VII. OLD HEART AND YOUNG HEART FACE-TO-FACE
Old man Gillenormand had now long since turned ninety-one. He was still living with Mademoiselle Gillenormand at no. 6, rue des Filles-du-Calvaire in the old house that belonged to him. He was, as you will recall, of that antique race of old men who await death perfectly erect, whom age burdens without buckling, and whom even sorrow does not bow.
Yet for some little time, his daughter had been saying: “My father is going downhill.” He no longer slapped the servants; he no longer banged his cane with the same verve on the stair landing when Basque was slow to open the door for him. For the past six months, the July Revolution had hardly ruffled his feathers at all. He had seen in the Moniteur almost with tranquillity this coupling of words: Monsieur Humblot-Conté, peer of France. The fact is that the old man was filled with despair. He did not sag, he did not surrender—that was no more in his physical makeup than in his moral makeup; but he felt himself inwardly disintegrating. For four years he had been waiting for Marius resolutely—that is indeed the right word—in the conviction that the naughty little rascal would ring at his door one of these days; now he had reached the point where, at certain mournful hours, he told himself that if Marius took his time even a little longer … It wasn’t death that he found unbearable, it was the idea that he might never see Marius again. Never to see Marius again—that had never, even for a moment, entered his head until now; but now the idea was beginning to occur to him and it sent shivers down his spine. Absence, as always happens with emotions that are natural and true, only increased the love the grandfather felt for the ungrateful boy who had taken himself off like that. It is on nights in December, when the temperature drops below zero, that we most think of the sun. Monsieur Gillenormand was, or thought he was, utterly incapable of making a move, he the grandfather, toward his grandson. “I’d sooner croak,” he said. He did not think himself in the wrong in any way, but he never thought of Marius except with deep affection and the mute despair of an old man with one foot in the grave.
He was beginning to lose his teeth, which added to his sadness.
Though he never admitted it to himself, for it would have made him furious and ashamed, Monsieur Gillenormand had never loved any mistress the way he loved Marius.
He had them hang in his bedroom, on the wall opposite his bed, as the first thing he would see when he woke up, an old portrait of his other daughter, the one who had died, Madame Pontmercy, a portrait done when she was eighteen years old. He never tired of looking at this portrait. One day while he was studying it, he happened to say: “I think it’s a good likeness.”
“Of my sister?” asked Mademoiselle Gillenormand. “Why, yes, it is.”
The old man added: “And of him, too.”
Once, as he was sitting with his knees pressed together and his eyes almost closed in an attitude of dejection, his daughter ventured to say to him: “Father, do you still bear as much of a grudge as ever toward—”
She broke off, not daring to go any further.
“Who?”
“That poor Marius.”
He lifted his old head, slammed his bony wrinkled old fist on the table, and shouted in his crabbiest and most ringing voice: “Poor Marius, you say! That gentleman is a bounder, a nasty little rotter, an ungrateful upstart, with no heart, no soul, a puffed-up popinjay, a bad piece of work.”
And he turned away so that his daughter could not see the tears that had welled up in his eyes. Three days later, he emerged from a silence that had lasted for four hours to tell his daughter point-blank: “I have the honor of beseeching Mademoiselle Gillenormand never to speak to me of him again.”
Aunt Gillenormand gave up all attempts and arrived at this profound diagnosis: “My father never loved my sister much after her silly mistake. It is clear he detests Marius.”
“After her silly mistake” meant: after she married the colonel.
Still, as you might well have surmised, Mademoiselle had failed in her attempt to substitute her favorite, the officer of the lancers, for Marius. Théodule had not taken as a replacement. Monsieur Gillenormand had not accepted the quid pro quo. A hole in the heart is not satisfied with a stopgap. Théodule, for his part, even with his nose on the inheritance, rebelled at the chore of pleasing. The old man bored the lancer and the lancer disgusted the old man. Lieutenant Théodule was doubtless cheery, but chatty; frivolous but common; a bon vivant, but one who mixed with a bad crowd; he had mistresses, it is true, and he talked about them a lot, also true, but he said nasty things about them. All his good points had their bad points. Monsieur Gillenormand was exasperated at his tales of casual amorous encounters near his barracks in the rue de Babylone. And then again, Lieutenant Gillenormand sometimes turned up in his uniform with the tricolor cockade. This made him quite simply insupportable. Old man Gillenormand had wound up telling his daughter: “I’ve had enough, of Théodule. You receive him if you like, I don’t have much time for men of war in times of peace. I don’t know if I don’t prefer sabreurs to saber-draggers. The clattering of blades in battle is less pathetic, after all, than the racket scabbards make tapping on the pavement. And then, arching his back like a swashbuckler and lacing himself up like a sissy! Fancy wearing a corset under a cuirass—it’s too ridiculous for words. When you are a real man, you keep an equal distance from bravado and simpering affectation. Neither a braggart nor a pretty boy. You can keep your Théodule to yourself.”
