3.V.5.3. MARIUS ATTACKED
ONE day, M. Gillenormand, while his daughter was putting
in order the phials and cups on the marble of the commode,
bent over Marius and said to him in his tenderest accents:
"Look here, my little Marius, if I were in your place, I would
eat meat now in preference to fish. A fried sole is excellent
to begin a convalescence with, but a good cutlet is needed to
put a sick man on his feet."
Marius, who had almost entirely recovered his strength,
collected
the whole of it, drew himself up into a sitting posture,
laid his two clenched fists on the sheets of his bed, looked his
grandfather in the face, assumed a terrible air, and said:
"This leads me to say something to you."
"What is it?"
"That I wish to marry."
"Agreed," said his grandfather.-And he burst out laughing.
"How agreed?"
"Yes, agreed. You shall have your little girl."
Marius, stunned and overwhelmed with the dazzling shock,
trembled in every limb.
M.Gillenormand went on:
"Yes, you shall have her, that pretty little girl of
yours.
She comes every day in the shape of an old gentleman to
inquire after you. Ever since you were wounded, she has
passed her time in weeping and making lint. I have made
inquiries. She lives in the Rue de l'Homme Arme, No. 7.
Ah! There we have it! Ah! so you want her! Well, you
shall have her. You're caught. You had arranged your little
plot, you had said to yourself: — 'I'm going to signify this
squarely to my grandfather, to that mummy of the Regency
and of the Directory, to that ancient beau, to that Dorante
turned Geronte; he has indulged in his frivolities also, that
he has, and he has had his love affairs, and his grisettes and
his Cosettes; he has made his rustle, he has had his wings,
he has eaten of the bread of spring; he certainly must
remember it.' Ah! you take the cockchafer by the horns.
That's good. I offer you a cutlet and you answer me: 'By
the way, I want to marry.' There's a transition for you!
Ah! you reckoned on a bickering! You do not know that I
am an old coward. What do you say to that? You are
vexed? You did not expect to find your grandfather still
more foolish than yourself, you are wasting the discourse
which you meant to bestow upon me, Mr. Lawyer, and that's
vexatious. Well, so much the worse, rage away. I'll do whatever
you wish, and that cuts you short, imbecile! Listen. I
have made my inquiries, I'm cunning too; she is charming, she
is discreet, it is not true about the lancer, she has made heaps
of lint, she's a jewel, she adores you, if you had died, there
would have been three of us, her coffin would have accompanied
mine. I have had an idea, ever since you have been
better, of simply planting her at your bedside, but it is only
in romances that young girls are brought to the bedsides of
handsome young wounded men who interest them. It is not
done. What would your aunt have said to it? You were
nude three quarters of the time, my good fellow. Ask Nicolette,
who has not left you for a moment, if there was any
possibility of having a woman here. And then, what would
the doctor have said? A pretty girl does not cure a man of
fever. In short, it's all right, let us say no more about it,
all's said, all's done, it's all settled, take her. Such is my
ferocity. You see, I perceived that you did not love me. I
said to myself: 'Here now, I have my little Cosette right under
my hand, I'm going to give her to him, he will be obliged to
love me a little then, or he must tell the reason why.' Ah! so
you thought that the old man was going to storm, to put on a
big voice, to shout no, and to lift his cane at all that aurora.
Not a bit of it. Cosette, so be it; love, so be it; I ask
nothing
better. Pray take the trouble of getting married, sir. Be
happy, my well-beloved child."
That said, the old man burst forth into sobs.
And he seized Marius' head, and pressed it with both arms
against his breast, and both fell to weeping. This is one of
the forms of supreme happiness.
"Father!" cried Marius.
"Ah, so you love me!" said the old man.
An ineffable moment ensued. They were choking and could
not speak.
At length the old man stammered:
"Come! his mouth is unstopped at last. He has said:
'Father' to me."
Marius disengaged his head from his grandfather's arms,
and said gently:
"But, father, now that I am quite well, it seems to me
that
I might see her."
"Agreed again, you shall see her to-morrow."
"Father!"
"What?"
"Why not to-day?"
"Well, to-day then. Let it be to-day. You have called me
'father' three times, and it is worth it. I will attend to it.
She shall be brought hither. Agreed, I tell you. It has
already been put into verse. This is the ending of the elegy
of the 'Jeune Malade' by Andre Chenier, by Andre Chenier
whose throat was cut by the ras . . . by the giants
of '93."
M. Gillenormand fancied that he detected a faint frown on
the part of Marius, who, in truth, as we must admit, was no
longer listening to him, and who was thinking far more of
Cosette than of 1793.
The grandfather, trembling at having so inopportunely
introduced Andre Chenier, resumed precipitately:
"Cut his throat is not the word. The fact is that the
great
revolutionary geniuses, who were not malicious, that is
incontestable,
who were heroes, pardi! found that Andre Chenier
embarrassed them somewhat, and they had him guillot . . .
that is to say, those great men on the 7th of Thermidor,
besought Andre Chenier, in the interests of public safety, to
be so good as to go . . ."
M. Gillenormand, clutched by the throat by his own phrase,
could not proceed. Being able neither to finish it nor to
retract
it, while his daughter arranged the pillow behind
Marius, who was overwhelmed with so many emotions, the
old man rushed headlong, with as much rapidity as his age
permitted, from the bed-chamber, shut the door behind him,
and, purple, choking and foaming at the mouth, his eyes
starting from his head, he found himself nose to nose with
honest Basque, who was blacking boots in the anteroom. He
seized Basque by the collar, and shouted full in his face in
fury: — "By the hundred thousand Javottes of the devil, those
ruffians did assassinate him!"
"Who, sir?"
"Andre Chenier!"
"Yes, sir," said Basque in alarm.