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MARBLE AGAINST GRANITE
It was hither that Marius had come on the first occasion
of his absenting himself from Paris.
It was hither that he had come every time that M. Gillenormand
had said:
"He is sleeping out."
Lieutenant Theodule was absolutely put out of countenance
by this unexpected encounter with a sepulchre; he experienced
a singular and disagreeable sensation which he was incapable of
analyzing, and which was composed of respect for the tomb, mingled
with respect for the colonel.
He retreated, leaving Marius alone in the cemetery, and there
was discipline in this retreat.
Death appeared to him with large epaulets, and he almost made
the military salute to him. Not knowing what to write to his aunt,
he decided not to write at all; and it is probable that nothing
would have resulted from the discovery made by Theodule as to
the love affairs of Marius, if, by one of those mysterious arrangements
which are so frequent in chance, the scene at Vernon had not had
an almost immediate counter-shock at Paris.
Marius returned from Vernon on the third day, in the middle
of the morning, descended at his grandfather's door, and, wearied
by the two nights spent in the diligence, and feeling the need
of repairing his loss of sleep by an hour at the swimming-school,
he mounted rapidly to his chamber, took merely time enough to
throw off his travelling-coat, and the black ribbon which he wore
round his neck, and went off to the bath.
M.Gillenormand, who had risen betimes like all old men in
good health, had heard his entrance, and had made haste to climb,
as quickly as his old legs permitted, the stairs to the upper
story where Marius lived, in order to embrace him, and to question
him while so doing, and to find out where he had been.
But the youth had taken less time to descend than the old
man had to ascend, and when Father Gillenormand entered the attic,
Marius was no longer there.
The bed had not been disturbed, and on the bed lay, outspread,
but not defiantly the great-coat and the black ribbon.
"I like this better," said M. Gillenormand.
And a moment later, he made his entrance into the salon, where
Mademoiselle Gillenormand was already seated, busily embroidering
her cart-wheels.
The entrance was a triumphant one.
M. Gillenormand held in one hand the great-coat, and in the
other the neck-ribbon, and exclaimed:--
"Victory!
We are about to penetrate the mystery!
We are going to learn the most minute details; we are going
to lay our finger on the debaucheries of our sly friend!
Here we have the romance itself. I have the portrait!"
In fact, a case of black shagreen, resembling a medallion
portrait, was suspended from the ribbon.
The old man took this case and gazed at it for some time without
opening it, with that air of enjoyment, rapture, and wrath, with
which a poor hungry fellow beholds an admirable dinner which is
not for him, pass under his very nose.
"For this evidently is a portrait.
I know all about such things. That is worn tenderly on the
heart.
How stupid they are! Some abominable fright that will make
us shudder, probably!
Young men have such bad taste nowadays!"
"Let us see, father," said the old spinster.
The case opened by the pressure of a spring.
They found in it nothing but a carefully folded paper.
"From the same to the same," said M. Gillenormand,
bursting with laughter.
"I know what it is.
A billet-doux."
"Ah! let us read it!" said the aunt.
And she put on her spectacles.
They unfolded the paper and read as follows:--
"For my son.--The Emperor made me a Baron on the battlefield
of Waterloo.
Since the Restoration disputes my right to this title which
I purchased with my blood, my son shall take it and bear it. That
he will be worthy of it is a matter of course."
The feelings of father and daughter cannot be described.
They felt chilled as by the breath of a death's-head. They
did not exchange a word.
Only, M. Gillenormand said in a low voice and as though speaking
to himself:--
"It is the slasher's handwriting."
The aunt examined the paper, turned it about in all directions,
then put it back in its case.
At the same moment a little oblong packet, enveloped in blue
paper, fell from one of the pockets of the great-coat. Mademoiselle
Gillenormand picked it up and unfolded the blue paper.
It contained Marius' hundred cards.
She handed one of them to M. Gillenormand, who read:
Le Baron Marius Pontmercy.
The old man rang the bell.
Nicolette came.
M. Gillenormand took the ribbon, the case, and the coat, flung
them all on the floor in the middle of the room, and said:--
"Carry those duds away."
A full hour passed in the most profound silence.
The old man and the old spinster had seated themselves with
their backs to each other, and were thinking, each on his own
account, the same things, in all probability.
At the expiration of this hour, Aunt Gillenormand said:--"A
pretty state of things!"
A few moments later, Marius made his appearance.
He entered. Even before he had crossed the threshold, he saw
his grandfather holding one of his own cards in his hand, and
on catching sight of him, the latter exclaimed with his air of
bourgeois and grinning superiority which was something crushing:--
"Well! well! well! well! well! so you are a baron now.
I present you my compliments.
What is the meaning of this?"
Marius reddened slightly and replied:--
"It means that I am the son of my father."