His daughter could try as she might to tell him, “But he is your grandnephew, after all.” It turned out that Monsieur Gillenormand, a grandfather to his fingertips, was no great-uncle at all.
Basically, as he was of sound mind and could make comparisons, Théodule only served to make him miss Marius all the more.
One evening—it was the fourth of June, though that did not stop old Gillenormand from having a roaring fire going in his fireplace—he had dismissed his daughter, who was quietly sewing in the next room. He was alone in his room with the pastoral scenes, his feet up on his firedogs, half wrapped round in his vast nine-panel Coromandel screen, leaning on his table where two candles burned under a green shade, swallowed up in his tapestry armchair, a book in his hand, but not reading. He was decked out, in his usual style, as an incroyable—a dandy—and he looked like an antique portrait of Garat. This would have caused him to be followed in the street, but his daughter always bundled him up whenever he went out in a vast quilted bishop’s overcoat that hid his clothes. At home, except when he got up or went to bed, he never wore a dressing gown. “They make a man look old,” he said.
Old Gillenormand was thinking of Marius lovingly and bitterly, and as usual, bitterness dominated. His embittered tenderness always ended up boiling over into outrage. He had reached the point where you try to come to grips with and accept what is tearing you apart. He was busy explaining to himself that there was no longer any reason for Marius to come back, that if he had needed to come back, he would have done so already, that he had to give up hoping for that. He tried to get used to the idea that it was over and that he would die without seeing “that gentleman” again. But his whole nature rebelled; his old paternal feelings could not allow it. “I don’t believe it!” he said; it was his painful refrain. “I don’t believe he’s never coming back!” His bald head had sunk onto his chest and he vaguely leveled at the ashes in his hearth a woeful yet cranky glance.
As he was in the depths of this reverie, his old servant Basque came in and asked him:
“Is Monsieur able to receive Monsieur Marius?”
The old man jerked upright, ashen and like a corpse jumping under a galvanic shock. All his blood had rushed to his heart. He stammered: “Monsieur Marius what?”
“I don’t know,” answered Basque, intimidated and thrown by his master’s look. “I didn’t see him. It was Nicolette who came and told me that there is a young man and to say that it’s Monsieur Marius.”
Old Gillenormand stuttered in a voice just above a whisper: “Sh-ssh-ow him in.”
And he remained in the same position, his head wobbly, his eyes riveted to the door. It opened again. A young man entered. It was Marius.
Marius stopped at the door as if waiting to be asked in.
His almost wretchedly shabby getup could not be seen in the obscurity created by the lampshade. Only his face could be made out, calm and grave, but strangely sad.
Old Gillenormand, overcome with amazement and joy, remained so dazzled for a few moments he was unable to see anything more than a bright light, as when you are confronted by an apparition. He was ready to pass out; he saw Marius through a blinding haze. It really was him, it really was Marius!
At last! After four years! He seized him, so to speak, sized him up, in a single glance. He found him handsome, noble, distinguished, grown-up, a mature man, with a correct demeanor and a charming air. He wanted to open his arms, to call him, to run to him, his heart was melting in ravishment, affectionate words welled up inside him and overflowed from his breast; finally, all this tenderness made itself felt and reached his lips, but out of that warring urge that was the very basis of his nature, harsh words came out. He said abruptly: “What have you come here for?”
Marius answered, embarrassed: “Monsieur …”
Monsieur Gillenormand would have liked Marius to throw himself into his arms. He was annoyed with Marius and with himself. He felt he was being brusque and that Marius was being cold. It was for the old man an unbearable and infuriating anxiety to feel himself so loving and so tearful inside yet not to be able to be anything but hard on the outside. His bitterness returned. He interrupted Marius in a gruff tone: “So why are you here?”
That “so” signified: if you have not come to give me a hug and a kiss. Marius looked at his grandfather, whose pallor had turned his face to marble.
“Have you come to say you’re sorry? Do you admit now that you were wrong?”
He thought he was putting Marius on the right track and that the “boy” was about to give in. Marius flinched; he was being asked to disown his father. He looked at the floor and answered: “No, Monsieur.”
