الفصل الفصل 185 · 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.