Chapter Chapter 346 · THE TWO OLD MEN DO EVERYTHING, EACH ONE AFTER HIS OWN

FASHION, TO RENDER COSETTE HAPPY

Everything was made ready for the wedding. The doctor, on being

consulted, declared that it might take place in February. It was then

December. A few ravishing weeks of perfect happiness passed.

The grandfather was not the least happy of them all. He remained for a

quarter of an hour at a time gazing at Cosette.

“The wonderful, beautiful girl!” he exclaimed. “And she has so sweet

and good an air! she is, without exception, the most charming girl that

I have ever seen in my life. Later on, she’ll have virtues with an odor

of violets. How graceful! one cannot live otherwise than nobly with

such a creature. Marius, my boy, you are a Baron, you are rich, don’t

go to pettifogging, I beg of you.”

Cosette and Marius had passed abruptly from the sepulchre to paradise.

The transition had not been softened, and they would have been stunned,

had they not been dazzled by it.

“Do you understand anything about it?” said Marius to Cosette.

“No,” replied Cosette, “but it seems to me that the good God is caring

for us.”

Jean Valjean did everything, smoothed away every difficulty, arranged

everything, made everything easy. He hastened towards Cosette’s

happiness with as much ardor, and, apparently with as much joy, as

Cosette herself.

As he had been a mayor, he understood how to solve that delicate

problem, with the secret of which he alone was acquainted, Cosette’s

civil status. If he were to announce her origin bluntly, it might

prevent the marriage, who knows? He extricated Cosette from all

difficulties. He concocted for her a family of dead people, a sure

means of not encountering any objections. Cosette was the only scion of

an extinct family; Cosette was not his own daughter, but the daughter

of the other Fauchelevent. Two brothers Fauchelevent had been gardeners

to the convent of the Petit-Picpus. Inquiry was made at that convent;

the very best information and the most respectable references abounded;

the good nuns, not very apt and but little inclined to fathom questions

of paternity, and not attaching any importance to the matter, had never

understood exactly of which of the two Fauchelevents Cosette was the

daughter. They said what was wanted and they said it with zeal. An

_acte de notoriété_ was drawn up. Cosette became in the eyes of the

law, Mademoiselle Euphrasie Fauchelevent. She was declared an orphan,

both father and mother being dead. Jean Valjean so arranged it that he

was appointed, under the name of Fauchelevent, as Cosette’s guardian,

with M. Gillenormand as supervising guardian over him.

As for the five hundred and eighty thousand francs, they constituted a

legacy bequeathed to Cosette by a dead person, who desired to remain

unknown. The original legacy had consisted of five hundred and

ninety-four thousand francs; but ten thousand francs had been expended

on the education of Mademoiselle Euphrasie, five thousand francs of

that amount having been paid to the convent. This legacy, deposited in

the hands of a third party, was to be turned over to Cosette at her

majority, or at the date of her marriage. This, taken as a whole, was

very acceptable, as the reader will perceive, especially when the sum

due was half a million. There were some peculiarities here and there,

it is true, but they were not noticed; one of the interested parties

had his eyes blindfolded by love, the others by the six hundred

thousand francs.

Cosette learned that she was not the daughter of that old man whom she

had so long called father. He was merely a kinsman; another

Fauchelevent was her real father. At any other time this would have

broken her heart. But at the ineffable moment which she was then

passing through, it cast but a slight shadow, a faint cloud, and she

was so full of joy that the cloud did not last long. She had Marius.

The young man arrived, the old man was effaced; such is life.

And then, Cosette had, for long years, been habituated to seeing

enigmas around her; every being who has had a mysterious childhood is

always prepared for certain renunciations.

Nevertheless, she continued to call Jean Valjean: Father.

Cosette, happy as the angels, was enthusiastic over Father

Gillenormand. It is true that he overwhelmed her with gallant

compliments and presents. While Jean Valjean was building up for

Cosette a normal situation in society and an unassailable status, M.

Gillenormand was superintending the basket of wedding gifts. Nothing so

amused him as being magnificent. He had given to Cosette a robe of

Binche guipure which had descended to him from his own grandmother.

“These fashions come up again,” said he, “ancient things are the rage,

and the young women of my old age dress like the old women of my

childhood.”

