THE FRIENDS OF THE A. B. C.
[CHAPTER I.]
A GROUP THAT NEARLY BECAME HISTORICAL.
At this epoch, which was apparently careless, a certain revolutionary quivering was vaguely felt. There were breezes in the air which returned from the depths of '89 and '92; and the young men, if we may be forgiven the expression, were in the moulting stage. Men became transformed, almost without suspecting it, by the mere movement of time, for the hand which moves round the clock-face also moves in the mind. Each took the forward step he had to take; the Royalists became liberals, and the Liberals democrats. It was like a rising tide complicated by a thousand ebbs, and it is the peculiarity of ebbs to cause things to mingle. Hence came very singular combinations of ideas, and men adored liberty and Napoleon at the same time. We are writing history here, and such were the mirages of that period. Opinions pass through phases, and Voltairian royalism, a strange variety, had a no less strange pendant in Bonapartist liberalism.
Other groups of minds were more serious; at one spot principles were sounded, and at another men clung to their rights. They became impassioned for the absolute, and obtained glimpses of infinite realizations; for the absolute, through its very rigidity, causes minds to float in the illimitable ether. There is nothing like the dogma to originate a dream, and nothing like a dream to engender the future; the Utopia of to-day is flesh and bone to-morrow. Advanced opinions had a false bottom, and a commencement of mystery threatened "established order," which was suspicious and cunning. This is a most revolutionary sign. The after-thought of the authorities meets in the sap the after-thought of the people, and the incubation of revolutions is the reply to the premeditation of Coups d'État. There were not as yet in France any of those vast subjacent organizations, like the Tugenbund of Germany or the Carbonari of Italy; but here and there were dark subterranean passages with extensive ramifications. The Cougourde was started at Aix; and there was at Paris, among other affiliations of this nature, the society of the Friends of the A. B. C.
Who were the Friends of the A. B. C.? A society whose ostensible object was the education of children, but the real one the elevation of men. They called themselves friends of the A. B. C.; the Abaissé was the nation, and they wished to raise it. It would be wrong to laugh at this pun, for puns at times are serious in politics; witnesses of this are the Castratus ad castra, which made Narses general of an army; the Barbari and Barberini; fueros fuegos; tu es Petrus et super hanc Petram, etc., etc. The Friends of the A. B. C. were few in number; it was a secret society, in a state of embryo, and we might almost call it a coterie, if coteries produced heroes. They assembled at two places in Paris,—at a cabaret called Corinthe near the Halles, to which we shall revert hereafter; and near the Panthéon, in a small café on the Place St. Michel, known as the Café Musain, and now demolished: the first of these meeting-places was contiguous to the workmen, and the second to the students. The ordinary discussions of the Friends of the A. B. C. were held in a back room of the Café Musain. This room, some distance from the coffee-room, with which it communicated by a very long passage, had two windows and an issue by a secret staircase into the little Rue des Grés. They smoked, drank, played, and laughed there; they spoke very loudly about everything, and in a whisper about the other thing. On the wall hung an old map of France under the Republic, which would have been a sufficient hint for a police-agent.
Most of the Friends of the A. B. C. were students, who maintained a cordial understanding with a few workmen. Here are the names of the principal members, which belong in a certain measure to history,—Enjolras, Combeferre, Jean Prouvaire, Feuilly, Courfeyrac, Bahorel, Lesgle or Laigle, Joly, and Grantaire. These young men formed a species of family through their friendship, and all came from the South, excepting Laigle. This group is remarkable, although it has vanished in the invisible depths which are behind us. At the point of this drama which we have now attained, it will not be labor lost, perhaps, to throw a ray of light upon these heads, before the reader watches them enter the shadows of a tragical adventure.
