certain renunciations.
Nevertheless, she continued to call Jean Valjean: Father.
Cosette, happy as the angels, was enthusiastic over Father
Gillenormand. It is true that he overwhelmed her with
gallant compliments and presents. While Jean Valjean was
building up for Cosette a normal situation in society and an
unassailable status, M. Gillenormand was superintending the
basket of wedding gifts. Nothing so amused him as being
magnificent. He had given to Cosette a robe of Binche guipure
which had descended to him from his own grandmother.
"These fashions come up again," said he, "ancient things
are the rage, and the young women of my old age dress like
the old women of my childhood."
He rifled his respectable chests of drawers in Coromandel
lacquer, with swelling fronts, which had not been opened for
years. — "Let us hear the confession of these dowagers," he
said, "let us see what they have in their paunches." He
noisily violated the pot-bellied drawers of all his wives, of all
his mistresses and of all his grandmothers. Pekins, damasks,
lampas, painted moires, robes of shot gros de Tours, India
kerchiefs embroidered in gold that could be washed, dauphines
without a right or wrong side, in the piece, Genoa and Alencon
point lace, parures in antique goldsmith's work, ivory bon-bon
boxes ornamented with microscopic battles, gewgaws and
ribbons — he lavished everything on Cosette. Cosette, amazed,
desperately in love with Marius, and wild with gratitude
towards M. Gillenormand, dreamed of a happiness without
limit clothed in satin and velvet. Her wedding basket seemed
to her to be upheld by seraphim. Her soul flew out into the
azure depths, with wings of Mechlin lace.
The intoxication of the lovers was only equalled, as we
have already said, by the ecstasy of the grandfather. A sort
of flourish of trumpets went on in the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire.
Every morning, a fresh offering of bric-a-brac from the
grandfather to Cosette. All possible knickknacks glittered
around her.
One day Marius, who was fond of talking gravely in the
midst of his bliss, said, apropos of I know not what incident:
"The men of the revolution are so great, that they have
the
prestige of the ages, like Cato and like Phocion, and each one
of them seems to me an antique memory."
"Moire antique!" exclaimed the old gentleman. "Thanks,
Marius. That is precisely the idea of which I was in search."
And on the following day, a magnificent dress of tea-rose
colored moire antique was added to Cosette's wedding presents.
From these fripperies, the grandfather extracted a bit of
wisdom.
"Love is all very well; but there must be something else
to go with it. The useless must be mingled with happiness.
Happiness is only the necessary. Season that enormously with
the superfluous for me. A palace and her heart. Her heart
and the Louvre. Her heart and the grand waterworks of
Versailles. Give me my shepherdess and try to make her a
duchess. Fetch me Phyllis crowned with corn-flowers, and
add a hundred thousand francs income. Open for me a
bucolic perspective as far as you can see, beneath a marble
colonnade. I consent to the bucolic and also to the fairy
spectacle
of marble and gold. Dry happiness resembles dry bread.
One eats, but one does not dine. I want the superfluous, the
useless, the extravagant, excess, that which serves no purpose.
I remember to have seen, in the Cathedral of Strasburg, a
clock, as tall as a three-story house which marked the hours,
which had the kindness to indicate the hour, but which had
not the air of being made for that; and which, after having
struck midday, or midnight, — midday, the hour of the sun,
or midnight, the hour of love, — or any other hour that you
like, gave you the moon and the stars, the earth and the sea,
birds and fishes, Phoebus and Phoebe, and a host of things
which emerged from a niche, and the twelve apostles, and the
Emperor Charles the Fifth, and Eponine, and Sabinus, and a
throng of little gilded goodmen, who played on the trumpet
to boot. Without reckoning delicious chimes which it sprinkled
through the air, on every occasion, without any one's
knowing why. Is a petty bald clock-face which merely tells
the hour equal to that? For my part, I am of the opinion of
the big clock of Strasburg, and I prefer it to the cuckoo clock
from the Black Forest."
M. Gillenormand talked nonsense in connection with the
wedding, and all the fripperies of the eighteenth century
passed pell-mell through his dithyrambs.
"You are ignorant of the art of festivals. You do not
know
how to organize a day of enjoyment in this age," he exclaimed.
"Your nineteenth century is weak. It lacks excess.