He rifled his respectable chests of drawers in Coromandel lacquer, with

swelling fronts, which had not been opened for years.—“Let us hear the

confession of these dowagers,” he said, “let us see what they have in

their paunches.” He noisily violated the pot-bellied drawers of all his

wives, of all his mistresses and of all his grandmothers. Pekins,

damasks, lampas, painted moires, robes of shot gros de Tours, India

kerchiefs embroidered in gold that could be washed, dauphines without a

right or wrong side, in the piece, Genoa and Alençon point lace,

parures in antique goldsmith’s work, ivory bon-bon boxes ornamented

with microscopic battles, gewgaws and ribbons—he lavished everything on

Cosette. Cosette, amazed, desperately in love with Marius, and wild

with gratitude towards M. Gillenormand, dreamed of a happiness without

limit clothed in satin and velvet. Her wedding basket seemed to her to

be upheld by seraphim. Her soul flew out into the azure depths, with

wings of Mechlin lace.

The intoxication of the lovers was only equalled, as we have already

said, by the ecstasy of the grandfather. A sort of flourish of trumpets

went on in the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire.

Every morning, a fresh offering of bric-à-brac from the grandfather to

Cosette. All possible knickknacks glittered around her.

One day Marius, who was fond of talking gravely in the midst of his

bliss, said, apropos of I know not what incident:

“The men of the revolution are so great, that they have the prestige of

the ages, like Cato and like Phocion, and each one of them seems to me

an antique memory.”

“Moire antique!” exclaimed the old gentleman. “Thanks, Marius. That is

precisely the idea of which I was in search.”

And on the following day, a magnificent dress of tea-rose colored moire

antique was added to Cosette’s wedding presents.

From these fripperies, the grandfather extracted a bit of wisdom.

“Love is all very well; but there must be something else to go with it.

The useless must be mingled with happiness. Happiness is only the

necessary. Season that enormously with the superfluous for me. A palace

and her heart. Her heart and the Louvre. Her heart and the grand

waterworks of Versailles. Give me my shepherdess and try to make her a

duchess. Fetch me Phyllis crowned with corn-flowers, and add a hundred

thousand francs income. Open for me a bucolic perspective as far as you

can see, beneath a marble colonnade. I consent to the bucolic and also

to the fairy spectacle of marble and gold. Dry happiness resembles dry

bread. One eats, but one does not dine. I want the superfluous, the

useless, the extravagant, excess, that which serves no purpose. I

remember to have seen, in the Cathedral of Strasburg, a clock, as tall

as a three-story house which marked the hours, which had the kindness

to indicate the hour, but which had not the air of being made for that;

and which, after having struck midday, or midnight,—midday, the hour of

the sun, or midnight, the hour of love,—or any other hour that you

like, gave you the moon and the stars, the earth and the sea, birds and

fishes, Phœbus and Phœbe, and a host of things which emerged from a

niche, and the twelve apostles, and the Emperor Charles the Fifth, and

Éponine, and Sabinus, and a throng of little gilded goodmen, who played

on the trumpet to boot. Without reckoning delicious chimes which it

sprinkled through the air, on every occasion, without any one’s knowing

why. Is a petty bald clock-face which merely tells the hour equal to

that? For my part, I am of the opinion of the big clock of Strasburg,

and I prefer it to the cuckoo clock from the Black Forest.”

M. Gillenormand talked nonsense in connection with the wedding, and all

the fripperies of the eighteenth century passed pell-mell through his

dithyrambs.

“You are ignorant of the art of festivals. You do not know how to

organize a day of enjoyment in this age,” he exclaimed. “Your

nineteenth century is weak. It lacks excess. It ignores the rich, it

ignores the noble. In everything it is clean-shaven. Your third estate

is insipid, colorless, odorless, and shapeless. The dreams of your

bourgeois who set up, as they express it: a pretty boudoir freshly

decorated, violet, ebony and calico. Make way! Make way! the Sieur

Curmudgeon is marrying Mademoiselle Clutch-penny. Sumptuousness and

splendor. A louis d’or has been stuck to a candle. There’s the epoch

for you. My demand is that I may flee from it beyond the Sarmatians.

