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MARIUS GROWN UP
At this epoch, Marius was twenty years of age.
It was three years since he had left his grandfather.
Both parties had remained on the same terms, without attempting
to approach each other, and without seeking to see each other.
Besides, what was the use of seeing each other?
Marius was the brass vase, while Father Gillenormand was the
iron pot.
We admit that Marius was mistaken as to his grandfather's
heart. He had imagined that M. Gillenormand had never loved him,
and that that crusty, harsh, and smiling old fellow who cursed,
shouted, and stormed and brandished his cane, cherished for him,
at the most, only that affection, which is at once slight and
severe, of the dotards of comedy.
Marius was in error. There are fathers who do not love their
children; there exists no grandfather who does not adore his grandson.
At bottom, as we have said, M. Gillenormand idolized Marius.
He idolized him after his own fashion, with an accompaniment
of snappishness and boxes on the ear; but, this child once gone,
he felt a black void in his heart; he would allow no one to mention
the child to him, and all the while secretly regretted that he
was so well obeyed. At first, he hoped that this Buonapartist,
this Jacobin, this terrorist, this Septembrist, would return.
But the weeks passed by, years passed; to M. Gillenormand's
great despair, the "blood-drinker" did not make his
appearance.
"I could not do otherwise than turn him out," said
the grandfather to himself, and he asked himself: "If the
thing were to do over again, would I do it?"
His pride instantly answered "yes," but his aged
head, which he shook in silence, replied sadly "no."
He had his hours of depression. He missed Marius.
Old men need affection as they need the sun. It is warmth.
Strong as his nature was, the absence of Marius had wrought
some change in him.
Nothing in the world could have induced him to take a step
towards "that rogue"; but he suffered. He never inquired
about him, but he thought of him incessantly. He lived in the
Marais in a more and more retired manner; he was still merry and
violent as of old, but his merriment had a convulsive harshness,
and his violences always terminated in a sort of gentle and gloomy
dejection.
He sometimes said: "Oh! if he only would return, what
a good box on the ear I would give him!"
As for his aunt, she thought too little to love much; Marius
was no longer for her much more than a vague black form; and she
eventually came to occupy herself with him much less than with
the cat or the paroquet which she probably had.
What augmented Father Gillenormand's secret suffering was,
that he locked it all up within his breast, and did not allow
its existence to be divined. His sorrow was like those recently
invented furnaces which consume their own smoke.
It sometimes happened that officious busybodies spoke to him
of Marius, and asked him:
"What is your grandson doing?" "What has become
of him?"
The old bourgeois replied with a sigh, that he was a sad case,
and giving a fillip to his cuff, if he wished to appear gay:
"Monsieur le Baron de Pontmercy is practising pettifogging
in some corner or other."
While the old man regretted, Marius applauded himself. As
is the case with all good-hearted people, misfortune had eradicated
his bitterness.
He only thought of M. Gillenormand in an amiable light, but
he had set his mind on not receiving anything more from the man
who had been unkind to his father. This was the mitigated translation
of his first indignation. Moreover, he was happy at having suffered,
and at suffering still. It was for his father's sake.
The hardness of his life satisfied and pleased him.
He said to himself with a sort of joy that-- it was certainly
the least he could do; that it was an expiation;-- that, had it
not been for that, he would have been punished in some other way
and later on for his impious indifference towards his father,
and such a father! that it would not have been just that his father
should have all the suffering, and he none of it; and that, in
any case, what were his toils and his destitution compared with
the colonel's heroic life? that, in short, the only way for him
to approach his father and resemble him, was to be brave in the
face of indigence, as the other had been valiant before the enemy;
and that that was, no doubt, what the colonel had meant to imply
by the words: "He will be worthy of it."
Words which Marius continued to wear, not on his breast, since
the colonel's writing had disappeared, but in his heart.
And then, on the day when his grandfather had turned him out
of doors, he had been only a child, now he was a man.
He felt it.
Misery, we repeat, had been good for him.
Poverty in youth, when it succeeds, has this magnificent property
about it, that it turns the whole will towards effort, and the
whole soul towards aspiration. Poverty instantly lays material
life bare and renders it hideous; hence inexpressible bounds towards
the ideal life.
The wealthy young man has a hundred coarse and brilliant distractions,
horse races, hunting, dogs, tobacco, gaming, good repasts, and
all the rest of it; occupations for the baser side of the soul,
at the expense of the loftier and more delicate sides.
The poor young man wins his bread with difficulty; he eats;
when he has eaten, he has nothing more but meditation.
