He sneered at all devotion in all parties, the father as well as the brother, Robespierre junior as well as Loizerolles.
"They are greatly in advance to be dead," he exclaimed.
He said of the crucifix:
"There is a gibbet which has been a success."
A rover, a gambler, a libertine, often drunk, he displeased these young dreamers by humming incessantly: "J'aimons les filles, et j'aimons le bon vin."
Air:
Vive Henri IV.
However, this sceptic had one fanaticism.
This fanaticism was neither a dogma, nor an idea, nor an art, nor a science; it was a man:
Enjolras.
Grantaire admired, loved, and venerated Enjolras. To whom did this anarchical scoffer unite himself in this phalanx of absolute minds?
To the most absolute.
In what manner had Enjolras subjugated him?
By his ideas?
No. By his character. A phenomenon which is often observable.
A sceptic who adheres to a believer is as simple as the law of complementary colors.
That which we lack attracts us.
No one loves the light like the blind man. The dwarf adores the drum-major. The toad always has his eyes fixed on heaven.
Why?
In order to watch the bird in its flight. Grantaire, in whom writhed doubt, loved to watch faith soar in Enjolras. He had need of Enjolras.
That chaste, healthy, firm, upright, hard, candid nature charmed him, without his being clearly aware of it, and without the idea of explaining it to himself having occurred to him.
He admired his opposite by instinct.
His soft, yielding, dislocated, sickly, shapeless ideas attached themselves to Enjolras as to a spinal column.
His moral backbone leaned on that firmness. Grantaire in the presence of Enjolras became some one once more. He was, himself, moreover, composed of two elements, which were, to all appearance, incompatible.
He was ironical and cordial. His indifference loved.
His mind could get along without belief, but his heart could not get along without friendship. A profound contradiction; for an affection is a conviction. His nature was thus constituted.
There are men who seem to be born to be the reverse, the obverse, the wrong side.
They are Pollux, Patrocles, Nisus, Eudamidas, Ephestion, Pechmeja.
They only exist on condition that they are backed up with another man; their name is a sequel, and is only written preceded by the conjunction and; and their existence is not their own; it is the other side of an existence which is not theirs.
Grantaire was one of these men. He was the obverse of Enjolras.
One might almost say that affinities begin with the letters of the alphabet.
In the series O and P are inseparable.
You can, at will, pronounce O and P or Orestes and Pylades.
Grantaire, Enjolras' true satellite, inhabited this circle of young men; he lived there, he took no pleasure anywhere but there; he followed them everywhere.
His joy was to see these forms go and come through the fumes of wine.
They tolerated him on account of his good humor.
Enjolras, the believer, disdained this sceptic; and, a sober man himself, scorned this drunkard.
He accorded him a little lofty pity.
Grantaire was an unaccepted Pylades.
Always harshly treated by Enjolras, roughly repulsed, rejected yet ever returning to the charge, he said of Enjolras:
"What fine marble!"
BOOK FOURTH.--THE FRIENDS OF THE A B C
CHAPTER II
BLONDEAU'S FUNERAL ORATION BY BOSSUET
On a certain afternoon, which had, as will be seen hereafter, some coincidence with the events heretofore related, Laigle de Meaux was to be seen leaning in a sensual manner against the doorpost of the Cafe Musain.
He had the air of a caryatid on a vacation; he carried nothing but his revery, however.
He was staring at the Place Saint-Michel. To lean one's back against a thing is equivalent to lying down while standing erect, which attitude is not hated by thinkers.
Laigle de Meaux was pondering without melancholy, over a little misadventure which had befallen him two days previously at the law-school, and which had modified his personal plans for the future, plans which were rather indistinct in any case.
Revery does not prevent a cab from passing by, nor the dreamer from taking note of that cab.
Laigle de Meaux, whose eyes were straying about in a sort of diffuse lounging, perceived, athwart his somnambulism, a two-wheeled vehicle proceeding through the place, at a foot pace and apparently in indecision. For whom was this cabriolet?
Why was it driving at a walk? Laigle took a survey.
In it, beside the coachman, sat a young man, and in front of the young man lay a rather bulky hand-bag. The bag displayed to passers-by the following name inscribed in large black letters on a card which was sewn to the stuff:
MARIUS PONTMERCY.