“Well then,” cried the old man impetuously with a pain that was poignant and full of anger, “what do you want with me?”
Marius clasped his hands, took a step forward, and said in a weak and quivering voice: “Monsieur, have pity on me.”
These words stirred Monsieur Gillenormand; if they’d been said earlier, he would have relented, but they came too late. The grandfather got up, he leaned on his walking stick with both hands; his lips were white, his head wobbled, but he dominated the bowed Marius with his height.
“Pity on you, Monsieur! It’s the adolescent asking for pity from the old man of ninety-one! You are just starting out in life, I’m about to leave it; you go off to shows, to balls, to cafés, to billiards, you’re witty, you please the ladies, you’re a good-looking boy; I, I sit there spitting on my embers in the middle of summer; you are rich with the only riches that count, I’ve got all the impoverishments of old age, infirmity, isolation! You’ve got all your thirty-two teeth, a good stomach, a keen eye, strength; I don’t even have white hair now, I’ve lost my teeth, I’m losing my legs, I’m losing my memory, there are three street names I always get wrong, the rue Charlot, the rue du Chaume, and the rue Saint-Claude, that’s where I’m at; you have the whole future before you, full of sunshine, while I can hardly see what’s in front of my nose anymore, I’ve gone so far into the night; you are in love, that goes without saying, I’m not loved by anyone in the world, and you ask me for pity! By Jove, Molière overlooked this one. If this is how you jest at the Palais, you lawyers, I offer you my sincere compliments. You are true comedians.”
And the old man went on in a voice both wrathful and grave: “Right, then, what do you want from me?”
“Monsieur,” Marius said, “I know that my presence annoys you, but I’ve only come to ask you for one thing, and then I will go at once.”
“You are a noodle!” said the old man. “Who said you were to go?”
This was a translation of the tender words in his innermost heart: Just say you’re sorry, why don’t you! Throw your arms around my neck! Monsieur Gillenormand realized that Marius would leave him in a few moments, that his unpleasant welcome had put him off, that his harshness was driving him away, he told himself all that and his pain only intensified and, since pain for him turned immediately to anger, his harshness only intensified. He wanted Marius to understand, but Marius did not understand, which made the old man furious. He went on: “Really! You deserted me, me, your grandfather, you left my house to go God knows where, you upset your aunt, you’ve gone and led—one can very well guess, it’s much more fun—the life of a bachelor, playing the fop, coming home at all hours, kicking up your heels, you haven’t given me the slightest sign of life, you’ve run up debts without even telling me to pay them, you’ve turned yourself into a smasher of windows and a rowdy hooligan and now, after four long years, you turn up on my doorstep and this is all you have to say to me!”
This violent way of pushing his grandson into a show of affection produced only silence with Marius; Monsieur Gillenormand folded his arms, a gesture that, with him, was particularly imperious, and he spat out bitterly at Marius: “Let’s get it over with. You’ve come to ask me something, you say? Well then, what? What is it? Speak.”
“Monsieur,” said Marius, with the look of a man knowing he is about to plummet over a precipice, “I’ve come to ask your permission to marry.”
Monsieur Gillenormand rang. Basque cracked the door open.
“Send my daughter in.”
A second later the door opened again, Mademoiselle Gillenormand did not come in, but showed herself at the doorway; Marius was standing, mute, his arms hanging, with the face of a criminal, Monsieur Gillenormand was pacing up and down the length of the room. He turned to his daughter and said to her: “Nothing. It’s Monsieur Marius. Say hello. Monsieur wants to marry. That’s all. Off you go.”
The old man’s clipped, hoarse tone of voice announced a strange fullness of feeling. The aunt threw Marius a bewildered look, seemed to scarcely recognize him, did not let a movement or a word escape her, and disappeared at a snort of fury from her father faster than a straw scuttled by a hurricane.
Meanwhile old Gillenormand had gone back to lean against the mantelpiece.
“Marry! At twenty-one! You’ve arranged it! You’ve nothing left to do now but to ask my permission! A mere formality. Do have a seat, Monsieur. Well now, you’ve been through a revolution since the last time I had the honor of seeing you. The Jacobins came out on top. You must have been happy about that. Aren’t you a republican—since you are a baron? You are made for each other. The republic must be the icing on the cake of our barony. Were you decorated for July? Did you help storm the Louvre a little, Monsieur? Very close to here, rue Saint-Antoine, opposite the rue des Nonnains-d’Hyères, there is a cannonball lodged in a third-story wall of a house with this inscription: July 28, 1830. Go and have a look at it. That makes a good impression. Ah, they do such nice things, don’t they, your friends! Speaking of which, aren’t they putting up a fountain to replace the monument of Monsieur le duc de Berry? And so, just like that, you want to get married? To whom? May one ask, without being indiscreet, to whom?”