He goes to the spectacles which God furnishes gratis; he gazes
at the sky, space, the stars, flowers, children, the humanity
among which he is suffering, the creation amid which he beams.
He gazes so much on humanity that he perceives its soul, he gazes
upon creation to such an extent that he beholds God.
He dreams, he feels himself great; he dreams on, and feels
himself tender. From the egotism of the man who suffers he passes
to the compassion of the man who meditates.
An admirable sentiment breaks forth in him, forgetfulness
of self and pity for all. As he thinks of the innumerable enjoyments
which nature offers, gives, and lavishes to souls which stand
open, and refuses to souls that are closed, he comes to pity,
he the millionnaire of the mind, the millionnaire of money.
All hatred departs from his heart, in proportion as light
penetrates his spirit.
And is he unhappy? No. The misery of a young man is never
miserable.
The first young lad who comes to hand, however poor he may
be, with his strength, his health, his rapid walk, his brilliant
eyes, his warmly circulating blood, his black hair, his red lips,
his white teeth, his pure breath, will always arouse the envy
of an aged emperor. And then, every morning, he sets himself afresh
to the task of earning his bread; and while his hands earn his
bread, his dorsal column gains pride, his brain gathers ideas.
His task finished, he returns to ineffable ecstasies, to contemplation,
to joys; he beholds his feet set in afflictions, in obstacles,
on the pavement, in the nettles, sometimes in the mire; his head
in the light.
He is firm serene, gentle, peaceful, attentive, serious, content
with little, kindly; and he thanks God for having bestowed on
him those two forms of riches which many a rich man lacks:
work, which makes him free; and thought, which makes him dignified.
This is what had happened with Marius.
To tell the truth, he inclined a little too much to the side
of contemplation.
From the day when he had succeeded in earning his living with
some approach to certainty, he had stopped, thinking it good to
be poor, and retrenching time from his work to give to thought;
that is to say, he sometimes passed entire days in meditation,
absorbed, engulfed, like a visionary, in the mute voluptuousness
of ecstasy and inward radiance. He had thus propounded the problem
of his life:
to toil as little as possible at material labor, in order
to toil as much as possible at the labor which is impalpable;
in other words, to bestow a few hours on real life, and to cast
the rest to the infinite.
As he believed that he lacked nothing, he did not perceive
that contemplation, thus understood, ends by becoming one of the
forms of idleness; that he was contenting himself with conquering
the first necessities of life, and that he was resting from his
labors too soon.
It was evident that, for this energetic and enthusiastic nature,
this could only be a transitory state, and that, at the first
shock against the inevitable complications of destiny, Marius
would awaken.
In the meantime, although he was a lawyer, and whatever Father
Gillenormand thought about the matter, he was not practising,
he was not even pettifogging.
Meditation had turned him aside from pleading. To haunt attorneys,
to follow the court, to hunt up cases-- what a bore!
Why should he do it?
He saw no reason for changing the manner of gaining his livelihood!
The obscure and ill-paid publishing establishment had come
to mean for him a sure source of work which did not involve too
much labor, as we have explained, and which sufficed for his wants.
One of the publishers for whom he worked, M. Magimel, I think,
offered to take him into his own house, to lodge him well, to
furnish him with regular occupation, and to give him fifteen hundred
francs a year.
To be well lodged!
Fifteen hundred francs!
No doubt. But renounce his liberty!
Be on fixed wages!
A sort of hired man of letters!
According to Marius' opinion, if he accepted, his position
would become both better and worse at the same time, he acquired
comfort, and lost his dignity; it was a fine and complete unhappiness
converted into a repulsive and ridiculous state of torture: something
like the case of a blind man who should recover the sight of one
eye.
He refused.
Marius dwelt in solitude.
Owing to his taste for remaining outside of everything, and
through having been too much alarmed, he had not entered decidedly
into the group presided over by Enjolras. They had remained good
friends; they were ready to assist each other on occasion in every
possible way; but nothing more. Marius had two friends:
one young, Courfeyrac; and one old, M. Mabeuf.
He inclined more to the old man.
In the first place, he owed to him the revolution which had
taken place within him; to him he was indebted for having known
and loved his father. "He operated on me for a cataract,"
he said.
The churchwarden had certainly played a decisive part.
It was not, however, that M. Mabeuf had been anything but
the calm and impassive agent of Providence in this connection.
He had enlightened Marius by chance and without being aware
of the fact, as does a candle which some one brings; he had been
the candle and not the some one.
As for Marius' inward political revolution, M. Mabeuf was
totally incapable of comprehending it, of willing or of directing
it.
As we shall see M. Mabeuf again, later on, a few words will
not be superfluous.
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