This name caused Laigle to change his attitude.
He drew himself up and hurled this apostrophe at the young man in the cabriolet:--
"Monsieur Marius Pontmercy!"
The cabriolet thus addressed came to a halt.
The young man, who also seemed deeply buried in thought, raised his eyes:--
"Hey?" said he.
"You are M. Marius Pontmercy?"
"Certainly."
"I was looking for you," resumed Laigle de Meaux.
"How so?" demanded Marius; for it was he:
in fact, he had just quitted his grandfather's, and had before him a face which he now beheld for the first time.
"I do not know you."
"Neither do I know you," responded Laigle.
Marius thought he had encountered a wag, the beginning of a mystification in the open street.
He was not in a very good humor at the moment. He frowned.
Laigle de Meaux went on imperturbably:--
"You were not at the school day before yesterday."
"That is possible."
"That is certain."
"You are a student?" demanded Marius.
"Yes, sir.
Like yourself.
Day before yesterday, I entered the school, by chance.
You know, one does have such freaks sometimes. The professor was just calling the roll.
You are not unaware that they are very ridiculous on such occasions.
At the third call, unanswered, your name is erased from the list.
Sixty francs in the gulf."
Marius began to listen.
"It was Blondeau who was making the call.
You know Blondeau, he has a very pointed and very malicious nose, and he delights to scent out the absent.
He slyly began with the letter P. I was not listening, not being compromised by that letter.
The call was not going badly. No erasures; the universe was present.
Blondeau was grieved. I said to myself:
`Blondeau, my love, you will not get the very smallest sort of an execution to-day.' All at once Blondeau calls, `Marius Pontmercy!'
No one answers.
Blondeau, filled with hope, repeats more loudly:
`Marius Pontmercy!'
And he takes his pen. Monsieur, I have bowels of compassion.
I said to myself hastily: `Here's a brave fellow who is going to get scratched out.
Attention. Here is a veritable mortal who is not exact.
He's not a good student. Here is none of your heavy-sides, a student who studies, a greenhorn pedant, strong on letters, theology, science, and sapience, one of those dull wits cut by the square; a pin by profession. He is an honorable idler who lounges, who practises country jaunts, who cultivates the grisette, who pays court to the fair sex, who is at this very moment, perhaps, with my mistress.
Let us save him.
Death to Blondeau!'
At that moment, Blondeau dipped his pen in, all black with erasures in the ink, cast his yellow eyes round the audience room, and repeated for the third time: `Marius Pontmercy!'
I replied:
`Present!' This is why you were not crossed off."
"Monsieur!--" said Marius.
"And why I was," added Laigle de Meaux.
"I do not understand you," said Marius.
Laigle resumed:--
"Nothing is more simple.
I was close to the desk to reply, and close to the door for the purpose of flight.
The professor gazed at me with a certain intensity.
All of a sudden, Blondeau, who must be the malicious nose alluded to by Boileau, skipped to the letter L. L is my letter.
I am from Meaux, and my name is Lesgle."
"L'Aigle!" interrupted Marius, "what fine name!"
"Monsieur, Blondeau came to this fine name, and called: `Laigle!' I reply:
`Present!' Then Blondeau gazes at me, with the gentleness of a tiger, and says to me:
`lf you are Pontmercy, you are not Laigle.'
A phrase which has a disobliging air for you, but which was lugubrious only for me.
That said, he crossed me off."
Marius exclaimed:--
"I am mortified, sir--"
"First of all," interposed Laigle, "I demand permission to embalm Blondeau in a few phrases of deeply felt eulogium.
I will assume that he is dead.
There will be no great change required in his gauntness, in his pallor, in his coldness, and in his smell. And I say:
`Erudimini qui judicatis terram.
Here lies Blondeau, Blondeau the Nose, Blondeau Nasica, the ox of discipline, bos disciplinae, the bloodhound of the password, the angel of the roll-call, who was upright, square exact, rigid, honest, and hideous. God crossed him off as he crossed me off.'"
Marius resumed:--
"I am very sorry--"
"Young man," said Laigle de Meaux, "let this serve you as a lesson. In future, be exact."
"I really beg you a thousand pardons."
"Do not expose your neighbor to the danger of having his name erased again."
"I am extremely sorry--"
Laigle burst out laughing.
