THE READER will have gathered that Éponine, having recognized the girl behind the wrought-iron gate in the Rue Plumet, whither she had been sent by Magnon, had begun by putting the ruffians off that particular house, and then had led Marius to it; and that Marius, after spending several days of ecstatic contemplation outside the gate, gripped by the force that draws iron to a magnet and the lover to the stones of his beloved’s dwelling, had finally entered Cosette’s garden much as Romeo had entered that of Juliet. It had indeed been less troublesome to him than to Romeo. Romeo had had to climb a wall, whereas Marius had needed only to force one of the rusty bars of the gate, which were already as loose in their sockets as an old man’s teeth. He was slender and had had no diffiuclty in wriggling through; nor, since there was never anyone in the street and he went only after dark, did he run any risk of being seen.
Following that blessed and hallowed hour when a kiss had sealed the lovers’ vows, he went there every evening. If at this moment in her life Cosette had had to do with an unscrupulous libertine, she would have been lost; for there are warm hearts whose instinct is to give, and she was one of those. Among the most great-hearted qualities of women is that of yielding. Love, when it holds absolute sway, afflicts modesty with a kind of blindness. The risks they run, those generous spirits! Often they give their hearts where we take only their bodies. That heart remains their own, for them to contemplate in shivering darkness. For with love there is no middle course: it destroys, or else it saves. All human destiny is contained in that dilemma, the choice between destruction and salvation, which is nowhere more implacably posed than in love. Love is life, or it is death. It is the cradle, but also the coffin. One and the same impulse moves the human heart to say yes or no. Of all things God has created it is the human heart that sheds the brightest light, and, alas, the blackest despair.
God decreed that the love which came to Cosette was a love that saves. During that month of May in the year 1832, in that wild garden with its dense tangle of undergrowth that grew daily more impenetrable and richly scented, two beings composed wholly of chastity and innocence, bathed in all the felicities under Heaven, nearer to the angels than to men, pure, truthful, intoxicated and enraptured, shone for each other in the gloom. To Cosette it seemed that Marius wore a crown, and to Marius Cosette bore a halo. They touched and gazed, held hands and clung together; but there was a gulf that they did not seek to cross, not because they feared it but because they ignored it. To Marius the purity of Cosette was a barrier, and to Cosette his steadfast self-restraint was a safeguard. The first kiss they had exchanged was also the last. Since then Marius had gone no further than to touch her hand with his lips, or her shawl, or a lock of her hair. To him she was an essence, rather than a woman. He breathed her in. She denied him nothing and he demanded nothing. She was happy and he was content. They existed in that state of ravishment which may be termed the enchantment of one soul by another, the ineffable first encounter of two virgin spirits in an idyllic world, two swans meeting on the Jungfrau.
In that first stage of their love, the stage when physical desire is wholly subdued beneath the omnipotence of spiritual ecstasy, Marius would have been more capable of going with a street-girl than of lifting the hem of Cosette’s skirt, even to above her ankle. When on one occasion she bent down to pick something up and her corsage gaped to disclose the top of her bosom, he turned his head away.
What did take place, then, between those two? Nothing. They adored each other. The garden, when they met there after dark, seemed to them a living and consecrated place. Its blossoms opened to enrich them with their scent, and they poured out their hearts to the blossoms. A vigorous, carnal world of flowing sap surrounded those two innocents, and the words of love they spoke set up a quiver in the trees.
As to the words they spoke, they were breaths and nothing more, but breaths that set all Nature stirring. They were a magic which would have little meaning were they to be set down on paper, those murmurs destined to be borne away like puffs of smoke under the leaves. If we rob the words of lovers of the melody from the heart that accompanies them like a lyre, what remains is but the shadow. Is that really all? - mere childishness, things said and said again, triteness, foolishness and reasonless laughter? Yes that is all, but there is nothing on earth more exquisite or more profound. Those are the only things that are really worth saying and worth hearing, and the man who has never heard or uttered them is a bad man and a fool.
‘You know…’ said Cosette. (They addressed each other instinctively as ‘tu’, neither knowing how this had come to pass.) ‘You know, my real name is Euphrasia.’
‘Euphrasia? But you’re called Cosette.’
‘Oh, that’s just a silly name they gave me when I was a child. I’m really Euphrasia. Do you like Euphrasia?’
‘Yes… But I don’t think Cosette is silly.’
‘Do you like it better than Euphrasia?’
‘Well-yes.’
‘Then so do I. You’re quite right. It’s a nice name. So you must always call me Cosette.’
And the smile accompanying the words made of that scrap of conversation an idyll worthy of a woodland in Heaven.
Another time, after looking hard at him she exclaimed:
‘Allow me to tell you, Monsieur, that you’re good-looking, you’re very handsome, and you’re clever, not a bit stupid, much more learned than I am. But I can match you in one thing - I love you!’
Marius in his rapture might have been hearing the melody of the spheres.
Then again, when he happened to cough, she gave him a little reproving pat and said: ‘You’re not to cough. No one is allowed to cough in my house without permission. It’s naughty of you to cough and worry me. I want you to be well always, because if you aren’t I shall be very unhappy.’
He said to her once: ‘Do you know, at one time I thought your name was Ursula?’ This thought kept them amused for the rest of the evening.
And during another conversation he suddenly exclaimed:
‘Well, there was one time in the Luxembourg when I would have liked to break an army veteran’s neck.’
But he did not go on with that story. He could not have done so without mentioning her garter, and this was out of the question. There was a whole world, that of the flesh, from which their innocent love recoiled with a kind of religious awe.
It was thus, and with nothing added, that Marius envisaged his life with Cosette - his coming every evening to the Rue Plumet, wriggling through that convenient gate, sitting beside her on the bench, the fold of his trouser mingling with the spread of her skirts while they watched the growing glitter of starlight through the trees, softly stroking her thumb-nail, addressing her as ‘tu’, breathing with her the scent of the same flowers - all this was to continue indefinitely, to last for ever. Meanwhile the clouds drifted above their heads. When the wind blows it blows away more human dreams than clouds in the sky.
But that is not to say that this almost fiercely chaste love was wholly lacking in gallantry. No. To ‘pay compliments’ to the loved person is the first step on the way to caresses, tentative audacity trying out its wings. A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil. Physical fulfilment makes its presence known, while still remaining hidden. The heart draws back from this fulfilment in order to love the more. Marius’s wooing, pervaded as it was with fantasy, was, so to speak, ethereal. The birds when they fly aloft in company with the angels must understand words such as he spoke. Yet there was life in them, manliness, all that was positive in Marius. They were words spoken in the grotto, the foreshadowing of those to be spoken in the alcove, lyrical effusions of mingled prose and poetry, soft flatteries, all love’s most delicate refinements arranged in a scented and subtle bouquet, the ineffable murmur of heart to heart.
‘How lovely you are!’ sighed Marius.’ I scarcely dare look at you, and so I have to contemplate you at a distance. You are grace itself and my senses reel even at the sight of your slipper beneath the hem of your skirt. And the light that dawns when I catch a glimpse of what you are thinking! Such good sense. There are moments when you seem to me a figure in a dream. Go on talking and let me listen. Oh, Cosette, how strange and wonderful it is! I think I am a little mad. I so worship you. I study your feet with a magnifying glass and your soul with a telescope.’
To which she replied:
‘I love you more with every minute that passes.’
Random conversations in which question and answer must take their chance, always returning to the subject of love, like those weighted dolls which always come upright.