It ignores the rich, it ignores the noble. In everything it is
clean-shaven. Your third estate is insipid, colorless, odorless,
and shapeless. The dreams of your bourgeois who set up, as
they express it: a pretty boudoir freshly decorated, violet,
ebony and calico. Make way! Make way! the Sieur Curmudgeon
is marrying Mademoiselle Clutch-penny. Sumptuousness
and splendor. A louis d'or has been stuck to a candle,
There's the epoch for you. My demand is that I may flee from
it beyond the Sarmatians. Ah! in 1787, I predict that all
was lost, from the day when I beheld the Duc de Rohan, Prince
de Leon, Duc de Chabot, Duc de Montbazon, Marquis de Sonbise,
Vicomte de Thouars, peer of France, go to Longchamps
in a tapecu! That has borne its fruits. In this century, men
attend to business, they gamble on 'Change, they win money,
they are stingy. People take care of their surfaces and varnish
them; every one is dressed as though just out of a bandbox,
washed, soaped, scraped, shaved, combed, waked, smoothed,
rubbed, brushed, cleaned on the outside, irreproachable, polished
as a pebble, discreet, neat, and at the same time, death
of my life, in the depths of their consciences they have dung-heaps
and cesspools that are enough to make a cow-herd who
blows his nose in his fingers, recoil. I grant to this age the
device: 'Dirty Cleanliness.' Don't be vexed, Marius, give
me permission to speak; I say no evil of the people as you see,
I am always harping on your people, but do look favorably
on my dealing a bit of a slap to the bourgeoisie. I belong to
it. He who loves well lashes well. Thereupon, I say plainly,
that now-a-days people marry, but that they no longer know
how to marry. Ah! it is true, I regret the grace of the
ancient manners. I regret everything about them, their elegance,
their chivalry, those courteous and delicate ways, that
joyous luxury which every one possessed, music forming part
of the wedding, a symphony above stairs, a beating of drums
below stairs, the dances, the joyous faces round the table, the
fine-spun gallant compliments, the songs, the fireworks, the
frank laughter, the devil's own row, the huge knots of ribbon.
I regret the bride's garter. The bride's garter is cousin to the
girdle of Venus. On what does the war of Troy turn? On
Helen's garter, parbleu! Why did they fight, why did Diomed
the divine break over the head of Meriones that great
brazen helmet of ten points? why did Achilles and Hector
hew each other up with vast blows of their lances? Because
Helen allowed Paris to take her garter. With Cosette's garter,
Homer would construct the
Iliad. He would put in his
poem, a loquacious old fellow, like me, and he would call
him Nestor. My friends, in bygone days, in those amiable
days of yore, people married wisely; they had a good contract,
and then they had a good carouse. As soon as Cujas had
taken his departure, Gamacho entered. But, in sooth! the
stomach is an agreeable beast which demands its due, and
which wants to have its wedding also. People supped well,
and had at table a beautiful neighbor without a guimpe so
that her throat was only moderately concealed. Oh! the
large laughing mouths, and how gay we were in those days!
youth was a bouquet; every young man terminated in a
branch of lilacs or a tuft of roses; whether he was a shepherd
or a warrior; and if, by chance, one was a captain of
dragoons, one found means to call oneself Florian. People
thought much of looking well. They embroidered and tinted
themselves. A bourgeois had the air of a flower, a Marquis
had the air of a precious stone. People had no straps to
their boots, they had no boots. They were spruce, shining,
waved, lustrous, fluttering, dainty, coquettish, which did not
at all prevent their wearing swords by their sides. The humming-bird
has beak and claws. That was the day of the
Galland
Indies. One of the sides of that century was delicate,
the other was magnificent; and by the green cabbages! people
amused themselves. To-day, people are serious. The bourgeois
is avaricious, the bourgeoise is a prude; your century is
unfortunate. People would drive away the Graces as being
too low in the neck. Alas! beauty is concealed as though it
were ugliness. Since the revolution, everything, including the
ballet-dancers, has had its trousers; a mountebank dancer
must be grave; your rigadoons are doctrinarian. It is necessary
to be majestic. People would be greatly annoyed if they
did not carry their chins in their cravats. The ideal of an
urchin of twenty when he marries, is to resemble M. Royer-Collard.
And do you know what one arrives at with that
majesty? at being petty. Learn this: joy is not only joyous;
it is great. But be in love gayly then, what the deuce! marry,
when you marry, with fever and giddiness, and tumult, and
the uproar of happiness! Be grave in church, well and good.
