บทที่ บทที่ 182 · RES ANGUSTA
That evening left Marius profoundly shaken, and with a melancholy
shadow in his soul. He felt what the earth may possibly feel, at the
moment when it is torn open with the iron, in order that grain may be
deposited within it; it feels only the wound; the quiver of the germ
and the joy of the fruit only arrive later.
Marius was gloomy. He had but just acquired a faith; must he then
reject it already? He affirmed to himself that he would not. He
declared to himself that he would not doubt, and he began to doubt in
spite of himself. To stand between two religions, from one of which you
have not as yet emerged, and another into which you have not yet
entered, is intolerable; and twilight is pleasing only to bat-like
souls. Marius was clear-eyed, and he required the true light. The
half-lights of doubt pained him. Whatever may have been his desire to
remain where he was, he could not halt there, he was irresistibly
constrained to continue, to advance, to examine, to think, to march
further. Whither would this lead him? He feared, after having taken so
many steps which had brought him nearer to his father, to now take a
step which should estrange him from that father. His discomfort was
augmented by all the reflections which occurred to him. An escarpment
rose around him. He was in accord neither with his grandfather nor with
his friends; daring in the eyes of the one, he was behind the times in
the eyes of the others, and he recognized the fact that he was doubly
isolated, on the side of age and on the side of youth. He ceased to go
to the Café Musain.
In the troubled state of his conscience, he no longer thought of
certain serious sides of existence. The realities of life do not allow
themselves to be forgotten. They soon elbowed him abruptly.
One morning, the proprietor of the hotel entered Marius’ room and said
to him:—
“Monsieur Courfeyrac answered for you.”
“Yes.”
“But I must have my money.”
“Request Courfeyrac to come and talk with me,” said Marius.
Courfeyrac having made his appearance, the host left them. Marius then
told him what it had not before occurred to him to relate, that he was
the same as alone in the world, and had no relatives.
“What is to become of you?” said Courfeyrac.
“I do not know in the least,” replied Marius.
“What are you going to do?”
“I do not know.”
“Have you any money?”
“Fifteen francs.”
“Do you want me to lend you some?”
“Never.”
“Have you clothes?”
“Here is what I have.”
“Have you trinkets?”
“A watch.”
“Silver?”
“Gold; here it is.”
“I know a clothes-dealer who will take your frock-coat and a pair of
trousers.”
“That is good.”
“You will then have only a pair of trousers, a waistcoat, a hat and a
coat.”
“And my boots.”
“What! you will not go barefoot? What opulence!”
“That will be enough.”
“I know a watchmaker who will buy your watch.”
“That is good.”
“No; it is not good. What will you do after that?”
“Whatever is necessary. Anything honest, that is to say.”
“Do you know English?”
“No.”
“Do you know German?”
“No.”
“So much the worse.”
“Why?”
“Because one of my friends, a publisher, is getting up a sort of an
encyclopædia, for which you might have translated English or German
articles. It is badly paid work, but one can live by it.”
“I will learn English and German.”
“And in the meanwhile?”
“In the meanwhile I will live on my clothes and my watch.”
The clothes-dealer was sent for. He paid twenty francs for the cast-off
garments. They went to the watchmaker’s. He bought the watch for
forty-five francs.
“That is not bad,” said Marius to Courfeyrac, on their return to the
hotel, “with my fifteen francs, that makes eighty.”
“And the hotel bill?” observed Courfeyrac.
“Hello, I had forgotten that,” said Marius.
The landlord presented his bill, which had to be paid on the spot. It
amounted to seventy francs.
“I have ten francs left,” said Marius.
“The deuce,” exclaimed Courfeyrac, “you will eat up five francs while
you are learning English, and five while learning German. That will be
swallowing a tongue very fast, or a hundred sous very slowly.”
In the meantime Aunt Gillenormand, a rather good-hearted person at
bottom in difficulties, had finally hunted up Marius’ abode.
One morning, on his return from the law-school, Marius found a letter
from his aunt, and the _sixty pistoles_, that is to say, six hundred
francs in gold, in a sealed box.
Marius sent back the thirty louis to his aunt, with a respectful
letter, in which he stated that he had sufficient means of subsistence
and that he should be able thenceforth to supply all his needs. At that
moment, he had three francs left.
His aunt did not inform his grandfather of this refusal for fear of
exasperating him. Besides, had he not said: “Let me never hear the name
of that blood-drinker again!”
Marius left the hotel de la Porte Saint-Jacques, as he did not wish to
run in debt there.
BOOK FIFTH—THE EXCELLENCE OF MISFORTUNE