His heart contracted within him. He was in a transport, trembling, panting.
All at once, without himself knowing what was in him, and what impulse he was obeying, he sprang to his feet, stretched both arms out of the window, gazed intently into the gloom, the silence, the infinite darkness, the eternal immensity, and exclaimed:
"Long live the Emperor!"
From that moment forth, all was over; the Ogre of Corsica,-- the usurper,--the tyrant,--the monster who was the lover of his own sisters,--the actor who took lessons of Talma,--the poisoner of Jaffa,--the tiger,--Buonaparte,--all this vanished, and gave place in his mind to a vague and brilliant radiance in which shone, at an inaccessible height, the pale marble phantom of Caesar. The Emperor had been for his father only the well-beloved captain whom one admires, for whom one sacrifices one's self; he was something more to Marius.
He was the predestined constructor of the French group, succeeding the Roman group in the domination of the universe. He was a prodigious architect, of a destruction, the continuer of Charlemagne, of Louis XI., of Henry IV., of Richelieu, of Louis XIV., and of the Committee of Public Safety, having his spots, no doubt, his faults, his crimes even, being a man, that is to say; but august in his faults, brilliant in his spots, powerful in his crime.
He was the predestined man, who had forced all nations to say: "The great nation!"
He was better than that, he was the very incarnation of France, conquering Europe by the sword which he grasped, and the world by the light which he shed.
Marius saw in Bonaparte the dazzling spectre which will always rise upon the frontier, and which will guard the future.
Despot but dictator; a despot resulting from a republic and summing up a revolution. Napoleon became for him the man-people as Jesus Christ is the man-God.
It will be perceived, that like all new converts to a religion, his conversion intoxicated him, he hurled himself headlong into adhesion and he went too far.
His nature was so constructed; once on the downward slope, it was almost impossible for him to put on the drag.
Fanaticism for the sword took possession of him, and complicated in his mind his enthusiasm for the idea. He did not perceive that, along with genius, and pell-mell, he was admitting force, that is to say, that he was installing in two compartments of his idolatry, on the one hand that which is divine, on the other that which is brutal.
In many respects, he had set about deceiving himself otherwise.
He admitted everything. There is a way of encountering error while on one's way to the truth. He had a violent sort of good faith which took everything in the lump. In the new path which he had entered on, in judging the mistakes of the old regime, as in measuring the glory of Napoleon, he neglected the attenuating circumstances.
At all events, a tremendous step had been taken.
Where he had formerly beheld the fall of the monarchy, he now saw the advent of France. His orientation had changed.
What had been his East became the West. He had turned squarely round.
All these revolutions were accomplished within him, without his family obtaining an inkling of the case.
When, during this mysterious labor, he had entirely shed his old Bourbon and ultra skin, when he had cast off the aristocrat, the Jacobite and the Royalist, when he had become thoroughly a revolutionist, profoundly democratic and republican, he went to an engraver on the Quai des Orfevres and ordered a hundred cards bearing this name: Le Baron Marius Pontmercy.
This was only the strictly logical consequence of the change which had taken place in him, a change in which everything gravitated round his father.
Only, as he did not know any one and could not sow his cards with any porter, he put them in his pocket.
By another natural consequence, in proportion as he drew nearer to his father, to the latter's memory, and to the things for which the colonel had fought five and twenty years before, he receded from his grandfather.
We have long ago said, that M. Gillenormand's temper did not please him.
There already existed between them all the dissonances of the grave young man and the frivolous old man. The gayety of Geronte shocks and exasperates the melancholy of Werther.
So long as the same political opinions and the same ideas had been common to them both, Marius had met M. Gillenormand there as on a bridge.
When the bridge fell, an abyss was formed. And then, over and above all, Marius experienced unutterable impulses to revolt, when he reflected that it was M. Gillenormand who had, from stupid motives, torn him ruthlessly from the colonel, thus depriving the father of the child, and the child of the father.
By dint of pity for his father, Marius had nearly arrived at aversion for his grandfather.