Enjolras, whom we named first, it will be seen afterwards why, was an only son, and rich. He was a charming young man, capable of becoming terrible; he was angelically beautiful, and looked like a stern Antinous. On noticing the pensive depth of his glance you might have fancied that he had gone through the revolutionary apocalypse in some preceding existence. He knew the traditions of it like an eye-witness, and was acquainted with all the minor details of the great thing. His was a pontifical and warlike nature, strange in a young man; he was a churchman and a militant; from the immediate point of view a soldier of democracy, but, above the contemporary movement, a priest of the ideal. He had a slightly red eyelid, a thick and easily disdainful lower lip, and a lofty forehead; a good deal of forehead on a face is like a good deal of sky in an horizon. Like certain young men of the beginning of the present century and the end of the last, who became illustrious at an early age, he looked excessively young, and was as fresh as a school-girl, though he had his hours of pallor. Although a man, he seemed still a boy, and his two-and-twenty years looked like only seventeen; he was serious, and did not appear to know that there was on the earth a being called woman. He had only one passion, justice, and only one thought, overthrowing the obstacle. On the Mons Aventinus, he would have been Gracchus; in the Convention, he would have been St. Just. He scarcely noticed roses, was ignorant of spring, and did not hear the birds sing; the bare throat of Evadne would have affected him as little as it did Aristogiton; to him, as to Harmodius, flowers were only good to conceal the sword. He was severe in his pleasures, and before all that was not the Republic he chastely lowered his eyes; he was the marble lover of liberty. His language had a sharp inspiration and a species of rhythmic strain. Woe to the love which risked itself in his direction! If any grisette of the Place Cambray or the Rue St. Jean de Beauvais, seeing this figure just escaped from college, with a neck like that of a page, long light lashes, blue eyes, hair floating wildly in the breeze, pink cheeks, cherry lips, and exquisite teeth, had felt a longing for all this dawn, and tried the effect of her charms upon Enjolras, a formidable look of surprise would have suddenly shown her the abyss, and taught her not to confound the avenging cherub of Ezekiel with the gallant cherub of Beaumarchais.
By the side of Enjolras, who represented the logic of the Revolution, Combeferre represented its philosophy. Between the logic and the philosophy of revolutions there is this difference, that the logic may conclude in war, while its philosophy can only lead to peace. Combeferre completed and rectified Enjolras; he was not so tall, but broader. He wished that the extended principles of general ideas should be poured over minds, and said, "Revolution but civilization!" and he opened the vast blue horizon around the peaked mountain. Hence there was something accessible and practicable in all Combeferre's views; and the Revolution with him was fitter to breathe than with Enjolras. Enjolras expressed its divine right and Combeferre its natural right; and while the former clung to Robespierre, the latter bordered upon Condorcet. Combeferre loved more than Enjolras the ordinary life of mankind; and if these two young men had gained a place in history, the one would have been the just man, the other the sage. Enjolras was more manly, Combeferre more humane, and the distinction between them was that between homo and vir. Combeferre was gentle as Enjolras was stern, through natural whiteness; he loved the word citizen, but preferred man, and would willingly have said Hombre, like the Spaniards. He read everything, went to the theatres, attended the public lectures, learned from Arago the polarization of light, and grew quite excited about a lecture in which Geoffroy St. Hilaire explained the double functions of the external and internal carotid arteries, the one which makes the face, and the other which produces the brain; he was conversant with, and followed, science step by step, confronted St. Simon with Fourier, deciphered hieroglyphics, broke pebbles which he found, drew from memory a bombyx butterfly, pointed out the errors in French in the Dictionary of the Academy, studied Puységur and Deleuze, affirmed nothing, not even miracles, denied nothing, not even ghosts, turned over the file of the Moniteur and reflected. He declared that the future is in the hand of the schoolmaster, and busied himself with educational questions. He wished that society should labor without relaxation at the elevation of the intellectual and moral standard, at coining science, bringing ideas into circulation, and making the minds of youth grow; and he feared that the present poverty of methods, the wretchedness from the literary point of view of confining studies to two or three centuries called