Cosette’s whole being expressed artlessness and ingenuousness, a white transparency, candour and light. One might say of her that she was light itself. She conveyed to the beholder a sense of April and daybreak; there was dew in her eyes. She was the condensation of dawn light in a woman’s form.
It was natural that Marius should admire as well as adore her; but the truth is that the little schoolgirl, so newly shaped by the convent, talked with great sagacity and said many things that were both true and perceptive. Her very babblings had meaning. She saw clearly and was not easily deceived, being guided by the soft, infallible instinct of the feminine heart. Only women have this gift for saying things that are at once tender and profound. Tenderness and depth: all womanhood resides in these, and all Heaven.
In this state of utter felicity tears rose constantly to their eyes. A crushed insect, a feather fallen from a nest, a broken sprig of hawthorn, these things moved them to pity, and their rapture, always near to melancholy, found relief in tears. The sovereign manifestation of love is a sense of compassion that at times is well-nigh intolerable.
And with all this - for these contradictions form the lightning-play of love – they laughed constantly and unrestrainedly, so familiarly that they might have been a pair of boys at play. Yet even in hearts intoxicated with chastity Nature is always present, always in pursuit of her sublime, remorseless aims; and, however great the purity of souls, even in the most innocent of relationships the wonderful and mysterious difference is still to be felt which separates a pair of lovers from a pair of friends.
They adored each other; but still the permanent and the immutable subsist. We may love and laugh, pout, clasp hands, smile and exchange endearments, but that does not affect eternity. Two lovers hide in the dusk of evening, amid flowers and the twittering of birds, and enchant each other with their hearts shining in their eyes; but the stars in their courses still circle through infinite space.
Thus, bathed in happiness, they lived untroubled by the world. They paid no heed to the epidemic of cholera which during that month ravaged Paris. They had told each other as much about themselves as they could, but it did not go very far beyond their names. Marius had told Cosette that he was an orphan, that his name was Marius Pontmercy, that he was a lawyer and that he got his living by working for publishers; that his father had been a colonel and a hero, and that he, Marius, had quarrelled with his grandfather, who was rich. He had also mentioned in passing that he was a baron, but this had made no impression on Cosette. Marius a baron? She had not understood, not knowing what the word meant. Marius was Marius. And on her side she had told him that she had been brought up in the Petit-Picpus convent, that her mother was dead, like his own, that her father was Monsieur Fauchelevent, that he was a good man who gave generously to the poor although he was poor himself, and that he denied himself everything while denying her nothing.
Strangely, to Marius in his present state of entrancement, all past events, even the most recent, seemed so misty and remote that he was quite satisfied with what Cosette told him. It did not occur to him even to mention the drama in the tenement, the Thénardiers, the burnt arm and the strange behaviour and remarkable disappearance of her father. All this had for the time being completely escaped his mind. He forgot in the evening what he had done in the morning, whether he had breakfasted, whether he had spoken to anyone. The trilling of birds deafened his ears to all other sounds; he was only really alive when he was with Cosette. And so, being in Heaven, it was easy for him to lose sight of earth. Both of them languorously bore the impalpable burden of unfleshly delights. It is thus that the sleep-walkers who are called lovers live.
Alas, who has not known that enchanted state? Why must the moment come when we emerge from that bliss, and why must life go on afterwards?
Loving is almost a substitute for thinking. Love is a burning forgetfulness of all other things. How shall we ask passion to be logical? Absolute logic is no more to be found in the human heart than you may find a perfect geometrical figure in the structure of the heavens. Nothing else existed for Cosette and Marius except Marius and Cosette. The world around them had vanished in a cloud. They lived in a golden moment, seeing nothing ahead of them and nothing behind. Marius was scarcely conscious of the fact that Cosette had a father; his wits were drugged with happiness. So what did they talk about, those lovers? They talked about flowers and swallows, sunset and moonrise, everything that to them was important; about everything and about nothing. The everything of lovers is a nothing. But as for her father, real life, the gang of ruffians, and the adventure in the attic - why bother to talk about all that? Was it even certain that that nightmare had really happened? They were together and they adored each other and that was all that concerned them. Other things did not exist. It is probable that the vanishing of Hell at our backs is inherent in the coming of Paradise. Have we really seen devils? - are there such things? - have we trembled and suffered? We no longer remember. They are lost in a rosy haze.
The two of them lived in that exalted state, in all the make-believe that is a part of nature, neither at the nadir nor at the zenith; somewhere between mankind and the angels; above the mire but below the upper air - in the clouds; scarcely flesh and blood, but spirit and ecstasy from head to foot; too exalted to walk on earth but still too human to disappear into the blue, suspended in life like molecules in solution that await precipitation; seemingly beyond the reach of fate; escaped from the rut of yesterday, today, tomorrow; marvelling, breathless and swaying, at moments light enough to fly off into infinite space, almost ready to vanish into eternity.
They drowsed wide-eyed in that cradled state, in the splendid lethargy of the real overwhelmed by the ideal. Such was Cosette’s beauty that at moments Marius closed his eyes; and that is the best way to see the soul, with the eyes closed.
They did not ask where this was taking them; they felt that they had arrived. It is one of the strange demands of mankind that love must take them somewhere.
Jean Valjean suspected nothing.
Cosette, less given to dreaming than Marius, was gay, and that was enough to make him happy. The thoughts in Cosette’s mind, her tender preoccupations, the picture of Marius that dwelt in her heart, all this in no way diminished the purity of her chaste and smiling countenance. She was at the age when a virgin girl bears her love like an angel carrying a lily. So Valjean was easy in his mind. And then when two lovers are in perfect harmony everything is easy to them; any third party who might disturb their love is kept in ignorance by those small concealments which are practised by all lovers. Thus, Cosette never opposed any wish of Valjean’s. Did he want to go out? Yes, dear father. He would rather stay at home? Very well. He wanted to spend the evening with her? She was delighted. Since he always went to bed at ten, Marius on these occasions never entered the garden until after that hour, and after hearing Cosette open the door on to the terrace. It goes without saying that Marius never showed himself by daytime, and indeed Valjean had forgotten his existence. But it happened one morning that he remarked to Cosette: ‘Your back’s all white.’ The evening before Marius, in a moment of rapture, had pressed her against the wall.
Old Toussaint, who went to bed early and only wanted to sleep once her work was done, was as ignorant as Valjean of what was going on.
Marius never set foot in the house. He and Cosette were accustomed to hide in a recess near the steps, where they could not be seen or heard from the street, and being seated were often content merely to clasp hands in silence while they gazed up at the branches of the trees. A thunderbolt might have fallen a few yards away without their noticing, so absorbed was each in the other. A state of limpid purity. Hours that were all white and nearly all the same. Love-affairs such as this are like a collection of lily-petals and doves’ feathers.
The whole stretch of garden lay between them and the street. Every time Marius entered or left he carefully re-arranged the bars of the gate, so that the fact that they had been moved would not be noticed.
He left as a rule at midnight and walked back to Courfeyrac’s lodging. Courfeyrac said to Bahorel:
‘Would you believe it! Marius has taken to coming home at one in the morning!’
‘Well, what of it?’ said Bahorel. ‘Still waters run deep.’
And sometimes Courfeyrac would fold his arms and say sternly to Marius:
‘You’re going off the rails, young fellow-me-lad.’
