Chương Chương 179 · MARIUS’ ASTONISHMENTS

In a few days, Marius had become Courfeyrac’s friend. Youth is the

season for prompt welding and the rapid healing of scars. Marius

breathed freely in Courfeyrac’s society, a decidedly new thing for him.

Courfeyrac put no questions to him. He did not even think of such a

thing. At that age, faces disclose everything on the spot. Words are

superfluous. There are young men of whom it can be said that their

countenances chatter. One looks at them and one knows them.

One morning, however, Courfeyrac abruptly addressed this interrogation

to him:—

“By the way, have you any political opinions?”

“The idea!” said Marius, almost affronted by the question.

“What are you?”

“A democrat-Bonapartist.”

“The gray hue of a reassured rat,” said Courfeyrac.

On the following day, Courfeyrac introduced Marius at the Café Musain.

Then he whispered in his ear, with a smile: “I must give you your entry

to the revolution.” And he led him to the hall of the Friends of the A

B C. He presented him to the other comrades, saying this simple word

which Marius did not understand: “A pupil.”

Marius had fallen into a wasps’-nest of wits. However, although he was

silent and grave, he was, nonetheless, both winged and armed.

Marius, up to that time solitary and inclined to soliloquy, and to

asides, both by habit and by taste, was a little fluttered by this

covey of young men around him. All these various initiatives solicited

his attention at once, and pulled him about. The tumultuous movements

of these minds at liberty and at work set his ideas in a whirl.

Sometimes, in his trouble, they fled so far from him, that he had

difficulty in recovering them. He heard them talk of philosophy, of

literature, of art, of history, of religion, in unexpected fashion. He

caught glimpses of strange aspects; and, as he did not place them in

proper perspective, he was not altogether sure that it was not chaos

that he grasped. On abandoning his grandfather’s opinions for the

opinions of his father, he had supposed himself fixed; he now

suspected, with uneasiness, and without daring to avow it to himself,

that he was not. The angle at which he saw everything began to be

displaced anew. A certain oscillation set all the horizons of his

brains in motion. An odd internal upsetting. He almost suffered from

it.

It seemed as though there were no “consecrated things” for those young

men. Marius heard singular propositions on every sort of subject, which

embarrassed his still timid mind.

A theatre poster presented itself, adorned with the title of a tragedy

from the ancient repertory called classic: “Down with tragedy dear to

the bourgeois!” cried Bahorel. And Marius heard Combeferre reply:—

“You are wrong, Bahorel. The bourgeoisie loves tragedy, and the

bourgeoisie must be left at peace on that score. Bewigged tragedy has a

reason for its existence, and I am not one of those who, by order of

Æschylus, contest its right to existence. There are rough outlines in

nature; there are, in creation, ready-made parodies; a beak which is

not a beak, wings which are not wings, gills which are not gills, paws

which are not paws, a cry of pain which arouses a desire to laugh,

there is the duck. Now, since poultry exists by the side of the bird, I

do not see why classic tragedy should not exist in the face of antique

tragedy.”

Or chance decreed that Marius should traverse Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau

between Enjolras and Courfeyrac.

Courfeyrac took his arm:—

“Pay attention. This is the Rue Plâtrière, now called Rue Jean-Jacques

Rousseau, on account of a singular household which lived in it sixty

years ago. This consisted of Jean-Jacques and Thérèse. From time to

time, little beings were born there. Thérèse gave birth to them,

Jean-Jacques represented them as foundlings.”

And Enjolras addressed Courfeyrac roughly:—

“Silence in the presence of Jean-Jacques! I admire that man. He denied

his own children, that may be; but he adopted the people.”

Not one of these young men articulated the word: The Emperor. Jean

Prouvaire alone sometimes said Napoleon; all the others said

“Bonaparte.” Enjolras pronounced it “Buonaparte.”

Marius was vaguely surprised. _Initium sapientiæ_.