Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [344]
“What is it you come here for?”
Marius answered with embarrassment:
“Monsieur—”
M. Gillenormand would have had Marius throw himself into his arms. He was displeased with Marius and with himself. He felt that he was rough, and that Marius was cold. It was to the goodman an unbearable and irritating anguish, to feel himself so tender and so much in tears within, while he could only be harsh without. The bitterness returned. He interrupted Marius with a sharp tone:
“Then what do you come for?”
This then signified: If you don’t come to embrace me. Marius looked at his grandfather, whose pallor had changed to marble.
“Monsieur—”
The old man continued, in a stern voice:
“Do you come to ask my pardon? have you seen your fault?”
He thought to put Marius on the track, and that “the child” was going to bend. Marius shuddered; it was the disavowal of his father which was asked of him; he cast down his eyes and answered:
“No, monsieur.”
“And then,” exclaimed the old man impetuously, with a grief which was bitter and full of anger, “what do you want with me?”
Marius clasped his hands, took a step, and said in a feeble and trembling voice:
“Monsieur, have pity on me.”
This word moved M. Gillenormand; spoken sooner, it would have softened him, but it came too late. The grandfather arose; he supported himself upon his cane with both hands, his lips were white, his forehead quivered, but his tall stature commanded the stooping Marius.
“Pity on you, monsieur! The youth asks pity from the old man of ninety-one! You are entering life, I am leaving it; you go to the theatre, the ball, the café, the billiard-room; you have wit, you please the women, you are a handsome fellow, while I cannot leave my chimney corner in midsummer; you are rich, with the only riches there are, while I have all the poverties of old age; infirmity, isolation. You have your thirty-two teeth, a good stomach, a keen eye, strength, appetite, health, cheerfulness, a forest of black hair, while I have not even white hair left; I have lost my teeth, I am losing my legs, I am losing my memory, there are three names of streets which I am always confounding, the Rue Chariot, the Rue du Chaume, and the Rue Saint Claude, there is where I am; you have the whole future before you full of sunshine, while I am beginning not to see another drop of it, so deep am I getting into the night; you are in love, of course, I am not loved by anybody in the world; and you ask pity of me. Zounds, Molière forgot this. If that is the way you jest at the Palais, Messieurs Lawyers, I offer you my sincere compliments. You are funny fellows.”
And the old man resumed in an angry and stern voice:
“Come now, what do you want of me?”
“Monsieur,” said Marius, “I know that my presence is displeasing to you, but I come only to ask one thing of you, and then I will go away immediately.”
“You are a fool!” said the old man. “Who’s telling you to go away?”
This was the translation of those loving words which he had deep in his heart: Come, ask my pardon now! Throw yourself on my neck! M. Gillenormand felt that Marius was going to leave him in a few moments, that his unkind reception repelled him, that his harshness was driving him away; he said all this to himself, and his anguish increased; and as his anguish immediately turned into anger, his harshness augmented. He would have had Marius comprehend, and Marius did not comprehend; which rendered the goodman furious. He continued:
“What! you have left me! me, your grandfather, you have left my house to go nobody knows where; you have afflicted your aunt, you have been, that is clear, it is more pleasant, leading the life of a bachelor, playing the elegant, going home at all hours, amusing yourself; you have not given me a sign of life; you have contracted debts without even telling me to pay them; you have made yourself a breaker of windows