M. Gillenormand ceased to laugh, and said harshly:--
"I am your father."
"My father," retorted Marius, with downcast eyes
and a severe air, "was a humble and heroic man, who served
the Republic and France gloriously, who was great in the greatest
history that men have ever made, who lived in the bivouac for
a quarter of a century, beneath grape-shot and bullets, in snow
and mud by day, beneath rain at night, who captured two flags,
who received twenty wounds, who died forgotten and abandoned,
and who never committed but one mistake, which was to love too
fondly two ingrates, his country and myself."
This was more than M. Gillenormand could bear to hear.
At the word republic, he rose, or, to speak more correctly,
he sprang to his feet.
Every word that Marius had just uttered produced on the visage
of the old Royalist the effect of the puffs of air from a forge
upon a blazing brand.
From a dull hue he had turned red, from red, purple, and from
purple, flame-colored.
"Marius!" he cried.
"Abominable child!
I do not know what your father was!
I do not wish to know!
I know nothing about that, and I do not know him!
But what I do know is, that there never was anything but scoundrels
among those men!
They were all rascals, assassins, red-caps, thieves!
I say all!
I say all! I know not one!
I say all!
Do you hear me, Marius!
See here, you are no more a baron than my slipper is!
They were all bandits in the service of Robespierre!
All who served B-u-o-naparte were brigands!
They were all traitors who betrayed, betrayed, betrayed their
legitimate king!
All cowards who fled before the Prussians and the English
at Waterloo!
That is what I do know! Whether Monsieur your father comes
in that category, I do not know! I am sorry for it, so much the
worse, your humble servant!"
In his turn, it was Marius who was the firebrand and M. Gillenormand
who was the bellows.
Marius quivered in every limb, he did not know what would
happen next, his brain was on fire.
He was the priest who beholds all his sacred wafers cast to
the winds, the fakir who beholds a passer-by spit upon his idol.
It could not be that such things had been uttered in his presence.
What was he to do?
His father had just been trampled under foot and stamped upon
in his presence, but by whom?
By his grandfather. How was he to avenge the one without outraging
the other? It was impossible for him to insult his grandfather
and it was equally impossible for him to leave his father unavenged.
On the one hand was a sacred grave, on the other hoary locks.
He stood there for several moments, staggering as though intoxicated,
with all this whirlwind dashing through his head; then he raised
his eyes, gazed fixedly at his grandfather, and cried in a voice
of thunder:--
"Down with the Bourbons, and that great hog of a Louis
XVIII.!"
Louis XVIII.
had been dead for four years; but it was all the same to him.
The old man, who had been crimson, turned whiter than his
hair. He wheeled round towards a bust of M. le Duc de Berry, which
stood on the chimney-piece, and made a profound bow, with a sort
of peculiar majesty.
Then he paced twice, slowly and in silence, from the fireplace
to the window and from the window to the fireplace, traversing
the whole length of the room, and making the polished floor creak
as though he had been a stone statue walking.
On his second turn, he bent over his daughter, who was watching
this encounter with the stupefied air of an antiquated lamb, and
said to her with a smile that was almost calm:
"A baron like this gentleman, and a bourgeois like myself
cannot remain under the same roof."
And drawing himself up, all at once, pallid, trembling, terrible,
with his brow rendered more lofty by the terrible radiance of
wrath, he extended his arm towards Marius and shouted to him:--
"Be off!"
Marius left the house.
On the following day, M. Gillenormand said to his daughter:
"You will send sixty pistoles every six months to that
blood-drinker, and you will never mention his name to me."
Having an immense reserve fund of wrath to get rid of, and
not knowing what to do with it, he continued to address his daughter
as you instead of thou for the next three months.
Marius, on his side, had gone forth in indignation.
There was one circumstance which, it must be admitted, aggravated
his exasperation. There are always petty fatalities of the sort
which complicate domestic dramas.
They augment the grievances in such cases, although, in reality,
the wrongs are not increased by them. While carrying Marius' "duds"
precipitately to his chamber, at his grandfather's command, Nicolette
had, inadvertently, let fall, probably, on the attic staircase,
which was dark, that medallion of black shagreen which contained
the paper penned by the colonel. Neither paper nor case could
afterwards be found.
Marius was convinced that "Monsieur Gillenormand"--from
that day forth he never alluded to him otherwise--had flung "his
father's testament" in the fire.
He knew by heart the few lines which the colonel had written,
and, consequently, nothing was lost.
But the paper, the writing, that sacred relic,--all that was
his very heart. What had been done with it?
Marius had taken his departure without saying whither he was
going, and without knowing where, with thirty francs, his watch,
and a few clothes in a hand-bag. He had entered a hackney-coach,
had engaged it by the hour, and had directed his course at hap-hazard
towards the Latin quarter.
What was to become of Marius?
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