Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [216]
“Pontmercy,” said Marius, turning pale.
“Exactly; Pontmercy. Did you know him?”
“Monsieur,” said Marius, “he was my father.”
The old churchwarden clasped his hands, and exclaimed—
“Ah! you are the child! Yes, that is it; he ought to be a man now. Well! poor child, you can say that you had a father who loved you well.”
Marius offered his arm to the old man, and walked with him to his house. Next day he said to Monsieur Gillenormand:—
“We have arranged a hunting party with a few friends. Will you permit me to be absent for three days?”
“Four,” answered the grandfather; “go; amuse yourself.”
And, with a wink he whispered to his daughter—
“Some love affair!”
5 (6)
WHAT IT IS TO HAVE MET A CHURCHWARDEN
WHERE MARIUS WENT we shall see a little further on.
Marius was absent three days, then he returned to Paris, went straight to the library of the law-school, and asked for the file of the Moniteur.
He read the Moniteur; he read all the histories of the republic and the empire; the Memorial de Sainte-Hélène; all the memoirs, journals, bulletins, proclamations; he devoured everything. The first time he met his father’s name in the bulletins of the grand army he had a fever for a whole week. He went to see the generals under whom George Pontmercy had served—among others, Count H. The churchwarden, Mabeuf, whom he had gone to see again, gave him an account of the life at Vernon, the colonel’s retreat, his flowers and his solitude. Marius came to understand fully this rare, sublime, and gentle man, this sort of lion-lamb who was his father.
In the meantime, engrossed in this study, which took up all his time, as well as all his thoughts, he hardly saw the Gillenormands more. At the hours of meals he appeared; then when they looked for him, he was gone. The aunt grumbled. The grandfather smiled. “Poh, poh! it is the age for the lasses!” Sometimes the old man added: “The devil! I thought that it was some flirtation. It seems to be a passion.”
It was a passion, indeed. Marius was on the way to adoration for his father.
The republic, the empire, had been to him, till then, nothing but monstrous words. The republic, a guillotine in a twilight; the empire, a sabre in the night. He had looked into them, and there, where he expected to find only a chaos of darkness, he had seen, with a sort of astounding surprise, mingled with fear and joy, stars shining, Mirabeau, Vergniaud, Saint-Just, Robespierre, Camille Desmoulins, Danton, and a sun rising, Napoleon. He knew not where he was. He recoiled blinded by the splendours. Little by little, the astonishment passed away, he accustomed himself to this radiance; he looked upon acts without dizziness, he examined personages without error; the revolution and the empire set themselves in luminous perspective before his straining eyes; he saw each of these two groups of events and men arrange themselves into two enormous facts: the republic into the sovereignty of the civic right restored to the masses, the empire into the sovereignty of the French idea imposed upon Europe; he saw spring out of the revolution the grand figure of the people, and out of the empire the grand figure of France. He declared to himself that all that had been good.
He perceived then that up to that time he had comprehended his country no more than he had his father. He had known neither one nor the other, and he had had a sort of voluntary night over his eyes. He now saw, and on the one hand he admired, on the other he worshipped.
He was full of regret and remorse and he thought with despair that all he had in his soul he could say now only to a tomb. Oh! if his father were living, if he had had him still, if God in his mercy and in his goodness had permitted that his father might be still alive, how he would have run, how he would