Courfeyrac, being of a practical turn of mind, did not take kindly to this glow of a secret paradise that surrounded Marius. He was not accustomed to undisclosed raptures. They bored him, and from time to time he would try to bring Marius down to earth. He said to him on one occasion:
‘My dear fellow, you seem to me these days to be living on the moon, in the kingdom of dreams of which the capital is the City of Soap-Bubble. Be a good chap and tell me her name.’
But nothing would make Marius talk. Not even torture could have extracted from him the sacred syllables of the name, Cosette. True love is as radiant as the dawn and as silent as the tomb. But Courfeyrac perceived this change in Marius, seeing that his very secretiveness was radiant.
Throughout that mild month of May, Marius and Cosette discovered these tremendous sources of happiness: The happiness of quarrelling simply for the fun of making up; of discussing at length and in exhaustive detail persons in whom they took no interest whatever, which is one more proof that in the ravishing opera that is called love the libretto is of almost no importance. The happiness, for Marius, of listening to Cosette talk about frills and furbelows, and, for Cosette, of listening to Marius talk about politics. The happiness for both of them, while they sat with knee touching knee, of hearing the distant sound of traffic on the Rue de Babylone; looking upwards to speculate on the same star in the sky, or downwards to study the same glow-worm in the grass; of being silent together, which is even more delightful than to talk… And so on.
But meanwhile complications were looming.
One evening when Marius was on his way along the Boulevard des Invalides to keep their nightly rendezvous, walking as usual with his eyes on the ground, just as he was about to turn into the Rue Plumet a voice spoke to him.
‘Good evening, Monsieur Marius.’
He looked up and saw Éponine.
The encounter gave him a shock. He had not given the girl a thought since the day she had led him to the Rue Plumet; he had not seen her again, and the memory of her had completely slipped his mind. He had every reason to be grateful to her; he owed his present happiness to her, and yet it embarrassed him to meet her.
It is a mistake to suppose that the state of being in love, be it never so happy and innocent, makes a man perfect. As we have seen, it simply makes him forgetful. If he forgets to be evil, he also forgets to be good. The sense of gratitude and obligation, the recollection of everyday essentials, all this tends to disappear. At any other time Marius would have treated Éponine quite differently; but absorbed as he was in the thought of Cosette he scarcely remembered that her full name was Éponine Thénardier, that she bore a name bequeathed to him by his father and one which, a few months earlier, he had longed to serve. We have to depict Marius as he was. Even the memory of his father had faded a little in the splendour of his love-affair.
He said awkwardly:
‘Oh, it’s you, Éponine.’
‘Why do you speak to me in that cold way? Have I done something wrong?’
‘No,’ he said.
Certainly he had nothing against her - far from it. It was simply that, with all his warmth bestowed on Cosette he had none for Éponine.
He stayed silent and she burst out, ‘But why -?’ But then she stopped. It seemed that words had failed the once so brazen and heedless creature. She tried to smile but could not. She said ‘Well…’ and then again was wordless, standing with lowered eyes.
‘Good night, Monsieur Marius,’ she said abruptly, and left him.
The next day was 3 June 1832, a date which must be set down because of the grave events now impending, that loomed like thunderclouds over Paris. Marius that evening was going the same way as on the previous evening, his head filled with the same thoughts and his heart charged with the same happiness, when he saw Éponine coming towards him past the trees on the boulevard. Two days in succession was too much. He turned sharply off the boulevard and made for the Rue Plumet by way of the Rue Monsieur.
This caused Éponine to follow him as far as the Rue Plumet, a thing which she had not previously done. Hitherto she had been content to watch him on his way along the boulevard without seeking to attract his notice. The previous evening was the first time she had ventured to speak to him.
So, without his knowing it, she followed him, and saw him slip through the wrought-iron gate into the garden. ‘Well! He’s going into the house!’ she concluded, and, testing the bars of the gate, rapidly discovered his means of entry. ‘Not for you, dearie,’ she murmured sadly.
As though taking up guard duty, she sat down on the step at the point where the stone gatepost adjoined the neighbouring wall. It was a dark corner which hid her entirely. She stayed there for more than an hour without moving, her mind busy with its thoughts. At about ten o’clock one of the two or three persons accustomed to use the Rue Plumet, an elderly gentleman hastening to get away from that lonely and ill-famed street, heard a low resentful voice say, ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if he came here every night!’ He looked round but could see no one, and, not daring to peer into the dark corner, hurried on in great alarm.
He did well to hurry, for a very short time afterwards six men entered the Rue Plumet. They came in single file, walking at some distance from one another and skirting the edge of the street like a scouting patrol. The first of them stopped at the wrought-iron gate, where he waited for the rest to catch up, until all six of them were gathered together.
They conferred in low voices.
‘Sure this is the place?’
‘Is there a dog?’
‘I don’t know. Anyway, I’ve brought something for it to eat.’
‘Have you brought the gummed paper to do the window-pane?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s an old gate,’ said a fifth man, speaking in a voice like that of a ventriloquist.
‘So much the better. We can cut through the bars all the easier.’
The sixth man, who had not yet spoken, proceeded to examine the gate as Éponine had done an hour before and was not slow to discover the bar loosened by Marius. But as he was about to wrench it aside a hand emerging from the darkness seized him by the arm. He felt himself thrust backward and a husky voice said in a warning undertone, ‘There’s a dog!’ The lanky figure of a girl rose up before him.
The man recoiled with the shock of the unexpected. He seemed to bristle, and nothing is more dismaying than the sight of a startled wild animal; their very fright is frightening. He drew back, exclaiming:
‘Who the devil are you?’
‘Your daughter.’
The man was Thénardier.
At this the five other men, Claquesous, Gueulemer, Babet, Montparnasse, and Brujon, gathered round them, moving silently, without haste and without speech, in the slow, deliberate manner that is proper to creatures of the night. They were equipped with a variety of sinister implements. Gueulemer had one of those curved crowbars that are known as jemmies.
‘What are you doing here? What do you want? Have you gone crazy?’ cried Thénardier, so far as anyone can be said to cry who is keeping his voice low. ‘Have you come to try and put me off?’
Éponine laughed and flung her arms round his neck.
‘I’m here because I’m here, dearest father. Aren’t I even allowed to sit down in the street? You’re the one who shouldn’t be here. What’s the use of coming here when it’s no good? I told Magnon it was a biscuit. There’s nothing to be got here. But you might at least kiss me. It’s a long time since we saw each other. So you’re out again?’
Thénardier grunted, trying to release himself from her arms:
‘That’s enough. You’ve kissed me. Yes, I’m not inside any more. And now, clear out.’
But Éponine still clung to him.
‘But how did you do it? It was very clever of you to get out. You must tell me how you did it. And mother - where is she? You must tell me about mother.’
‘She’s all right,’ said Thénardier. ‘I don’t know where she is. And now, clear out, can’t you?’
‘But I don’t want to go,’ said Éponine, pouting like a spoilt child. ‘I haven’t seen you for four months, and you want to send me away.’ And she tightened her grip on him.
‘This is getting silly,’ said Babet.
‘Hurry it up,’ said Gueulemer. ‘The cops’ll be along.
Éponine turned to the other men.
‘Why, it’s Monsieur Brujon! And Monsieur Babet. Good evening, Monsieur Claquesous. Don’t you recognize me, Monsieur Gueulemer? And how are you, Montparnasse?’
‘That’s all right, they all know you,’ said Thénardier. ‘Well, you’ve said hallo, and now for God’s sake go away and leave us in peace.’