Ah! in 1787, I predict that all was lost, from the day when I beheld

the Duc de Rohan, Prince de Léon, Duc de Chabot, Duc de Montbazon,

Marquis de Soubise, Vicomte de Thouars, peer of France, go to

Longchamps in a tapecu! That has borne its fruits. In this century, men

attend to business, they gamble on ’Change, they win money, they are

stingy. People take care of their surfaces and varnish them; every one

is dressed as though just out of a bandbox, washed, soaped, scraped,

shaved, combed, waked, smoothed, rubbed, brushed, cleaned on the

outside, irreproachable, polished as a pebble, discreet, neat, and at

the same time, death of my life, in the depths of their consciences

they have dung-heaps and cesspools that are enough to make a cow-herd

who blows his nose in his fingers, recoil. I grant to this age the

device: ‘Dirty Cleanliness.’ Don’t be vexed, Marius, give me permission

to speak; I say no evil of the people as you see, I am always harping

on your people, but do look favorably on my dealing a bit of a slap to

the bourgeoisie. I belong to it. He who loves well lashes well.

Thereupon, I say plainly, that nowadays people marry, but that they no

longer know how to marry. Ah! it is true, I regret the grace of the

ancient manners. I regret everything about them, their elegance, their

chivalry, those courteous and delicate ways, that joyous luxury which

every one possessed, music forming part of the wedding, a symphony

above stairs, a beating of drums below stairs, the dances, the joyous

faces round the table, the fine-spun gallant compliments, the songs,

the fireworks, the frank laughter, the devil’s own row, the huge knots

of ribbon. I regret the bride’s garter. The bride’s garter is cousin to

the girdle of Venus. On what does the war of Troy turn? On Helen’s

garter, parbleu! Why did they fight, why did Diomed the divine break

over the head of Meriones that great brazen helmet of ten points? why

did Achilles and Hector hew each other up with vast blows of their

lances? Because Helen allowed Paris to take her garter. With Cosette’s

garter, Homer would construct the _Iliad_. He would put in his poem, a

loquacious old fellow, like me, and he would call him Nestor. My

friends, in bygone days, in those amiable days of yore, people married

wisely; they had a good contract, and then they had a good carouse. As

soon as Cujas had taken his departure, Gamacho entered. But, in sooth!

the stomach is an agreeable beast which demands its due, and which

wants to have its wedding also. People supped well, and had at table a

beautiful neighbor without a guimpe so that her throat was only

moderately concealed. Oh! the large laughing mouths, and how gay we

were in those days! youth was a bouquet; every young man terminated in

a branch of lilacs or a tuft of roses; whether he was a shepherd or a

warrior; and if, by chance, one was a captain of dragoons, one found

means to call oneself Florian. People thought much of looking well.

They embroidered and tinted themselves. A bourgeois had the air of a

flower, a Marquis had the air of a precious stone. People had no straps

to their boots, they had no boots. They were spruce, shining, waved,

lustrous, fluttering, dainty, coquettish, which did not at all prevent

their wearing swords by their sides. The humming-bird has beak and

claws. That was the day of the _Galland Indies_. One of the sides of

that century was delicate, the other was magnificent; and by the green

cabbages! people amused themselves. To-day, people are serious. The

bourgeois is avaricious, the bourgeoise is a prude; your century is

unfortunate. People would drive away the Graces as being too low in the

neck. Alas! beauty is concealed as though it were ugliness. Since the

revolution, everything, including the ballet-dancers, has had its

trousers; a mountebank dancer must be grave; your rigadoons are

doctrinarian. It is necessary to be majestic. People would be greatly

annoyed if they did not carry their chins in their cravats. The ideal

of an urchin of twenty when he marries, is to resemble M.