Nothing of this sort, however, was betrayed on the exterior, as we have already said.
Only he grew colder and colder; laconic at meals, and rare in the house.
When his aunt scolded him for it, he was very gentle and alleged his studies, his lectures, the examinations, etc., as a pretext.
His grandfather never departed from his infallible diagnosis:
"In love!
I know all about it."
From time to time Marius absented himself.
"Where is it that he goes off like this?" said his aunt.
On one of these trips, which were always very brief, he went to Montfermeil, in order to obey the injunction which his father had left him, and he sought the old sergeant to Waterloo, the inn-keeper Thenardier.
Thenardier had failed, the inn was closed, and no one knew what had become of him. Marius was away from the house for four days on this quest.
"He is getting decidedly wild," said his grandfather.
They thought they had noticed that he wore something on his breast, under his shirt, which was attached to his neck by a black ribbon.
BOOK THIRD.--THE GRANDFATHER AND THE GRANDSON
CHAPTER VII
We have mentioned a lancer.
He was a great-grand-nephew of M. Gillenormand, on the paternal side, who led a garrison life, outside the family and far from the domestic hearth.
Lieutenant Theodule Gillenormand fulfilled all the conditions required to make what is called a fine officer. He had "a lady's waist," a victorious manner of trailing his sword and of twirling his mustache in a hook.
He visited Paris very rarely, and so rarely that Marius had never seen him. The cousins knew each other only by name.
We think we have said that Theodule was the favorite of Aunt Gillenormand, who preferred him because she did not see him.
Not seeing people permits one to attribute to them all possible perfections.
One morning, Mademoiselle Gillenormand the elder returned to her apartment as much disturbed as her placidity was capable of allowing. Marius had just asked his grandfather's permission to take a little trip, adding that he meant to set out that very evening. "Go!" had been his grandfather's reply, and M. Gillenormand had added in an aside, as he raised his eyebrows to the top of his forehead:
"Here he is passing the night out again." Mademoiselle Gillenormand had ascended to her chamber greatly puzzled, and on the staircase had dropped this exclamation:
"This is too much!"--and this interrogation:
"But where is it that he goes?" She espied some adventure of the heart, more or less illicit, a woman in the shadow, a rendezvous, a mystery, and she would not have been sorry to thrust her spectacles into the affair. Tasting a mystery resembles getting the first flavor of a scandal; sainted souls do not detest this.
There is some curiosity about scandal in the secret compartments of bigotry.
So she was the prey of a vague appetite for learning a history.
In order to get rid of this curiosity which agitated her a little beyond her wont, she took refuge in her talents, and set about scalloping, with one layer of cotton after another, one of those embroideries of the Empire and the Restoration, in which there are numerous cart-wheels. The work was clumsy, the worker cross.
She had been seated at this for several hours when the door opened.
Mademoiselle Gillenormand raised her nose. Lieutenant Theodule stood before her, making the regulation salute. She uttered a cry of delight.
One may be old, one may be a prude, one may be pious, one may be an aunt, but it is always agreeable to see a lancer enter one's chamber.
"You here, Theodule!" she exclaimed.
"On my way through town, aunt."
"Embrace me."
"Here goes!" said Theodule.
And he kissed her.
Aunt Gillenormand went to her writing-desk and opened it.
"You will remain with us a week at least?"
"I leave this very evening, aunt."
"It is not possible!"
"Mathematically!"
"Remain, my little Theodule, I beseech you."
"My heart says `yes,' but my orders say `no.' The matter is simple. They are changing our garrison; we have been at Melun, we are being transferred to Gaillon.
It is necessary to pass through Paris in order to get from the old post to the new one.
I said:
`I am going to see my aunt.'"
"Here is something for your trouble."
And she put ten louis into his hand.
"For my pleasure, you mean to say, my dear aunt."
Theodule kissed her again, and she experienced the joy of having some of the skin scratched from her neck by the braidings on his uniform.