But, as soon as the mass is finished, sarpejou! you must make
a dream whirl around the bride. A marriage should be royal
and chimerical; it should promenade its ceremony from the
cathedral of Rheims to the pagoda of Chanteloup. I have a
horror of a paltry wedding. Ventregoulette! be in Olympus
for that one day, at least. Be one of the gods. Ah! people
might be sylphs. Games and Laughter, argiraspides; they
are stupids. My friends, every recently made bridegroom
ought to be Prince Aldobrandini. Profit by that unique
minute in life to soar away to the empyrean with the swans
and the eagles, even if you do have to fall back on the morrow
into the bourgeoisie of the frogs. Don't economize on the
nuptials, do not prune them of their splendors; don't scrimp
on the day when you beam. The wedding is not the housekeeping.
Oh! if I were to carry out my fancy, it would be
gallant, violins would be heard under the trees. Here is my
programme: sky-blue and silver. I would mingle with the
festival the rural divinities, I would convoke the Dryads and
the Nereids. The nuptials of Amphitrite, a rosy cloud,
nymphs with well dressed locks and entirely naked, an Academician
offering quatrains to the goddess, a chariot drawn by
marine monsters.
"Triton trottait devant, et tirait de sa conque
Des sons si ravissants qu'il ravissait quiconque!"
— there's a festive programme, there's a good one, or else I
know nothing of such matters, deuce take it!"
While the grandfather, in full lyrical effusion, was
listening
to himself, Cosette and Marius grew intoxicated as they gazed
freely at each other.
Aunt Gillenormand surveyed all this with her imperturbable
placidity. Within the last five or six months she had
experienced a certain amount of emotions. Marius returned,
Marius brought back bleeding, Marius brought back from a
barricade, Marius dead, then living, Marius reconciled, Marius
betrothed, Marius wedding a poor girl, Marius wedding a
millionairess.
The six hundred thousand francs had been her
last surprise. Then, her indifference of a girl taking her first
communion returned to her. She went regularly to service,
told her beads, read her euchology, mumbled
Aves in one
corner
of the house, while
I love you was being whispered in
the
other, and she beheld Marius and Cosette in a vague way, like
two shadows. The shadow was herself.
There is a certain state of inert asceticism in which the
soul,
neutralized by torpor, a stranger to that which may be designated
as the business of living, receives no impressions, either
human, or pleasant or painful, with the exception of earthquakes
and catastrophes. This devotion, as Father Gillenormand
said to his daughter, corresponds to a cold in the head.
You smell nothing of life. Neither any bad, nor any good
odor.
Moreover, the six hundred thousand francs had settled the
elderly spinster's indecision. Her father had acquired the
habit of taking her so little into account, that he had not
consulted her in the matter of consent to Marius' marriage.
He had acted impetuously, according to his wont, having, a
despot-turned slave, but a single thought, — to satisfy Marius.
As for the aunt, — it had not even occurred to him that the
aunt existed, and that she could have an opinion of her own,
and, sheep as she was, this had vexed her. Somewhat resentful
in her inmost soul, but impassible externally, she had
said to herself: "My father has settled the question of the
marriage
without reference to me; I shall settle the question of
the inheritance without consulting him." She was rich, in
fact, and her father was not. She had reserved her decision
on this point. It is probable that, had the match been a poor
one, she would have left him poor. "So much the worse for
my nephew! he is wedding a beggar, let him be a beggar himself!"
But Cosette's half-million pleased the aunt, and altered
her inward situation so far as this pair of lovers were
concerned. One owes some consideration to six hundred thousand
francs, and it was evident that she could not do otherwise
than leave her fortune to these young people, since they
did not need it.
It was arranged that the couple should live with the
grandfather —
M. Gillenormand insisted on resigning to them his
chamber, the finest in the house. "That will make me young
again," he said. "It's an old plan of mine. I have always
entertained the idea of having a wedding in my chamber."
He furnished this chamber with a multitude of elegant
trifles. He had the ceiling and walls hung with an extraordinary
stuff, which he had by him in the piece, and which he
believed to have emanated from Utrecht with a buttercup-colored
satin ground, covered with velvet auricula blossoms. —
"It was with that stuff," said he, "that the bed of the Duchesse
d'Anville at la Roche-Guyon was draped." — On the chimney-piece,
he set a little figure in Saxe porcelain, carrying a
muff against her nude stomach.
M. Gillenormand's library became the lawyer's study, which
Marius needed; a study, it will be remembered, being required
by the council of the order.