Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [221]
“You will send sixty pistoles every six months to this blood-drinker, and never speak of him to me again.cn
Having an immense residuum of fury to expend, and not knowing what to do with it, he spoke to his daughter with coldness for more than three months.
Marius, for his part, departed in indignation. A circumstance, which we must mention, had aggravated his exasperation still more. There are always such little fatalities complicating domestic dramas. Feelings are embittered by them, although in reality the faults are none the greater. In hurriedly carrying away, at the old man’s command, Marius’ “things” to his room, Nicolette had, without perceiving it, dropped, probably on the garret stairs, which were dark, the black shagreen medallion which contained the paper written by the colonel. Neither the paper nor the medallion could be found. Marius was convinced that “Monsieur Gillenormand”—from that day forth he never named him otherwise—had thrown “his father’s will” into the fire. He knew by heart the few lines written by the colonel, and consequently nothing was lost. But the paper, the writing, that sacred relic, all that was his heart itself. What had been done with it?
Marius went away without saying where he was going, and without knowing where he was going, with thirty francs, his watch, and a few clothes in a carpet-bag. He hired a cabriolet by the hour, jumped in, and drove at random towards the Latin quarter.
What was Marius to do?
BOOK FOUR
THE FRIENDS OF THEABC
1
A GROUP WHICH ALMOST BECAME HISTORIC
AT THAT PERIOD, apparently unimportant, something of a revolutionary thrill was vaguely felt. Whispers coming from the depths of ‘89 and of ’92 were in the air. Young Paris was, excuse the expression, in the process of moulting. People were transformed almost without suspecting it, by the very movement of the time. The hand which moves over the dial moves also among souls. Each one took the step forward which was before him. Royalists became liberals, liberals became democrats.
It was like a rising tide, complicated by a thousand ebbs; the peculiarity of the ebb is to make mixtures; thence very singular combinations of ideas; men worshipped at the same time Napoleon and liberty.
At that time there were not yet in France any of those underlying organisations like the German Tugenbund and the Italian Carbonari; but here and there obscure excavations were branching out. La Cougourde was assuming form at Aix; there was in Paris, among other affiliations of this kind, the Society of the Friends of the A B C.
Who were the Friends of the A B C? A society having as its aim, in appearance, the education of children; in reality, the elevation of men.
They declared themselves the Friends of the A B C.co The abaissé were the people. They wished to raise them up.
The Friends of the A B C were not numerous, it was a secret society in the embryonic state; we should almost say a coterie, if coteries produced heroes. They met in Paris, at two places, near the Halles, in a wine shop called Corinthe, which will be referred to hereafter, and near the Pantheon, in a little coffeehouse on the Place Saint Michel, called Le Café Musain, now torn down; the first of these two places of rendezvous was near the working-men, the second near the students.2
The ordinary conventicles of the Friends of the A B C were held in a back room of the Café Musain.
This room, quite distant from the café, with which it communicated by a very long passage, had two windows, and an exit by a private stairway upon the little Rue des Grès. They smoked, drank, played, and laughed there. They talked very loud about everything, and in whispers about something else. On the wall was nailed, an indication sufficient to awaken the suspicion of a police officer, an old map of France under the republic.
Most of the Friends of the A B C were students, in thorough understanding with a few working-men. The names of the principal are as follows. They belong to a certain extent to history; Enjolras, Combeferre,