‘This is a time for foxes, not for hens,’ said Montparnasse.
‘You can see we’ve got a job to do,’ said Babet.
Éponine took Montparnasse’s hand.
‘Careful,’ he said. ‘You’ll cut yourself. My knife’s open.’
‘Montparnasse, my love,’ said Éponine very sweetly, ‘you must learn to trust people. Aren’t I my father’s daughter? Don’t you remember, Monsieur Babet and Monsieur Gueulemer, that I was sent to look this place over?’
It is worthy of note that Éponine did not speak a word of argot. Since she had known Marius thieves’ slang had become impossible for her. She pressed her thin, bony fingers into Gueulemer’s rugged palm and went on:
‘You know I’m not stupid. People generally believe me. I’ve been useful to you more than once. Well, I’ve found things out, and I swear there’s nothing for you here. You’d be running risks for no reason.’
‘Two women alone,’ said Gueulemer.
‘No. The people have left.’
“The candles haven’t,’ said Babet.
And he pointed through the tree-tops to a flickering light in the attic, where Toussaint, staying up later than usual, was hanging out washing to dry.
Éponine made a last effort.
‘Anyway, they’re very poor, nothing there of any value.’
‘Go to the devil!’ exclaimed Thénardier. ‘When we’ve ransacked the house from top to bottom we’ll know if there’s anything worth having.’
He thrust her aside.
‘Montparnasse, you’re my friend,’ said Éponine. ‘You’re a good lad. Don’t go in!’
‘Watch out you don’t cut yourself,’ said Montparnasse.
Thénardier spoke with the authority he knew how to assume.
‘Off you go, girl, and leave the men to get on with their business.’
Éponine let go of Montparnasse’s hand and said:
‘So you’re determined to break in!’
‘That’s right,’ said the ventriloquist and chuckled.
‘Well, I won’t let you,’ said Éponine.
She stood with her back to the gate, facing the six men, all armed to the teeth and looking like demons in the dark. She went on in a low, resolute voice:
‘Listen to me. I mean this. If you try to get into the garden, if you so much as touch this gate, I’ll scream the place down. I’ll rouse the whole neighbourhood and have the lot of you pinched.’
‘She will, too,’ muttered Thénardier to Brujon and the ventriloquist.
Éponine nodded vigorously, adding, ‘And my father for a start!’
Thénardier moved towards her.
‘You keep your distance,’ she said.
He drew back, furiously muttering, ‘What’s got into her?’ And he spat the word at her: ‘Bitch!’
She laughed derisively.
‘Say what you like, you aren’t going in. I’m not a dog’s daughter but a wolf’s. There are six of you, six men and I’m one woman, but I’m not afraid of you. You aren’t going to break into this house, because I don’t choose to let you. I’m the watchdog, and if you try it I’ll bark. So you might as well be on your way. Go anywhere you like, but don’t come here. I won’t have it’
She took a step towards them, and she was awe-inspiring. She laughed again.
‘My God, do you think I’m scared? I’m used to starving in summer and freezing in winter. You poor fools, you think you can frighten any woman because you’ve got soft little sluts of mistresses who cower under the bedclothes when you talk rough. But I’m not scared.’ She looked at her father. ‘Not even of you.’ With fiery eyes she glared round at the other men. ‘What do I care if my body’s picked up in the street tomorrow morning, beaten to death by my own father - or found in a year’s time in the ditches round Saint-Cloud or the Île des Cygnes, along with the garbage and the dead dogs?’
She was interrupted by a fit of coughing, a hollow sound that came from the depths of her narrow, sickly chest.
‘I’ve only got to yell, you know, and people will come running. There are six of you, but I’m the public.’
Thénardier again made a move towards her. ‘Keep away!’ she cried. He stopped and said mildly: ‘All right, I won’t come any nearer, but don’t talk so loud. My girl, are you trying to prevent me working? After all, we have to earn our living. Have you no more feeling for your father?’
‘You sicken me,’ said Éponine.
‘But we’ve got to eat.’
‘I don’t care if you starve.’
Having said which she sat down again on the step, humming the refrain of ‘Ma grand’mère’ by Béranger, the most renowned songwriter of the day:
Combien je regrette
Mon bras si dodu,
Ma jambe bien faite
Et le temps perdu*
She sat with her legs crossed, her elbow on her knee and her chin on her hand, swinging her foot with an air of indifference, the glow of a nearby street-lamp illuminating her posture and her profile. Through the rents in her tattered garment her thin shoulder-blades were to be seen. It would be hard to conceive a picture more determined or more surprising.
The six ruffians, disconcerted at being kept at bay by a girl, withdrew into the shadows and conferred together with furious shruggings of their shoulders, while she calmly but resolutely surveyed them.
‘There must be some reason,’ said Babet. ‘D’you think she’s fallen in love with the dog? But it would be a shame to pass it up. Two women and an old man who lives in the back-yard. There are good curtains in the windows. If you ask me, the man’s a Jew. I reckon it’s worth trying.’
‘Well, you lot go in,’ said Montparnasse. ‘I’ll stick with the girl, and if she gives so much as a squeak…’ He flourished the knife which he kept up his sleeve.
Thénardier said nothing, seeming content to leave the decision to the others.
Brujon, who was something of an oracle, and who, as we know, was the original promoter of the enterprise, had not so far spoken. He seemed to be thinking. It was said of him that he would stop at nothing, and he was known to have looted a police post out of sheer bravado. Moreover, he made up poems and songs, and this caused him to be highly esteemed.
Babet now looked at him:
‘Why aren’t you saying anything?’
Brujon remained silent for some moments, and then, portentously wagging his head, spoke as follows:
‘Well, listen. This morning I saw two sparrows fighting, and
this afternoon I bumped into a woman who abused me. Those are bad signs. Let’s go.’
So they went away. Montparnasse muttered:
‘All the same, if wanted, I was ready to give the girl a clout.’
‘I wouldn’t have,’ said Babet. ‘I don’t hit women.’
At the bend of the street they paused to exchange a few cryptic words.
‘Where are we going to sleep tonight?’
‘Under the town.’
‘Have you the key to the grating, Thénardier?’
‘Maybe.’
Éponine, intently watching, saw them move off the way they had come. She got up and stole along behind them, keeping close to walls and housefronts until they reached the boulevard. Here they separated, and melted like shadows into the night.
With the departure of the robber band the Rue Plumet resumed its night-time aspect.
What had happened in that street would not have been unusual in a jungle. Trees and thickets, tangled branches, creepers and undergrowth live their own dark lives, witnessing amid their savage growth sudden manifestations of the life they cannot grasp. What lives on a higher plane than man peers down through the mist at what is lower, and things unknown by daylight encounter each other in the dark. Wild, bristling Nature takes fright at what it feels to be supernatural. The powers of darkness know each other and preserve a mysterious balance between them. Tooth and claw respect the intangible. Animals that drink blood, voracious appetites in search of prey, instinct equipped with jaws and talons, with no source or aim other than the belly, apprehensively sniff the shrouded spectral figure, stalking in filmy, fluttering garments, that seems to them imbued with a terrible dead life. Those brutish creatures, wholly material, instinctively fight shy of the measureless obscurity contained in any unknown being. A dark figure barring the way stops a wild animal in its tracks. What emerges from the burial-ground alarms and dismays that which emerges from the lair; the bloodthirsty fears the sinister; the wolf recoils from the ghoul.
