Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [414]
He approached Marius, who was still livid and motionless, and to whom the physician had returned, and he began to wring his hands. The old man’s white lips moved as if mechanically, and made way for almost indistinct words, like whispers in a death-rattle, which could scarcely be heard: “Oh! heartless! Oh! conspirator! Oh! scoundrel! Oh! Septembrist!” Reproaches whispered by a dying man to a corpse.
Little by little, as internal eruptions must always make their way out, the connection of his words returned, but the grandfather appeared to have lost the strength to utter them, his voice was so dull and faint that it seemed to come from the other side of an abyss:
“It is all the same to me, I am going to die too, myself. And to say that there is no little creature in Paris who would have been glad to make the wretch happy! A rascal who, instead of amusing himself and enjoying life, went to fight and got himself riddled like a brute! And for whom? for what? For the republic! Instead of going to dance at the Chaumière, as young people should! What’s the good of being twenty years old. The republic, a deuced fine folly. Poor mothers, raise your pretty boys then. Come, he is dead. That will make two funerals under the porte-cochère. Then you fixed yourself out like that for the sake of General Lamarque! What had he done for you, this General Lamarque? A sabrer! a babbler! To get killed for a dead man! If it isn’t enough to make a man crazy! Think of it! At twenty! And without turning his head to see if he was not leaving somebody behind him! Here now are the poor old goodmen who must die alone. Perish in your corner, owl! Well, indeed, so much the better, it is what I was hoping, it is going to kill me dead. I am too old, I am a hundred, I am a hundred thousand; it is a long time since I have had a right to be dead. With this blow, it is done. It is all over then, how lucky! What is the use of making him breathe smelling salts and all this heap of drugs? You are losing your pains, dolt of a doctor! Go along, he is dead, stone dead. I understand it, I, who am dead also. He hasn’t done the thing half way. Yes, these times are infamous, infamous, infamous, and that is what I think of you, of your ideas, of your systems, of your masters, of your oracles, of your doctors, of your scamps of writers, of your beggars of philosophers, and of all the revolutions which for sixty years have frightened the flocks of crows in the Tuileries! And as you had no pity in getting yourself killed like that, I shall not have even any grief for your death, do you understand, assassin?”
At this moment, Marius slowly raised his lids, and his gaze, still veiled in the astonishment of lethargy, rested upon M. Gillenormand.
“Marius!” cried the old man. “Marius! my darling Marius! my child! my dear son! You are opening your eyes, you are looking at me, you are alive, thanks!”
And he fell, unconscious.
BOOK FOUR
JAVERT DERAILED
1
JAVERT DERAILED
JAVERT made his way with slow steps from the Rue de l‘Homme Armé.
He walked with his head down, for the first time in his life, and, for the first time in his life as well, with his hands behind his back.
Until that day, Javert had taken, from Napoleon’s two postures, only that which expresses resolution, the arms folded upon the breast; that which expresses uncertainty, the hands behind the back, was unknown to him. Now, a change had taken place; his whole person, slow and gloomy, bore the impress of anxiety.
He plunged into the silent streets.
Still he followed one direction.
He took the shortest