He paused, but before Marius had a chance to answer, he erupted violently: “For heaven’s sake, do you have any standing? A fortune behind you? How much do you make in the legal profession?”
“Nothing,” said Marius with an almost fierce firmness and resolve.
“Nothing? All you have to live on is the twelve hundred livres I give you?”
Marius did not answer. Monsieur Gillenormand continued: “So, I take it the girl is rich?”
“Like me.”
“What! No dowry?”
“No.”
“Any expectations?”
“I think not.”
“Not a rag on her back! And what does the father do?”
“I don’t know.”
“And what is her name?”
“Mademoiselle Fauchelevent.”
“Fauchele-what?”
“Fauchelevent.”
“Phh!” went the old man.
“Monsieur!” cried Marius.
Monsieur Gillenormand cut him off in the tone of a man talking to himself.
“That’s right, twenty-one years old, no standing, twelve hundred livres a year, Madame la baronne Pontmercy will go and ask for two sous’ worth of parsley at the fruit-seller’s.”
“Monsieur,” Marius cut in wildly, now clutching at the last vanishing straw of hope, “I beg you! I beseech you, in heaven’s name, I join my hands together in prayer, Monsieur, I throw myself at your feet, allow me to marry her.”
The old man let out a laugh, shrill and grim, through which he coughed and spoke.
“Ha! Ha! Ha! You said to yourself: Damn it! I’ll have to go and look up that doddering old fogy, that driveling old goat! What a pity I’m not twenty-five yet! What a nice respectable notice I’d chuck him then! How well I’d make do without him! Never mind, I’ll say to him: Old noodle, you are only too happy to see me, I want to marry, I want to marry Mamselle Nobody, daughter of Monsieur Nothing, I have no shoes, she has no chemise, no matter, I want to throw my career to the dogs, my future, my youth, my life, I want to sink into destitution with a wife around my neck, that’s what I have in mind, you must consent! And, just like that, the old fossil will consent … Go to it, my boy, as you will, tie your millstone round your neck, marry your Pousselevent, your Coupelevent … Never, Monsieur! Never!”
“Father!”
“Never!”
At the tone in which that never was uttered, Marius lost all hope. He rose and slowly crossed the room, head bowed, unsteady on his feet, more like a man about to die than one taking his leave. Monsieur Gillenormand followed him with his eyes and the moment the door opened and Marius was about to go out, he darted forward four steps with that senile vivacity imperious and spoiled old men have, grabbed Marius by the collar, marched him back energetically into the room, threw him into an armchair and said to him: “Tell me about it!”
It was that single word father escaping Marius’s lips that had brought about this revolution. Marius stared at him, amazed. Monsieur Gillenormand’s mobile face no longer expressed anything other than a rough and ineffable bonhomie. The stern ancestor had made way for the grandfather.
“Come on, let’s talk, tell me about your love life, you chatterbox, tell all! Heavens! What geese these young men are!”
“Father!” said Marius once more.
The old man’s whole face lit up with an indescribable radiance.
“Yes, that’s the way! Call me father and you’ll see!”
There was now something so good, so soft, so open, so paternal in this brusqueness that Marius was made dizzy and almost drunk by the sudden shift from discouragement to hope. He was sitting near the table; the light from the candles brought out the dilapidated state of his clothes and old father Gillenormand was studying them, flabbergasted.
“Well then, father,” said Marius.
“For heaven’s sake,” Monsieur Gillenormand broke in. “You really haven’t got a sou, have you?! You’re rigged out like a thief.”
He fumbled in a drawer and pulled out a purse, which he put on the table.
“Here, there’s a hundred louis, buy yourself a hat.”
“Father,” Marius plowed on, “my good, dear father, if you only knew! I love her. You can’t imagine, the first time I saw her was in the Luxembourg, she used to go there; in the beginning, I didn’t pay her much attention and then I don’t know how it happened, but I fell in love with her. Oh, how unhappy it made me! In the end, well, now I see her every day, at her place, her father doesn’t know, imagine, they are about to go away, we see each other in the garden in the evening, her father wants to take her away to England, so I said to myself: I’ll go and see my grandfather and tell him all about it. I’d go mad first, I’d die, I’d get sick, I’d throw myself in the river. I absolutely have to marry her, I’d go mad otherwise. So, well, that’s the whole truth, I don’t think I’ve left anything out. She lives in a garden where there’s a gate, rue Plumet. That’s over by the Invalides.”