While that human watchdog was guarding the gate, and the six ruffians were giving in to a girl, Marius was with Cosette.
Never had the night been more starry and enchanting, the trees more tremulous, the scent of grass more pungent; never had the birds twittered more sweetly as they fell asleep amid the leaves, or the harmonies of a serene universe been more in tune with the unsung music of love; and never had Marius been more enraptured and entranced. But he had found Cosette unhappy. She had been weeping and her eyes were red. It was the first cloud in their clear sky.
His first words to her were, ‘What’s the matter?’, and seated beside him on their bench by the steps into the villa she told him of her troubles.
‘My father said this morning that I must be ready. He has business to attend to and we may have to leave this place.’
Marius trembled. At the end of life death is a departure; but at life’s beginning a departure is a death.
In the past six weeks Marius, by gradual degrees, had been taking possession of Cosette: possession in ideal terms but deeply rooted. As we have said, in a first love it is the soul that is first captured, then the body; later the body comes before the soul, which may be forgotten altogether. Cynics may maintain that this is because the soul does not exist, but fortunately that sarcasm is a blasphemy. Marius possessed Cosette only in spirit; but his whole soul bound her jealously to him, and with overwhelming assurance. He possessed her smiles, the light of her blue eyes and the fragrance of her breath, the softness of her skin when he touched her hand, the magical grace of her neck, her every thought. They had vowed never to sleep without each dreaming of the other, and so he possessed all Cosette’s dreams. His gaze dwelt endlessly on the small hairs on the nape of her neck, which sometimes he stirred with his breathing, and he told himself that there was not one of them that did not belong to him. He studied and adored the things she wore – ribbons, gloves, cuffs, slippers – seeing them as hallowed objects of which he was the proprietor. He thought of himself as the owner of the tortoiseshell comb in her hair, and went so far – such are the first stirrings of a growing sensuality – as to consider that there was not a tape in her garments, a stitch in her stockings, a fold in her corset, that did not belong to him. Seated beside Cosette he felt himself to be lord of his domain, master of his estate, near his ruler and his slave. It seemed to him, so deeply merged were their souls, that if they had tried to separate them they would not have been able to tell which part belonged to which… ‘That bit’s mine’… ‘No, it’s mine’… ‘I’m sure you’re wrong. That bit is me’… ‘No. What you think is you is really me’… Marius was a part of Cosette, and Cosette was a part of Marius; he felt her life within him. To have Cosette, to possess her, this to him was no different from breathing. It was into this entranced state of absolute, virginal possession, this state of sovereignty, that the words, ‘We may be going away,’ suddenly fell; and it was the peremptory voice of reality warning him, ‘Cosette is not yours!’
Marius suddenly woke up. For six weeks he had been living outside life. Now he was brought harshly back to earth.
He could not speak, but Cosette felt his hand grow cold. She asked, as he had done, ‘What’s the matter?’ and he replied, so low that she could scarcely hear:
‘I don’t understand what you mean.’
‘Father told me this morning that I must get ready,’ she said. ‘He said that he had to go on a journey and we would go together. He would give me his clothes to pack, and I must see to everything –a big trunk for me and a little one for him. It must all be ready within a week, and perhaps we should be going to England.’
‘But that’s monstrous!’ cried Marius.
It is unquestionable that, to Marius at that moment, no act of despotic tyranny in the whole course of history, from Tiberius to Henry VIII, could rank with this in infamy – that Monsieur Fauchelevent should take his daughter to England because he had business there! He asked in a stifled voice:
‘And when, precisely, will you be leaving?’
‘He didn’t say.’
‘And when will you be coming back?’
‘He didn’t tell me that, either.’
Marius rose to his feet and said coldly:
‘Cosette, are you going?’
She looked distractedly up at him.
‘But –’
‘Are you going to England?’
‘Why are you being so cruel to me?’
‘I’m simply asking if you’re going.’
‘But what else can I do?’ she cried, wringing her hands.
‘So you are going?’
‘But if my father goes…’
Cosette reached for Marius’s hand. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Then I shall go away.’
Cosette felt the words, rather than understood them, and turned so pale that her face gleamed whitely in the darkness. She murmured:
‘What do you mean?’
Marius looked away from her without answering; but then, looking back at her, he found that she was smiling. The smile of a woman one loves is discernible even in the dark.
‘Marius, how silly we’re being! I’ve got an idea.’
‘What is it?’
‘If we go you must come too. I’ll tell you where, and you must meet me there, wherever it is.’
Marius was now fully awake. He had come down to earth with a bump.
‘How can I possibly do that?’ he cried. ‘Are you crazy? It takes money to go to England, and I haven’t any. I already owe Courfeyrac more than ten louis - he’s a friend of mine. And I wear a hat that isn’t worth three francs, and I’ve lost half the buttons off my jacket, and my cuffs are frayed and my boots leak. I haven’t thought about things like that for six weeks. I haven’t told you, Cosette, but I’m a pauper. You only see me at night and you give me your hand; if you saw me by daylight you’d give me alms. England! I can’t even afford a passport.’
He got up and stood with his face pressed to the trunk of a tree with his arms above his head, unconscious of the roughness of the bark against his cheek and almost ready to collapse – a statue of despair. He stayed in this posture for a long time; depths such as these are timeless. Finally he turned, having heard a small, stifled sound behind him. Cosette was in tears.
He fell on his knees in front of her, and bending down, kissed the foot that showed beneath the hem of her skirt. She made no response. There are moments when, like a saddened and resigned goddess, a woman silently accepts the gestures of love.
‘Don’t cry,’ he said.
‘But if I’ve got to go away and you can’t come too…’
She answered him with the divine word that is never more moving than when spoken amid tears:
‘I adore you.’
His voice as he spoke again was the gentlest of caresses.
‘Then don’t cry. Do that much for me - stop crying.’
“Do you love me?’ she asked.
He took her hand.
‘Cosette, I have never given anyone my word of honour because it frightens me to do so. I feel my father watching me. But I give you my most sacred word of honour that if you leave me I shall die.’
These words were uttered with so much quiet solemnity that she trembled, feeling chilled as though at a ghostly touch, terrifying but true. She stopped crying.
‘Now listen,’ he said. ‘Don’t expect me here tomorrow.’
‘Why not?’
‘Not until the day after.’
‘But why?’
‘You’ll see.’
‘A whole day without seeing you! But that’s dreadful!’
‘We must sacrifice a day for the sake of our whole lives.’ And Marius murmured, half to himself: ‘He won’t change his habits. He never sees anyone except in the evening.’
‘Who are you talking about?’ asked Cosette.
‘Never mind.’
‘But what are you going to do?’
‘Wait until the day after tomorrow.’
‘Must I really?’
‘Yes, Cosette.’
She took his head in her hands and, rising on tiptoe, sought to read his secret in his eyes.
‘While I think of it,’ said Marius, ‘you must have my address in case you need it. I’m living with this friend of mine, Courfeyrac, at 16, Rue de la Verrerie.’
He got a penknife out of his pocket and scratched it on the plaster of the wall - 16, Rue de la Verrerie.
Cosette was intently watching him.
‘Tell me what you’re thinking. Marius, you’re thinking of something. Tell me what it is, or how shall I sleep tonight?’
‘I’m thinking this – that God can’t possibly mean us to be separated. I shall be here the evening after tomorrow.’
