3.V.1.16. HOW FROM A BROTHER ONE BECOMES A FATHER
AT that same moment, in the garden of the Luxembourg, —
for the gaze of the drama must be everywhere present, — two
children were holding each other by the hand. One might
have been seven years old, the other five. The rain having
soaked them, they were walking along the paths on the sunny
side; the elder was leading the younger; they were pale and
ragged; they had the air of wild birds. The smaller of them
said: "I am very hungry."
The elder, who was already somewhat of a protector, was
leading his brother with his left hand and in his right he
carried a small stick.
They were alone in the garden. The garden was deserted,
the gates had been closed by order of the police, on account
of the insurrection. The troops who had been bivouacking
there had departed for the exigencies of combat.
How did those children come there? Perhaps they had
escaped from some guard-house which stood ajar; perhaps
there was in the vicinity, at the Barriere d'Enfer; or on the
Esplanade de l'Observatoire, or in the neighboring carrefour,
dominated by the pediment on which could be read: Invenerunt
parvulum pannis involutum, some mountebank's booth
from which they had fled; perhaps they had, on the preceding
evening, escaped the eye of the inspectors of the garden at
the hour of closing, and had passed the night in some one of
those sentry-boxes where people read the papers? The fact
is, they were stray lambs and they seemed free. To be astray
and to seem free is to be lost. These poor little creatures
were, in fact, lost.
These two children were the same over whom Gavroche
had been put to some trouble, as the reader will recollect.
Children of the Thenardiers, leased out to Magnon, attributed
to M. Gillenormand, and now leaves fallen from all these
rootless branches, and swept over the ground by the wind.
Their clothing, which had been clean in Magnon's day, and
which had served her as a prospectus with M. Gillenormand,
had been converted into rags.
Henceforth these beings belonged to the statistics as
"Abandoned children," whom the police take note of, collect,
mislay and find again on the pavements of Paris.
It required the disturbance of a day like that to account
for these miserable little creatures being in that garden. If
the superintendents had caught sight of them, they would
have driven such rags forth. Poor little things do not enter
public gardens; still, people should reflect that, as children,
they have a right to flowers.
These children were there, thanks to the locked gates.
They were there contrary to the regulations. They had
slipped into the garden and there they remained. Closed
gates do not dismiss the inspectors, oversight is supposed to
continue, but it grows slack and reposes; and the inspectors,
moved by the public anxiety and more occupied with the outside
than the inside, no longer glanced into the garden, and had
not seen the two delinquents.
It had rained the night before, and even a little in the
morning. But in June, showers do not count for much. An
hour after a storm, it can hardly be seen that the beautiful
blonde day has wept. The earth, in summer, is as quickly
dried as the cheek of a child. At that period of the solstice,
the light of full noonday is, so to speak, poignant. It takes
everything. It applies itself to the earth, and superposes
itself with a sort of suction. One would say that the sun was
thirsty. A shower is but a glass of water; a rainstorm is
instantly
drunk up. In the morning everything was dripping,
in the afternoon everything is powdered over.
Nothing is so worthy of admiration as foliage washed by
the rain and wiped by the rays of sunlight; it is warm freshness.
The gardens and meadows, having water at their roots,
and sun in their flowers, become perfuming-pans of incense,
and smoke with all their odors at once. Everything smiles,
sings and offers itself. One feels gently intoxicated. The
springtime is a provisional paradise, the sun helps man to
have patience.
There are beings who demand nothing further; mortals,
who, having the azure of heaven, say: "It is enough!" dreamers
absorbed in the wonderful, dipping into the idolatry of
nature, indifferent to good and evil, contemplators of cosmos
and radiantly forgetful of man, who do not understand how
people can occupy themselves with the hunger of these, and
the thirst of those, with the nudity of the poor in winter, with
the lymphatic curvature of the little spinal column, with the
pallet, the attic, the dungeon, and the rags of shivering young
girls, when they can dream beneath the trees; peaceful and
terrible spirits they, and pitilessly satisfied. Strange to say,
the infinite suffices them. That great need of man, the finite,
which admits of embrace, they ignore. The finite which admits
of progress and sublime toil, they do not think about.