Royer-Collard. And do you know what one arrives at with that majesty?

at being petty. Learn this: joy is not only joyous; it is great. But be

in love gayly then, what the deuce! marry, when you marry, with fever

and giddiness, and tumult, and the uproar of happiness! Be grave in

church, well and good. But, as soon as the mass is finished, sarpejou!

you must make a dream whirl around the bride. A marriage should be

royal and chimerical; it should promenade its ceremony from the

cathedral of Rheims to the pagoda of Chanteloup. I have a horror of a

paltry wedding. Ventregoulette! be in Olympus for that one day, at

least. Be one of the gods. Ah! people might be sylphs. Games and

Laughter, argiraspides; they are stupids. My friends, every recently

made bridegroom ought to be Prince Aldobrandini. Profit by that unique

minute in life to soar away to the empyrean with the swans and the

eagles, even if you do have to fall back on the morrow into the

bourgeoisie of the frogs. Don’t economize on the nuptials, do not prune

them of their splendors; don’t scrimp on the day when you beam. The

wedding is not the housekeeping. Oh! if I were to carry out my fancy,

it would be gallant, violins would be heard under the trees. Here is my

programme: sky-blue and silver. I would mingle with the festival the

rural divinities, I would convoke the Dryads and the Nereids. The

nuptials of Amphitrite, a rosy cloud, nymphs with well dressed locks

and entirely naked, an Academician offering quatrains to the goddess, a

chariot drawn by marine monsters.

“Triton trottait devant, et tirait de sa conque

Des sons si ravissants qu’il ravissait quiconque!”65

—there’s a festive programme, there’s a good one, or else I know

nothing of such matters, deuce take it!”

While the grandfather, in full lyrical effusion, was listening to

himself, Cosette and Marius grew intoxicated as they gazed freely at

each other.

Aunt Gillenormand surveyed all this with her imperturbable placidity.

Within the last five or six months she had experienced a certain amount

of emotions. Marius returned, Marius brought back bleeding, Marius

brought back from a barricade, Marius dead, then living, Marius

reconciled, Marius betrothed, Marius wedding a poor girl, Marius

wedding a millionairess. The six hundred thousand francs had been her

last surprise. Then, her indifference of a girl taking her first

communion returned to her. She went regularly to service, told her

beads, read her euchology, mumbled _Aves_ in one corner of the house,

while _I love you_ was being whispered in the other, and she beheld

Marius and Cosette in a vague way, like two shadows. The shadow was

herself.

There is a certain state of inert asceticism in which the soul,

neutralized by torpor, a stranger to that which may be designated as

the business of living, receives no impressions, either human, or

pleasant or painful, with the exception of earthquakes and

catastrophes. This devotion, as Father Gillenormand said to his

daughter, corresponds to a cold in the head. You smell nothing of life.

Neither any bad, nor any good odor.

Moreover, the six hundred thousand francs had settled the elderly

spinster’s indecision. Her father had acquired the habit of taking her

so little into account, that he had not consulted her in the matter of

consent to Marius’ marriage. He had acted impetuously, according to his

wont, having, a despot-turned slave, but a single thought,—to satisfy

Marius. As for the aunt,—it had not even occurred to him that the aunt

existed, and that she could have an opinion of her own, and, sheep as

she was, this had vexed her. Somewhat resentful in her inmost soul, but

impassible externally, she had said to herself: “My father has settled

the question of the marriage without reference to me; I shall settle

the question of the inheritance without consulting him.” She was rich,

in fact, and her father was not. She had reserved her decision on this

point. It is probable that, had the match been a poor one, she would

have left him poor. “So much the worse for my nephew! he is wedding a

beggar, let him be a beggar himself!” But Cosette’s half-million

pleased the aunt, and altered her inward situation so far as this pair

of lovers were concerned. One owes some consideration to six hundred

thousand francs, and it was evident that she could not do otherwise

than leave her fortune to these young people, since they did not need

it.

It was arranged that the couple should live with the grandfather—M.

Gillenormand insisted on resigning to them his chamber, the finest in

the house. “That will make me young again,” he said. “It’s an old plan

of mine. I have always entertained the idea of having a wedding in my

chamber.”

He furnished this chamber with a multitude of elegant trifles. He had

the ceiling and walls hung with an extraordinary stuff, which he had by

him in the piece, and which he believed to have emanated from Utrecht

with a buttercup-colored satin ground, covered with velvet auricula

blossoms.—“It was with that stuff,” said he, “that the bed of the

Duchesse d’Anville at la Roche-Guyon was draped.”—On the chimney-piece,

he set a little figure in Saxe porcelain, carrying a muff against her

nude stomach.

M. Gillenormand’s library became the lawyer’s study, which Marius

needed; a study, it will be remembered, being required by the council

of the order.