‘But what am I to do until then? It’s all very well for you, you’ll be out and about. You’ll be doing things. Men are so lucky! But I shall be all alone. I shall be so wretched. Where are you going tomorrow evening?’
‘I’m going to try something.’
‘Well, I’ll pray for you to succeed and I’ll never stop thinking about you. I’ll ask no more questions because you don’t want me to. You’re the master. I’ll spend tomorrow evening singing the music from Euryanthe that you like so much– you listened to it once outside the window. But you must be here in good time the day after tomorrow. I shall expect you at nine o’clock exactly. Oh, two whole days is such a long time! Do you hear me? At exactly nine o’clock I shall be waiting in the garden!’
‘I shall be there.’
And without further speech, prompted by the same impulse, the electric current that unites lovers in their every thought, passionate even in their sorrow, they fell into each other’s arms, unconscious that their lips were joined while their tear-filled eyes looked upward at the stars.
By the time Marius left the street was deserted. Éponine had just departed to follow the robber band as far as the boulevard.
While he had stood reflecting with his face against the tree-trunk, Marius had had an idea - one that alas he himself thought hopeless and impossible. He had taken a drastic decision.
Monsieur Gillenormand had now passed his ninety-first year. He was still living with his daughter in the old house which he owned in the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire. He was, we may recall, one of those veterans cast in the antique mould who await death upright, burdened but not softened by age, and whom even bitter disappointment cannot bend.
Nevertheless for some time Mlle Gillenormand had been saying, ‘My father is failing.’ He no longer cuffed his servants or so vigorously rapped the banister on the landing with his cane when Basque was slow in opening the door. His fury at the July Revolution had lasted barely six months, and his calm had been scarcely ruffled when in the Moniteur he had come upon that monstrous conjunction of words, ‘Monsieur Humblot-Conte, Peer of France’. The truth is that the old man was filled with despair. He did not give way to it, he did not surrender, since it was not in his physical or moral nature to do so; but he was conscious of an inner weakening. For four years he had sturdily – that is the right word – awaited Marius’s return, convinced that sooner or later the young scamp would knock at his door; but now there were melancholy moments when he reflected that if the boy did not come soon… It was not the approach of death that he found unbearable, but the thought that he might never see Marius again. Until quite recently this thought had never entered his head, but now it haunted and terrified him. Absence, as happens always in the case of true and natural feeling, had served only to increase his affection for the graceless boy who had deserted him. It is in the dark and cold December nights that we most ardently desire the sun. Monsieur Gillenormand, the grand-father, was wholly incapable - or thought he was - of making any move towards reconciliation with his grandson - ‘I would rather die,’ he thought. Although aware of no fault in himself, he thought of Marius with the profound tenderness and silent desolation of an old man on the threshold of the grave.
He was beginning to lose his teeth, which added to his unhappiness.
Without confessing it to himself, for the avowal would have made him furious and ashamed, Monsieur Gillenormand had never loved any of his mistresses as well as he loved Marius. He had had hung in his bedroom, facing the end of his bed so that it was the first thing he saw when he awoke, an old portrait of his other daughter, the one now dead who had become Madame Pontmercy, which had been painted when she was eighteen. He gazed at it constantly, and on one occasion remarked:
‘I think he’s like her.’
‘Like my sister?’ said Mlle Gillenormand. ‘Yes, he is.’
‘Like him, too,’ the old man said.
Once, when he was sitting huddled with his knees together and his eyes half-closed in a posture of dejection, his daughter ventured to say:
‘Father, are you still so angry with -’ She broke off, afraid to say more.
‘With poor Marius.’
He looked up sharply, thumped with his old, wrinkled fist on the table, and cried in a voice ringing with fury:
‘Poor Marius, indeed! That gentleman is a worthless scoundrel without heart or feeling or gratitude, a monster of conceit, a villainous rogue.’ And he turned away his head so that she should not see the tears in his eyes.
Three days after this he broke a silence that had lasted four hours to say without preliminaries to his daughter:
‘I have already requested Mademoiselle Gillenormand never to mention that subject agan.’
After this Aunt Gillenormand gave up the attempt, having arrived at the following conclusion - ‘Father never greatly cared for my sister after she made a fool of herself. Clearly, he detests Marius.’ By ‘made a fool of herself’ she meant marrying the colonel.
Apart from this, as the reader will have surmised, Mlle Gillenormand had failed in her attempt to find a substitute for Marius. Lieutenant Théodule had not brought it off. Monsieur Gillenormand had disdained him. The ravaged heart does not so readily accept palliatives. And for his part, Théodule, while interested in the possible inheritance, had disliked the business of ingratiating himself. The old man had bored the cavalry officer, and the cavalry officer had exasperated the old man. Théodule was cheerful but over-talkative, frivolous but commonplace, a high-liver but in shabby company; it was true that he had mistresses and that he talked about them, but he talked badly. All his virtues were flawed. Monsieur Gillenormand was outraged by his tales of casual encounters near the barracks in the Rue de Babylone. And then again, he sometimes turned up in uniform, his cap adorned with a tricolour cockade. This alone ruled him out. It had ended with the old gentleman saying to his daughter: ‘I’ve had enough of Théodule. You can see him if you like, but I don’t much care for peacetime warriors. I’m not sure that I don’t prefer adventurers to men who simply wear a sword. The clash of blades in battle is a less depressing sound than the rattle of a scabbard on the pavement. And then, to parade oneself as a fighting man and be titivated like a woman, with a corset under one’s cuirasse, is to be fatuous twice over. A real man avoids display as much as he does effeminacy. You can have your Théodule, he’s neither one thing nor the other.’
His daughter’s argument that Théodule was his great-nephew was unavailing. Monsieur Gillenormand, it seemed, was a grandfather to his finger-tips, but not in the least a great-uncle. Indeed, the comparison being forced on him, Théodule had served only to make him miss Marius the more.
An evening came - it was the 4th of June, but that did not prevent him from having a fire blazing in the hearth - when Monsieur Gillenormand, having dismissed his daughter, was alone in his room with its pastoral tapestries, seated in his armchair with his feet on the hob, half-enclosed in his nine-leafed screen, with two green-shaded candles on the table at his elbow and with a book in his hand which, however, he was not reading. According to his habit he was dressed in the fashion of the incroyables and looked like an old-style portrait of Garat, the Minister of Justice at the time of the execution of Louis XVI. This would have caused him to be stared at in the streets, but whenever he went out his daughter saw to it that he was enveloped in a sort of bishop’s cloak which hid his costume. At home he never wore any sort of house-gown except in his bedroom. ‘They make you look old,’ he said.
He was thinking of Marius with both affection and bitterness, and, as usual, bitterness came uppermost. His exacerbated tenderness always ended by boiling up into anger. He was at the point where we seek to come to terms with a situation and to accept the worst. There was no reason, after all, why Marius should ever come back to him; if he had been going to do so he would have done so already. There was no more hope, and Monsieur Gillenormand was trying to resign himself to the idea that all was over, and that he must go to his grave without ever seeing ‘that gentleman’ again. But he could not do so; his whole being recoiled from the thought, his every instinct rejected it. ‘What – never! He’ll never come back? Never again?’ His bald head had sunk on to his chest, and he was gazing with grievous, exasperated eyes into the fire.
And while this mood was on him his old man-servant Basque entered the room and asked:
‘Will Monsieur receive Monsieur Marius?’