The indefinite, which is born from the human and divine
combination
of the infinite and the finite, escapes them. Provided
that they are face to face with immensity, they smile
Joy never, ecstasy forever. Their life lies in surrendering
their personality in contemplation. The history of humanity
is for them only a detailed plan. All is not there; the true
All remains without; what is the use of busying oneself over
that detail, man? Man suffers, that is quite possible; but
look at Aldebaran rising! The mother has no more milk, the
new-born babe is dying. I know nothing about that, but just
look at this wonderful rosette which a slice of wood-cells of
the pine presents under the microscope! Compare the most
beautiful Mechlin lace to that if you can! These thinkers
forget to love. The zodiac thrives with them to such a point
that it prevents their seeing the weeping child. God eclipses
their souls. This is a family of minds which are, at once,
great and petty. Horace was one of them; so was Goethe. La
Fontaine perhaps; magnificent egoists of the infinite, tranquil
spectators of sorrow, who do not behold Nero if the
weather be fair, for whom the sun conceals the funeral pile,
who would look on at an execution by the guillotine in the
search for an effect of light, who hear neither the cry nor the
sob, nor the death rattle, nor the alarm peal, for whom
everything
is well, since there is a month of May, who, so long as
there are clouds of purple and gold above their heads, declare
themselves content, and who are determined to be happy until
the radiance of the stars and the songs of the birds are
exhausted.
These are dark radiances. They have no suspicion that
they are to be pitied. Certainly they are so. He who does
not weep does not see. They are to be admired and pitied, as
one would both pity and admire a being at once night and day,
without eyes beneath his lashes but with a star on his brow.
The indifference of these thinkers, is, according to some,
a
superior philosophy. That may be; but in this superiority
there is some infirmity. One may be immortal and yet limp:
witness Vulcan. One may be more than man and less than
man. There is incomplete immensity in nature. Who knows
whether the sun is not a blind man?
But then, what? In whom can we trust? Solem quis
dicere falsum audeat? Who shall dare to say that the sun is
false? Thus certain geniuses, themselves, certain Very-Lofty
mortals, man-stars, may be mistaken? That which is on high
at the summit, at the crest, at the zenith, that which sends
down so much light on the earth, sees but little, sees badly,
sees not at all? Is not this a desperate state of things? No.
But what is there, then, above the sun? The god.
On the 6th of June, 1832, about eleven o'clock in the
morning,
the Luxembourg, solitary and depopulated, was charming.
The quincunxes and flower-beds shed forth balm and dazzling
beauty into the sunlight. The branches, wild with the brilliant
glow of midday, seemed endeavoring to embrace. In
the sycamores there was an uproar of linnets, sparrows triumphed,
woodpeckers climbed along the chestnut trees, administering
little pecks on the bark. The flower-beds accepted
the legitimate royalty of the lilies; the most august of perfumes
is that which emanates from whiteness. The peppery
odor of the carnations was perceptible. The old crows of
Marie de Medici were amorous in the tall trees. The sun
gilded, empurpled, set fire to and lighted up the tulips, which
are nothing but all the varieties of flame made into flowers.
All around the banks of tulips the bees, the sparks of these
flame-flowers, hummed. All was grace and gayety, even the
impending rain; this relapse, by which the lilies of the valley
and the honeysuckles were destined to profit, had nothing
disturbing about it; the swallows indulged in the charming
threat of flying low. He who was there aspired to happiness;
life smelled good; all nature exhaled candor, help, assistance,
paternity, caress, dawn. The thoughts which fell from heaven
were as sweet as the tiny hand of a baby when one kisses it.
The statues under the trees, white and nude, had robes of
shadow pierced with light; these goddesses were all tattered
with sunlight; rays hung from them on all sides. Around
the great fountain, the earth was already dried up to the point
of being burnt. There was sufficient breeze to raise little
insurrections of dust here and there. A few yellow leaves, left
over from the autumn, chased each other merrily, and seemed
to be playing tricks on each other.
