Bab Bab 184 · MARIUS POOR

It is the same with wretchedness as with everything else. It ends by

becoming bearable. It finally assumes a form, and adjusts itself. One

vegetates, that is to say, one develops in a certain meagre fashion,

which is, however, sufficient for life. This is the mode in which the

existence of Marius Pontmercy was arranged:

He had passed the worst straits; the narrow pass was opening out a

little in front of him. By dint of toil, perseverance, courage, and

will, he had managed to draw from his work about seven hundred francs a

year. He had learned German and English; thanks to Courfeyrac, who had

put him in communication with his friend the publisher, Marius filled

the modest post of utility man in the literature of the publishing

house. He drew up prospectuses, translated newspapers, annotated

editions, compiled biographies, etc.; net product, year in and year

out, seven hundred francs. He lived on it. How? Not so badly. We will

explain.

Marius occupied in the Gorbeau house, for an annual sum of thirty

francs, a den minus a fireplace, called a cabinet, which contained only

the most indispensable articles of furniture. This furniture belonged

to him. He gave three francs a month to the old _principal tenant_ to

come and sweep his hole, and to bring him a little hot water every

morning, a fresh egg, and a penny roll. He breakfasted on this egg and

roll. His breakfast varied in cost from two to four sous, according as

eggs were dear or cheap. At six o’clock in the evening he descended the

Rue Saint-Jacques to dine at Rousseau’s, opposite Basset’s, the

stamp-dealer’s, on the corner of the Rue des Mathurins. He ate no soup.

He took a six-sou plate of meat, a half-portion of vegetables for three

sous, and a three-sou dessert. For three sous he got as much bread as

he wished. As for wine, he drank water. When he paid at the desk where

Madam Rousseau, at that period still plump and rosy majestically

presided, he gave a sou to the waiter, and Madam Rousseau gave him a

smile. Then he went away. For sixteen sous he had a smile and a dinner.

This Restaurant Rousseau, where so few bottles and so many water

carafes were emptied, was a calming potion rather than a restaurant. It

no longer exists. The proprietor had a fine nickname: he was called

_Rousseau the Aquatic_.

Thus, breakfast four sous, dinner sixteen sous; his food cost him

twenty sous a day; which made three hundred and sixty-five francs a

year. Add the thirty francs for rent, and the thirty-six francs to the

old woman, plus a few trifling expenses; for four hundred and fifty

francs, Marius was fed, lodged, and waited on. His clothing cost him a

hundred francs, his linen fifty francs, his washing fifty francs; the

whole did not exceed six hundred and fifty francs. He was rich. He

sometimes lent ten francs to a friend. Courfeyrac had once been able to

borrow sixty francs of him. As far as fire was concerned, as Marius had

no fireplace, he had “simplified matters.”

Marius always had two complete suits of clothes, the one old, “for

every day”; the other, brand new for special occasions. Both were

black. He had but three shirts, one on his person, the second in the

commode, and the third in the washerwoman’s hands. He renewed them as

they wore out. They were always ragged, which caused him to button his

coat to the chin.

It had required years for Marius to attain to this flourishing

condition. Hard years; difficult, some of them, to traverse, others to

climb. Marius had not failed for a single day. He had endured

everything in the way of destitution; he had done everything except

contract debts. He did himself the justice to say that he had never

owed any one a sou. A debt was, to him, the beginning of slavery. He

even said to himself, that a creditor is worse than a master; for the

master possesses only your person, a creditor possesses your dignity

and can administer to it a box on the ear. Rather than borrow, he went

without food. He had passed many a day fasting. Feeling that all

extremes meet, and that, if one is not on one’s guard, lowered fortunes

may lead to baseness of soul, he kept a jealous watch on his pride.

Such and such a formality or action, which, in any other situation

would have appeared merely a deference to him, now seemed insipidity,

and he nerved himself against it. His face wore a sort of severe flush.

He was timid even to rudeness.

During all these trials he had felt himself encouraged and even

uplifted, at times, by a secret force that he possessed within himself.

The soul aids the body, and at certain moments, raises it. It is the

only bird which bears up its own cage.

Besides his father’s name, another name was graven in Marius’ heart,

the name of Thénardier. Marius, with his grave and enthusiastic nature,

surrounded with a sort of aureole the man to whom, in his thoughts, he

owed his father’s life,—that intrepid sergeant who had saved the

colonel amid the bullets and the cannon-balls of Waterloo. He never

separated the memory of this man from the memory of his father, and he

associated them in his veneration. It was a sort of worship in two

steps, with the grand altar for the colonel and the lesser one for

Thénardier. What redoubled the tenderness of his gratitude towards

Thénardier, was the idea of the distress into which he knew that

Thénardier had fallen, and which had engulfed the latter. Marius had

learned at Montfermeil of the ruin and bankruptcy of the unfortunate

inn-keeper. Since that time, he had made unheard-of efforts to find

traces of him and to reach him in that dark abyss of misery in which

Thénardier had disappeared. Marius had beaten the whole country; he had

gone to Chelles, to Bondy, to Gourney, to Nogent, to Lagny. He had

persisted for three years, expending in these explorations the little

money which he had laid by. No one had been able to give him any news

of Thénardier: he was supposed to have gone abroad. His creditors had

also sought him, with less love than Marius, but with as much

assiduity, and had not been able to lay their hands on him. Marius

blamed himself, and was almost angry with himself for his lack of

success in his researches. It was the only debt left him by the

colonel, and Marius made it a matter of honor to pay it. “What,” he

thought, “when my father lay dying on the field of battle, did

Thénardier contrive to find him amid the smoke and the grape-shot, and

bear him off on his shoulders, and yet he owed him nothing, and I, who

owe so much to Thénardier, cannot join him in this shadow where he is

lying in the pangs of death, and in my turn bring him back from death

to life! Oh! I will find him!” To find Thénardier, in fact, Marius

would have given one of his arms, to rescue him from his misery, he

would have sacrificed all his blood. To see Thénardier, to render

Thénardier some service, to say to him: “You do not know me; well, I do

know you! Here I am. Dispose of me!” This was Marius’ sweetest and most

magnificent dream.