"Are you making the journey on horseback, with your regiment?" she asked him.
"No, aunt.
I wanted to see you.
I have special permission. My servant is taking my horse; I am travelling by diligence. And, by the way, I want to ask you something."
"What is it?"
"Is my cousin Marius Pontmercy travelling so, too?"
"How do you know that?" said his aunt, suddenly pricked to the quick with a lively curiosity.
"On my arrival, I went to the diligence to engage my seat in the coupe."
"Well?"
"A traveller had already come to engage a seat in the imperial. I saw his name on the card."
"What name?"
"Marius Pontmercy."
"The wicked fellow!" exclaimed his aunt.
"Ah! your cousin is not a steady lad like yourself.
To think that he is to pass the night in a diligence!"
"Just as I am going to do."
"But you--it is your duty; in his case, it is wildness."
"Bosh!" said Theodule.
Here an event occurred to Mademoiselle Gillenormand the elder,-- an idea struck her.
If she had been a man, she would have slapped her brow.
She apostrophized Theodule:--
"Are you aware whether your cousin knows you?"
"No. I have seen him; but he has never deigned to notice me."
"So you are going to travel together?"
"He in the imperial, I in the coupe."
"Where does this diligence run?"
"To Andelys."
"Then that is where Marius is going?"
"Unless, like myself, he should stop on the way.
I get down at Vernon, in order to take the branch coach for Gaillon.
I know nothing of Marius' plan of travel."
"Marius! what an ugly name! what possessed them to name him Marius? While you, at least, are called Theodule."
"I would rather be called Alfred," said the officer.
"Listen, Theodule."
"I am listening, aunt."
"Pay attention."
"I am paying attention."
"You understand?"
"Yes."
"Well, Marius absents himself!"
"Eh! eh!"
"He travels."
"Ah! ah!"
"He spends the night out."
"Oh! oh!"
"We should like to know what there is behind all this."
Theodule replied with the composure of a man of bronze:--
"Some petticoat or other."
And with that inward laugh which denotes certainty, he added:--
"A lass."
"That is evident," exclaimed his aunt, who thought she heard M. Gillenormand speaking, and who felt her conviction become irresistible at that word fillette, accentuated in almost the very same fashion by the granduncle and the grandnephew.
She resumed:--
"Do us a favor.
Follow Marius a little.
He does not know you, it will be easy.
Since a lass there is, try to get a sight of her. You must write us the tale.
It will amuse his grandfather."
Theodule had no excessive taste for this sort of spying; but he was much touched by the ten louis, and he thought he saw a chance for a possible sequel.
He accepted the commission and said: "As you please, aunt."
And he added in an aside, to himself:
"Here I am a duenna."
Mademoiselle Gillenormand embraced him.
"You are not the man to play such pranks, Theodule.
You obey discipline, you are the slave of orders, you are a man of scruples and duty, and you would not quit your family to go and see a creature."
The lancer made the pleased grimace of Cartouche when praised for his probity.
Marius, on the evening following this dialogue, mounted the diligence without suspecting that he was watched.
As for the watcher, the first thing he did was to fall asleep.
His slumber was complete and conscientious.
Argus snored all night long.
At daybreak, the conductor of the diligence shouted:
"Vernon! relay of Vernon!
Travellers for Vernon!"
And Lieutenant Theodule woke.
"Good," he growled, still half asleep, "this is where I get out."
Then, as his memory cleared by degrees, the effect of waking, he recalled his aunt, the ten louis, and the account which he had undertaken to render of the deeds and proceedings of Marius. This set him to laughing.
"Perhaps he is no longer in the coach," he thought, as he rebuttoned the waistcoat of his undress uniform.
"He may have stopped at Poissy; he may have stopped at Triel; if he did not get out at Meulan, he may have got out at Mantes, unless he got out at Rolleboise, or if he did not go on as far as Pacy, with the choice of turning to the left at Evreus, or to the right at Laroche-Guyon. Run after him, aunty.