This abundance of light had something indescribably
reassuring
about it. Life, sap, heat, odors overflowed; one was
conscious, beneath creation, of the enormous size of the source;
in all these breaths permeated with love, in this interchange
of reverberations and reflections, in this marvellous expenditure
of rays, in this infinite outpouring of liquid gold, one
felt the prodigality of the inexhaustible; and, behind this
splendor as behind a curtain of flame, one caught a glimpse
of God, that millionaire of stars.
Thanks to the sand, there was not a speck of mud; thanks
to the rain, there was not a grain of ashes. The clumps of
blossoms had just been bathed; every sort of velvet, satin,
gold and varnish, which springs from the earth in the form of
flowers, was irreproachable. This magnificence was cleanly.
The grand silence of happy nature filled the garden. A celestial
silence that is compatible with a thousand sorts of music,
the cooing of nests, the buzzing of swarms, the flutterings of
the breeze. All the harmony of the season was complete in
one gracious whole; the entrances and exits of spring took
place in proper order; the lilacs ended; the jasmines began;
some flowers were tardy, some insects in advance of their time;
the van-guard of the red June butterflies fraternized with the
rear-guard of the white butterflies of May. The plantain
trees were getting their new skins. The breeze hollowed out
undulations in the magnificent enormity of the chestnut-trees.
It was splendid. A veteran from the neighboring barracks,
who was gazing through the fence, said: "Here is the Spring
presenting arms and in full uniform."
All nature was breakfasting; creation was at table; this
was
its hour; the great blue cloth was spread in the sky, and the
great green cloth on earth; the sun lighted it all up
brilliantly.
God was serving the universal repast. Each creature had his
pasture or his mess. The ring-dove found his hemp-seed, the
chaffinch found his millet, the goldfinch found chickweed, the
red-breast found worms, the green finch found flies, the fly
found infusoriae, the bee found flowers. They ate each other
somewhat, it is true, which is the misery of evil mixed with
good; but not a beast of them all had an empty stomach.
The two little abandoned creatures had arrived in the
vicinity
of the grand fountain, and, rather bewildered by all this
light, they tried to hide themselves, the instinct of the poor
and the weak in the presence of even impersonal magnificence;
and they kept behind the swans' hutch.
Here and there, at intervals, when the wind blew, shouts,
clamor, a sort of tumultuous death rattle, which was the
firing, and dull blows, which were discharges of cannon,
struck the ear confusedly. Smoke hung over the roofs in the
direction of the Halles. A bell, which had the air of an
appeal, was ringing in the distance.
These children did not appear to notice these noises. The
little one repeated from time to time: "I am hungry."
Almost at the same instant with the children, another
couple approached the great basin. They consisted of a goodman,
about fifty years of age, who was leading by the hand a
little fellow of six. No doubt, a father and his son. The
little man of six had a big brioche.
At that epoch, certain houses abutting on the river, in
the
Rues Madame and d'Enfer, had keys to the Luxembourg garden,
of which the lodgers enjoyed the use when the gates
were shut, a privilege which was suppressed later on. This
father and son came from one of these houses, no doubt.
The two poor little creatures watched "that gentleman"
approaching, and hid themselves a little more thoroughly.
He was a bourgeois. The same person, perhaps, whom
Marius had one day heard, through his love fever, near the
same grand basin, counselling his son "to avoid excesses."
He had an affable and haughty air, and a mouth which was
always smiling, since it did not shut. This mechanical smile,
produced by too much jaw and too little skin, shows the teeth
rather than the soul. The child, with his brioche, which he
had bitten into but had not finished eating, seemed satiated.
The child was dressed as a National Guardsman, owing to
the insurrection, and the father had remained clad as a bourgeois
out of prudence.
Father and son halted near the fountain where two swans
were sporting. This bourgeois appeared to cherish a special
admiration for the swans. He resembled them in this sense,
that he walked like them.