Monsieur Gillenormand started upright, ashen-faced and looking like a corpse revived by a galvanic shock. All the blood seemed to have been drained out of his body. He stammered:
‘Monsieur - who?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Basque, alarmed by his master’s appearance.
‘I haven’t seen him. Nicolette says that a young man has called and I’m to tell you that it’s Monsieur Marius.’
Monsieur Gillenormand said in a very low voice:
‘Show him in.’
He waited, quivering, with his eyes fixed on the door until at length it opened and the young man entered. It was Marius.
He stood uncertainly in the doorway, as though waiting to be invited in. The shabbiness of his clothes was not apparent in the half-darkness of the room. Nothing of him was clearly visible but his face, which was calm and grave but strangely sad.
Monsieur Gillenormand, in the turmoil of his stupefaction and delight, was incapable for some moments of seeing anything but a sort of glimmer, as though he had been visited by an apparition. He was near to swooning. He saw Marius through a haze. But it was really he; it was Marius!
At last! After four years! When at length he was able to look him over he found him handsome, noble, distinguished, grown into a whole man, correct in bearing and agreeable in manner. He wanted to open his arms and summon him to his embrace; his whole being cried out to him… until finally this surge of feeling found expression in words springing from the harsh underside of his nature, and he asked abruptly:
‘What have you come for?’
Marius murmured in embarrassment:
‘Monsieur…’
Monsieur Gillenormand had wanted him to rush into his arms. He was vexed both with Marius and with himself. He felt that he had been too brusque and that Marius’s response was too cold. It was an intolerable exasperation to him that he should be so tenderly moved inside and outwardly so hard. His bitterness revived. He cut Marius short, saying:
‘Well, why are you here?’
The significance of that ‘Well -’ was, ‘if you have not come to embrace me’. Marius stared at the old man’s face, whose pallor gave it a look of marble.
‘Have you come to apologize? Do you now see that you were wrong?’
Hard though the words sounded, they were intended to be helpful, to pave the way for the ‘boy’s’ surrender. But Marius shivered. He was being asked to disavow his father. He lowered his eyes, and said:
‘No, Monsieur.’
‘Well then,’ the old man burst out in an access of pain and anger, ‘what do you want of me?’
Marius clasped his hands, and moving a step towards him said in a low and trembling voice:
‘Monsieur, I ask you to have pity on me.’
The words touched Monsieur Gillenormand. Had they been spoken sooner they would have melted him, but they came too late. The old man rose to his feet and stood white-lipped, leaning on his stick with his head swaying on his shoulders, but by his taller stature dominating Marius, whose eyes were still cast down.
‘Pity indeed! A youth your age asking pity of a man aged ninety-one! You’re beginning life and I’m leaving it. You go to the theatre, the dance, the café, the billiard-hall; you’ve got wits and looks to attract the women - while I huddle in midsummer spitting into the fire. You have all the riches that matter while I have all the poverty of age, infirmity, and loneliness. You have all your teeth and a sound digestion, a clear eye, health, strength, and gaiety and a good crop of dark hair, while I haven’t even any white hairs left. I’ve lost my teeth, I’m losing the use of my legs and I’m losing my memory. I can’t even remember the name of the streets round this house. Rue Chariot, Rue du Chaume, Rue Saint-Claude, I’m always muddling them up. That’s the state I’m in. You have the whole world at your feet, bathed in sunshine, but for me there’s nothing but darkness. You’re in love, it goes without saying, but nobody on earth loves me. And then you come here asking for pity. That’s something even Molière didn’t think of. If it’s the kind of joke you lawyers crack in the courts, I congratulate you! You’re a waggish lot.’ Then he said impatiently but more seriously, ‘Well, and what is it you really want?’
‘Monsieur,’ said Marius, ‘I know that I am not welcome here. I have come to ask for only one thing, and then I will go away at once.’
‘You’re a young fool,’ the old man said. ‘Who said you were to go away?’
It was the nearest he could get to the words that were in his heart - ‘Ask my forgiveness! Fling yourself into my arms!’ He realized that Marius was on the verge of leaving, driven away by the coldness of his reception; he knew all this and his unhappiness was sharpened by the knowledge; and since, with him, unhappiness was transformed instantly into rage, so did his harshness increase. He wanted Marius to understand, but Marius did not understand, and this made him more angry still.
‘You deserted me, your grandfather! You left my house to go God knows where. You almost broke your aunt’s heart. I’ve no doubt you found a bachelor life very much more pleasant - aping the young man-about-town, playing the fool, coming home at all hours, having a high old time. And not a word to us. You’ve run up debts, I suppose, without even asking me to pay them. You’ve joined in demonstrations, no doubt, behaved like a street hooligan. And now, after four years, you come back to me, and this is all you have to say!’
This rough attempt to evoke in Marius a display of affection simply had the effect of reducing him to silence. Monsieur Gillenormand folded his arms, a particularly lordly gesture as he used it, and concluded bitterly:
‘Well, let’s get to the point. You say you’ve come to ask for something. What is it?’
‘Monsieur,’ said Marius, with the expression of a man about to jump off a precipice, ‘I have come to ask your consent to my marriage.’
Monsieur Gillenormand rang the bell and Basque appeared.
‘Will you please ask my daughter to come here.’
The door was again opened a few moments later. Mlle Gillenormand showed herself in the doorway but did not enter the room. Marius was standing dumbly with his arms hanging, looking like a criminal. Monsier Gillenormand was pacing up and down. He glanced at his daughter and said:
‘A trifling matter. Here, as you see, is Monsieur Marius. Bid him good day. He wants to get married. That’s all. Now go away.’
The terse, harsh tone of the old man’s utterance conveyed a strange fullness of emotion. Aunt Gillenormand darted a startled glance at Marius, seeming scarcely to recognize him, and then, without speaking or making any gesture, scuttled away from her father’s fury like a dead leaf in a gale of wind. Monsieur Gillenormand resumed his place in front of the hearth.
‘And so you want to get married - at the age of twenty-one. You’ve arranged it all except for one trifling formality – my consent. Please be seated, Monsieur. There has been a revolution since I last had the privilege of seeing you, and the Jacobins came off best. You must have been highly gratified. No doubt you’ve become a republican since you became a baron. The two things go together. The republic adds savour to the barony, does it not? Were you awarded any July decorations? Did you help to take the Louvre, Monsieur? Quite near here, in the Rue Saint-Antoine, opposite the Rue des Nonnains-d’Hyères, there’s a cannon ball lodged in the third storey of a house wall, bearing the inscription, 28 July 1830. You should go and look at it, it is most impressive. They do such charming things, these friends of yours. They’re putting up a fountain, I believe, in place of the statue of the Duc de Berry. And so you want to get married? Would it be indiscreet to ask to whom?’
The old man paused, but before Marius could reply he burst out:
‘So I suppose you’ve got some sort of position. Perhaps you’ve made a fortune. What do you earn as a lawyer?’
‘Nothing,’ said Marius in a voice of almost savage firmness and defiance.
‘Nothing? So all you have to live on are the twelve hundred livres I allow you?’
Marius made no reply, and Monsieur Gillenormand went on:
‘Well then, I take it the girl is rich.’
‘No richer than I am.’
‘You mean, she won’t have a dowry?’
‘No.’
‘Expectations?’
‘I think not.’
‘Not a rag to her back! And what does her father do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, what’s her name?’
‘Mademoiselle Fauchelevent.’
‘Fauche - what?’
‘Fauchelevent’
‘Pshaw!’ said the old man.