Old father Gillenormand had sat down next to Marius, beaming with joy. While listening to him and savoring the sound of his voice, he savored at the same time a good long pinch of snuff. At the words rue Plumet, he stopped inhaling and let the rest of his snuff fall on his knees.
“Rue Plumet? You say rue Plumet? Let me see, now! I’ll be! Isn’t there a barracks over that way? Yes, that’s it. Your cousin Théodule has told me about her—You know, the lancer, the officer—A peach, my dear friend, a peach! Lordy, yes, rue Plumet. It’s what used to be called the rue Blomet. Now it’s coming back to me. I’ve heard talk about this lass at the gate of the rue Plumet. In a garden. A real Pamela. Nothing wrong with your taste. They say she’s nice and clean. Between you and me, I think that nincompoop of a lancer had a try at wooing her. I don’t know how far it went. When it comes down to it, that’s neither here nor there. Besides, you can’t take him at his word, he’s such a braggart. Marius! I think it’s wonderful that a young man like you should be in love. You’re the right age for it. I like you better in love than a Jacobin. I like you better smitten by a skirt—by Jove! by twenty skirts—than by Monsieur Robespierre. For my part, I must admit that the only sansculottes I’ve ever loved are the women. Pretty girls are pretty girls, for pity’s sake! There’s nothing wrong with that. As for this little lass, she sees you behind papa’s back. That’s how it should be. I’ve had affairs like that myself, too. More than one. Do you know what you do? You don’t go in too hard; you don’t go asking for trouble; no talk of a wedding and Monsieur le maire and his sash. You’ve got a head on your shoulders—use it. It’s as simple as that. You have to show some common sense. Err by all means, mortals, but do not marry. You come and find the grandfather, who’s not a bad old stick at heart, and who always has a few rolls of louis lying around in an old drawer, and you say to him: Grandfather, this is how it is. And the grandfather says: It’s quite simple. Youth profits and old age provides. I was young once, and one day you will be old. Go to it, my boy, you’ll hand this on to your grandson. Here are two hundred pistoles. Have fun, for heaven’s sake. Nothing better! That’s how the business should be conducted. Don’t marry, but don’t let that stop you. Do you get my meaning?”
Marius, absolutely dumbstruck, unable to articulate a single sound, shook his head to say no. The old man burst out laughing, gave him a wink of his tired old eye, and a rap on the knee, looked him straight in the eye, beaming mysteriously, and told him, with the most affectionate shrug of the shoulders: “Make her your mistress, you silly goose!”
Marius blanched. He had not been able to make head or tail of anything his grandfather had just been saying. That rigmarole about the rue Blomet, Pamela, barracks, lancers, had gone over his head. Nothing of such a fantasy could have any bearing on Cosette, who was as pure as a lily. The old man was rambling. But this rambling had ended in a word Marius understood only too well—a word that was a mortal insult to Cosette. That phrase “make her your mistress” stabbed the strict young man’s heart like a sword.
He stood up, picked up his hat, which was on the floor, and walked to the door with firm and assured tread. There he turned round, bowed deeply to his grandfather, lifted his head high again, and said: “Five years ago, you insulted my father, today you insult my wife. I will never ask you for anything again, Monsieur. Adieu.”
Old Gillenormand, stupefied, opened his mouth, reached out his arms, attempted to get up; but before he could utter a word, the door had shut again and Marius was gone.
The old man remained for a few moments without moving and as though thunderstruck; he could not talk or breathe, as though a fist was closing around his gullet. Finally, he tore himself out of his armchair, ran to the door as fast as a person can run at ninety-one, flung it open and yelled: “Help! Help!”
His daughter appeared, then the servants. He shouted at them, with a terrible rattle in his voice: “Run after him! Catch him! What did I do to him? He’s gone mad! He’s going! Oh, my God! Oh, my God! This time he won’t come back!”
He rushed to the window that looked on the street, opened it with his shaky old hands, leaned out down to the waist while Basque and Nicolette held him from behind, and cried: “Marius! Marius! Marius! Marius!”
But Marius was already out of hearing, was at that very moment turning the corner of the rue Saint-Louis.
The old man clapped his hands on his temples two or three times in anguish, turned away from the window and flopped into an armchair, pulseless, speechless, tearless, nodding his head and moving his lips like a half-wit, with nothing left in his eyes or his heart but a deep mournful sensation that resembled night.