For the moment, the swans were swimming, which is their
principal talent, and they were superb.
If the two poor little beings had listened and if they had
been of an age to understand, they might have gathered the
words of this grave man. The father was saying to his son:
"The sage lives content with little. Look at me, my son.
I do not love pomp. I am never seen in clothes decked with
gold lace and stones; I leave that false splendor to badly
organized souls."
Here the deep shouts which proceeded from the direction
of the Halles burst out with fresh force of bell and
uproar.
"What is that?" inquired the child.
The father replied:
"It is the Saturnalia."
All at once, he caught sight of the two little ragged boys
behind the green swan-hutch.
"There is the beginning," said he.
And, after a pause, he added:
"Anarchy is entering this garden."
In the meanwhile, his son took a bite of his brioche, spit
it
out, and, suddenly burst out crying.
"What are you crying about?" demanded his father.
"I am not hungry any more," said the child.
The father's smile became more accentuated.
"One does not need to be hungry in order to eat a cake."
"My cake tires me. It is stale."
"Don't you want any more of it?"
"No."
The father pointed to the swans.
"Throw it to those palmipeds."
The child hesitated. A person may not want any more of
his cake; but that is no reason for giving it away.
The father went on:
"Be humane. You must have compassion on animals."
And, taking the cake from his son, he flung it into the
basin.
The cake fell very near the edge.
The swans were far away, in the centre of the basin, and
busy with some prey. They had seen neither the bourgeois
nor the brioche.
The bourgeois, feeling that the cake was in danger of
being
wasted, and moved by this useless shipwreck, entered upon a
telegraphic agitation, which finally attracted the attention of
the swans.
They perceived something floating, steered for the edge
like ships, as they are, and slowly directed their course toward
the brioche, with the stupid majesty which befits white
creatures.
"The swans [cygnes] understand signs
[signes]," said the
bourgeois, delighted to make a jest.
At that moment, the distant tumult of the city underwent
another sudden increase. This time it was sinister. There
are some gusts of wind which speak more distinctly than
others. The one which was blowing at that moment brought
clearly defined drum-beats, clamors, platoon firing, and the
dismal replies of the tocsin and the cannon. This coincided
with a black cloud which suddenly veiled the sun.
The swans had not yet reached the brioche.
"Let us return home," said the father, "they are attacking
the Tuileries."
He grasped his son's hand again. Then he continued:
"From the Tuileries to the Luxembourg, there is but the
distance which separates Royalty from the peerage; that is
not far. Shots will soon rain down."
He glanced at the cloud.
"Perhaps it is rain itself that is about to shower down;
the sky is joining in; the younger branch is condemned. Let
us return home quickly."
"I should like to see the swans eat the brioche," said the
child.
The father replied:
"That would be imprudent."
And he led his little bourgeois away.
The son, regretting the swans, turned his head back toward
the basin until a corner of the quincunxes concealed it from
him.
In the meanwhile, the two little waifs had approached the
brioche at the same time as the swans. It was floating on
the water. The smaller of them stared at the cake, the elder
gazed after the retreating bourgeois.
Father and son entered the labyrinth of walks which leads
to the grand flight of steps near the clump of trees on the
side of the Rue Madame.
As soon as they had disappeared from view, the elder child
hastily flung himself flat on his stomach on the rounding curb
of the basin, and clinging to it with his left hand, and leaning
over the water, on the verge of falling in, he stretched out his
right hand with his stick towards the cake. The swans,
perceiving
the enemy, made haste, and in so doing, they produced
an effect of their breasts which was of service to the little
fisher; the water flowed back before the swans, and one of
these gentle concentric undulations softly floated the brioche
towards the child's wand. Just as the swans came up, the
stick touched the cake. The child gave it a brisk rap, drew in
the brioche, frightened away the swans, seized the cake, and
sprang to his feet. The cake was wet; but they were hungry
and thirsty. The elder broke the cake into two portions, a
large one and a small one, took the small one for himself,
gave the large one to his brother, and said to him:
"Ram that into your muzzle."