Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [345]
This violent method of pushing the grandson to tenderness produced only silence on the part of Marius. M. Gillenormand folded his arms, a posture which with him was particularly imperious, and apostrophised Marius bitterly.
“Let us make an end of it. You have come to ask something of me, say you? Well what? what is it? speak!”
“Monsieur,” said Marius, with the look of a man who feels that he is about to fall into an abyss, “I come to ask your permission to marry.”
M. Gillenormand rang. Basque half opened the door.
“Send my daughter in.”
A second later—the door opened again. Mademoiselle Gillenormand did not come in, but showed herself. Marius was standing mute, his arms hanging down, with the look of a criminal. M. Gillenormand was coming and going up and down the room. He turned towards his daughter and said to her:
“Nothing. It is Monsieur Marius. Bid him good evening. Monsieur wishes to marry. That is all. Go.”
The crisp, harsh tones of the old man’s voice announced a strange fulness of feeling. The aunt looked at Marius with a bewildered air, appeared hardly to recognise him, allowed neither a motion nor a syllable to escape her, and disappeared at a breath from her father, quicker than a dry leaf before a hurricane.
Meanwhile Grandfather Gillenormand had returned and stood with his back to the fireplace.
“You marry! at twenty-one! You have arranged that! You have nothing but a permission to ask! a formality. Sit down, monsieur. Well, you have had a revolution since I had the honour to see you. The Jacobins have had the upper hand. You ought to be satisfied. You are a republican, are you not, since you are a baron? You arrange that. The republic is sauce to the barony. Are you decorated by July?—did you take a bit of the Louvre, monsieur? There is close by here, in the Rue Saint Antoine, opposite the Rue des Nonaindières, a cannonball embedded in the wall of the fourth story of a house with this inscription: July 28th, 1830. Go and see that. That produces a good effect. Ah! Pretty things those friends of yours do. By the way, are they not making a fountain in the square of the monument of M. the Duke de Berry? So you want to marry? Whom? can the question be asked without indiscretion?”
He stopped, and, before Marius had had time to answer, he added violently:
“Come now, you have a business? your fortune made? how much do you earn at your lawyer’s trade?”
“Nothing,” said Marius, with a firmness and resolution which were almost savage.
“Nothing? you have nothing to live on but the twelve hundred livres which I send you?”
Marius made no answer. M. Gillenormand continued:
“Then I understand the girl is rich?”
“As I am.”
“What! no dowry?”
“No.”
“Some expectations?”
“I believe not.”
“With nothing to her back! and what is the father?”
“I do not know.”
“What is her name?”
“Mademoiselle Fauchelevent.”
“Fauchewhat?”
“Fauchelevent.”
“Pttt!” said the old man.
“Monsieur!” exclaimed Marius.
M. Gillenormand interrupted him with the tone of a man who is talking to himself.
“That is it, twenty-one, no business, twelve hundred livres a year, Madame the Baroness Pontmercy will go to the market to buy two sous’ worth of parsley.”
“Monsieur,” said Marius, in the desperation of the last vanishing hope, “I supplicate you! I conjure you, in the name of heaven, with clasped hands, monsieur, I throw myself at your feet, allow me to marry her!”
The old man burst into a shrill, dreary laugh, through which he coughed and spoke.
“Ha, ha, ha! you said to yourself, ‘The devil! I will go and find that old wig, that silly dolt! What a pity that I am not twenty-five! how I would toss him a good respectful notice! how I would give him the go-by. Never mind, I will say to him: Old idiot, you are too happy to see me, I desire to marry, I desire to espouse mamselle no matter whom, daughter of monsieur no matter what, I have no shoes, she has no chemise, all right; I desire to throw to the dogs my career, my future, my youth,