"And I am delighted.
I was on the brink of becoming a lawyer. This erasure saves me.
I renounce the triumphs of the bar. I shall not defend the widow, and I shall not attack the orphan. No more toga, no more stage.
Here is my erasure all ready for me. It is to you that I am indebted for it, Monsieur Pontmercy. I intend to pay a solemn call of thanks upon you.
Where do you live?"
"In this cab," said Marius.
"A sign of opulence," retorted Laigle calmly.
"I congratulate you. You have there a rent of nine thousand francs per annum."
At that moment, Courfeyrac emerged from the cafe.
Marius smiled sadly.
"I have paid this rent for the last two hours, and I aspire to get rid of it; but there is a sort of history attached to it, and I don't know where to go."
"Come to my place, sir," said Courfeyrac.
"I have the priority," observed Laigle, "but I have no home."
"Hold your tongue, Bossuet," said Courfeyrac.
"Bossuet," said Marius, "but I thought that your name was Laigle."
"De Meaux," replied Laigle; "by metaphor, Bossuet."
Courfeyrac entered the cab.
"Coachman," said he, "hotel de la Porte-Saint-Jacques."
And that very evening, Marius found himself installed in a chamber of the hotel de la Porte-Saint-Jacques side by side with Courfeyrac.
BOOK FOURTH.--THE FRIENDS OF THE A B C
CHAPTER III
MARIUS' ASTONISHMENTS
In a few days, Marius had become Courfeyrac's friend.
Youth is the season for prompt welding and the rapid healing of scars. Marius breathed freely in Courfeyrac's society, a decidedly new thing for him.
Courfeyrac put no questions to him.
He did not even think of such a thing.
At that age, faces disclose everything on the spot.
Words are superfluous.
There are young men of whom it can be said that their countenances chatter.
One looks at them and one knows them.
One morning, however, Courfeyrac abruptly addressed this interrogation to him:--
"By the way, have you any political opinions?"
"The idea!" said Marius, almost affronted by the question.
"What are you?"
"A democrat-Bonapartist."
"The gray hue of a reassured rat," said Courfeyrac.
On the following day, Courfeyrac introduced Marius at the Cafe Musain. Then he whispered in his ear, with a smile:
"I must give you your entry to the revolution."
And he led him to the hall of the Friends of the A B C. He presented him to the other comrades, saying this simple word which Marius did not understand:
"A pupil."
Marius had fallen into a wasps'-nest of wits.
However, although he was silent and grave, he was, none the less, both winged and armed.
Marius, up to that time solitary and inclined to soliloquy, and to asides, both by habit and by taste, was a little fluttered by this covey of young men around him.
All these various initiatives solicited his attention at once, and pulled him about. The tumultuous movements of these minds at liberty and at work set his ideas in a whirl.
Sometimes, in his trouble, they fled so far from him, that he had difficulty in recovering them. He heard them talk of philosophy, of literature, of art, of history, of religion, in unexpected fashion.
He caught glimpses of strange aspects; and, as he did not place them in proper perspective, he was not altogether sure that it was not chaos that he grasped. On abandoning his grandfather's opinions for the opinions of his father, he had supposed himself fixed; he now suspected, with uneasiness, and without daring to avow it to himself, that he was not. The angle at which he saw everything began to be displaced anew. A certain oscillation set all the horizons of his brains in motion. An odd internal upsetting.
He almost suffered from it.
It seemed as though there were no "consecrated things" for those young men.
Marius heard singular propositions on every sort of subject, which embarrassed his still timid mind.
A theatre poster presented itself, adorned with the title of a tragedy from the ancient repertory called classic:
"Down with tragedy dear to the bourgeois!" cried Bahorel.
And Marius heard Combeferre reply:--
"You are wrong, Bahorel.
The bourgeoisie loves tragedy, and the bourgeoisie must be left at peace on that score. Bewigged tragedy has a reason for its existence, and I am not one of those who, by order of AEschylus, contest its right to existence. There are rough outlines in nature; there are, in creation, ready-made parodies; a beak which is not a beak, wings which are not wings, gills which are not gills, paws which are not paws, a cry of pain which arouses a desire to laugh, there is the duck. Now, since poultry exists by the side of the bird, I do not see why classic tragedy should not exist in the face of antique tragedy."