‘Monsieur!’ cried Marius.
Monsieur Gillenormand cut him short, speaking in an aside to himself.
‘So that’s it. Twenty-one years old and no position, nothing but twelve hundred livres a year. Madame la Baronne Pontmercy will have to count her sous when she goes to market.’
‘Monsieur,’ cried Marius, in the distraction of seeing his last hope vanish, “I beg of you, I beseech you in Heaven’s name on my bended knees, to allow me to marry her!’
The old man uttered a shrill, anguished laugh which turned into a fit of coughing, then burst again into speech.
‘So you said to yourself, “I’ll have to go and see him, that old fossil, that old mountebank. It’s too bad I’m not yet twenty-five. I wouldn’t have to worry about him and his consent. As it is, I’ll go there and crawl to him, and the old fool will be so happy to see me that he won’t care who I marry. I haven’t a sound pair of shoes and she hasn’t a chemise to her back, but no matter. I’m proposing to throw away my career, my prospects, my youth, my whole life and plunge into poverty with a woman round my neck. That’s what I intend to do, I’ll tell him, and I’ll ask his consent. And the old fossil will oblige…” That’s what you think, isn’t it? Well, my lad, you can do what you please. Hamstring yourself, if you must. Marry your Pousselevent or Coupelevent or whatever her name is. But as for my consent, the answer is, never!’
‘Grandfather-’
‘Never!’
The tone in which the word was uttered robbed Marius of all hope. He rose and crossed the room slowly, swaying a little, with his head bowed, more like someone in the act of dying than someone merely taking his leave. Monsieur Gillenormand stood watching him, but then, when he was about to open the door, moving with jerky liveliness of a spoilt, imperious old man, he darted after him, seized him by the coat collar, dragged him vigorously back into the room, thrust him into an armchair and said:
‘Tell me about it.’
It was the word ‘grandfather’ that had brought about the change in him. Marius stared in amazement. Monsieur Gillenormand’s expression had become one of coarse, implicit bonhomie. The stern guardian had given way to the grandfather.
‘Come on. Tell me all about your love-affairs. Don’t be afraid to talk. Lord, what fools you young fellows are.’
‘Grandfather…’ Marius said again, and the old man’s face lighted up.
‘That’s it. Don’t forget I’m your grandfather.’
There was so much bluff, fatherly indulgence in his manner that Marius, now suddenly transported from despair to hope, was quite bewildered. He was seated near the table and the light of the two candles, disclosing the dilapidated state of his attire, caused Monsieur Gillenormand to survey him with astonishment.
‘You really are penniless, aren’t you!’ he said. ‘You look like a tramp.’ He pulled open a drawer and got out a purse which he put on the table. ‘Here’s a hundred louis. Buy yourself some clothes.’
‘Oh, grandfather,’ said Marius, ‘if you knew how much I love her. The first time I saw her was in the Luxembourg, she was there every day. I didn’t take much notice of her at first, but then - I don’t know how it was - I fell in love with her. I was terribly unhappy, but in the end - well, now I see her every day at her home - her father doesn’t know - we meet in the garden in the evening - and they’re going away, he’s going to take her to England. So when I heard this I thought to myself, I’ll go and see my grandfather and tell him about it. Because otherwise I’ll get ill, or go mad and throw myself in the river. I’ve got to marry her, I must marry her, or I shall go mad. Well, that’s the whole truth. I don’t think I’ve left anything out. She lives in a house in the Rue Plumet, with a garden and a wrought-iron gate. It’s near the Invalides.’
Monsieur Gillenormand was seated radiantly beside him, adding zest to his delight in his presence and the sound of his voice with an occasional long pinch of snuff. But at the mention of the Rue Plumet he started, with his fingers to his nose, and let the snuff fall on his knees.
‘The Rue Plumet? Wait a minute. Isn’t there a barracks near there? That’s it, your cousin Théodule – you know, the cavalry officer – he told me about her. In the Rue Plumet. It used to be the Rue Blomet. I remember perfectly-a girl in a garden with a wrought-iron gate in the Rue Plumet. Another Pamela. You have good taste, my boy. A pretty wench, from what I hear. I fancy that fool Théodule had his eye on her, but I don’t know how far it went. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, you can’t believe a word he says, he’s always boasting. My dear Marius, I think it entirely right that a young fellow like you should be in love. It’s natural at your age. I’d far sooner have you in love with a wench than with revolution. I’d sooner have you crazy about a dancing partner, or twenty dancing partners, than about Monsieur de Robespierre. I’m bound to say that the only kind of sons-culottes I’ve ever cared for are the ones in skirts. A pretty wench is a pretty wench, and what’s wrong with that? So she lets you in without her father knowing, does she? That’s quite in order. I’ve had that kind of adventure myself, and more than once. But listen, you don’t want to take it too seriously, you mustn’t go asking for trouble – no drama, no talk of marriage or anything of that sort. You’re a gay young blade, but you’ve got a head on your shoulders. You have your fun, but you don’t marry. You come to see your grandfather, who’s not a bad old boy at heart and always has a few louis stuffed away in a drawer, and you ask him to help you out. And grandfather says, “Why, that’s easy!” Youth profits and age provides. I’ve been young, and one day you’ll be old. Here you are, lad, and you’ll pay it back to your own grandson. Two hundred pistoles. Have your fun, and what could be better? That’s how it should be. You don’t marry, but that needn’t stop you – you understand?’
Marius, too shocked to be capable of speech, shook his head. The old man burst out laughing, winked an aged eyelid, tapped him on the knee and gazing conspiratorially at him said with an indulgent shrug of his shoulders:
‘Why, you young nincompoop – make her your steady mistress!’
Marius turned pale. He had understood nothing of what his grandfather had said. The talk of the Rue Blomet, Pamela, the barracks, and the cavalry officer had been to him a meaningless rigmarole. None of it had anything to do with his lily-white Cosette. The old man had been babbling; but his babbling had ended in an admonition which Marius had understood: ‘Make her your mistress!’ The mere suggestion was an insult to Cosette, and it wounded her high-minded young lover like a swordthrust to his heart.
He rose, picked up his hat off the floor and walked firmly and resolutely towards the door. Here he turned, bowed deeply to his grandfather, straightened himself and said:
‘Five years ago you insulted my father; today you have insulted my future wife. I shall ask nothing more of you, Monsieur. Farewell.’
Monsieur Gillenormand opened his mouth in stupefaction, reached out an arm and sought to get up from his chair; but before he could say anything the door had closed and Marius was gone.
The old man stayed motionless for some moments, unable to speak or breathe, as though a hand had clutched him by the throat. Finally he struggled to his feet. He ran to the door, so far as his ninety-one years permitted him to run, opened it and cried:
‘Help! Help!’
His daughter appeared, followed by the servants. He croaked pitifully:
‘After him! Catch him! What have I done to him? He must be mad. He’s going away again. Oh, my God, my God, this time he’ll never come back!’
He ran to the window looking on to the street, opened it with aged, trembling hands and leaned out while Basque and Nicolette held him from behind.
‘Marius!’ he called. ‘Marius! Marius!’
But Marius, turning the corner of the Rue Saint-Louis, was already out of earshot.
Monsieur Gillenormand clasped his hands to his head and with an anguished expression withdrew from the window. He sank into an armchair, breathless, speechless, and tearless, wagging his head and soundlessly moving his lips, with nothing more in his eyes or his heart than a blankness like the coming of night.