classical, the tyrannical dogmatism of official pedants, scholastic prejudices, and routine would in the end convert our colleges into artificial oyster-beds. He was learned, a purist, polite, and polytechnic, a delver, and at the time pensive, "even to a chimera," as his friends said. He believed in all dreams,—railways, the suppression of suffering in surgical operations, fixing the image of the camera obscura, electric telegraphy, and the steering of balloons. He was but slightly terrified by the citadels built on all sides against the human race by superstitions, despotisms, and prejudices; for he was one of those men who think that science will in the end turn the position. Enjolras was a chief, and Combeferre a guide; you would have liked to fight under one and march with the other. Not that Combeferre was incapable of fighting, he did not refuse to seize obstacles round the waist and attack them by main force; but it pleased him better to bring the human race into harmony with its destiny gradually, by the instruction of axioms and the promulgation of positive laws; and with a choice between two lights, his inclination was for illumination rather than fire. A fire may certainly produce a dawn, but why not wait for daybreak? A volcano illumines, but the sun does so far better. Combeferre perhaps preferred the whiteness of the beautiful to the flashing of the sublime; and a brightness clouded by smoke, a progress purchased by violence, only half satisfied his tender and serious mind. A headlong hurling of a people into the truth, a '93, startled him; still, stagnation was more repulsive to him, for he smelt in it putrefaction and death. Altogether he liked foam better than miasma, and preferred the torrent to the sewer, and the Falls of Niagara to the Lake of Montfauçon. In a word, he desired neither halt nor haste; and while his tumultuous friends, who were chivalrously attracted by the absolute, adored and summoned the splendid revolutionary adventurer, Combeferre inclined to leave progress, right progress, to act: it might be cold but it was pure, methodical but irreproachable, and phlegmatic but imperturbable. Combeferre would have knelt down and prayed that this future might arrive with all its candor, and that nothing might disturb the immense virtuous evolution of the peoples. "The good must be innocent," he repeated incessantly. And in truth, if the grandeur of the revolution is to look fixedly at the dazzling ideal, and fly toward it through the lightning, with blood and fire in the claws, the beauty of progress is to be unspotted; and there is between Washington, who represents the one, and Danton, who is the incarnation of the other, the same difference as that which separates the angel with the swan's wings from the angel with the eagle's wings.
Jean Prouvaire was of an even softer tinge than Combeferre; he was called "Jehan," through that little momentary fantasy which was blended with the powerful and profound movement from which issued the study of the Middle Ages, so essential. Jean Prouvaire was in love, cultivated a pot of flowers, played the flute, wrote verses, loved the people, pitied women, wept over children, confounded in the same confidence the future and God, and blamed the Revolution for having caused a royal head to fall, that of André Chénier. He had a voice which was habitually delicate, and suddenly became masculine; he was erudite, and almost an Orientalist. He was good before all, and through a motive which those will easily understand who know how closely goodness borders on grandeur,—he loved immensity in poetry. He knew Italian, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and he employed his knowledge to read only four poets,—Dante, Juvenal, Æschylus, and Isaiah. In French he preferred Corneille to Racine, and Agrippa d'Aubigné to Corneille. He was fond of strolling about the fields of wild oats and corn-flowers, and occupied himself with clouds almost as much as with events. His mind had two attitudes,—one turned to man, the other to God; he either studied or contemplated. The whole day long he studied social questions,—wages, capital, credit, marriage, religion, liberty of thought, liberty of love, education, the penal code, wretchedness, partnership, property, production, and division, that enigma of the lower world which casts a shadow over the human ant-heap, and at night he looked at the stars, those enormous beings. Like Enjolras, he was rich, and an only son; he talked softly, hung his head, looked down, smiled with an embarrassed air, dressed badly, had an awkward gait, blushed at a nothing, and was very timid; with all that he was intrepid.
Feuilly was a journeyman fan-maker, doubly an orphan, who laboriously earned three francs a day, and had only one idea,—to deliver the world. He had another preoccupation as well, instructing himself, which he called self-deliverance. He had taught himself to read and write, and all that he knew he had learned alone. Feuilly had a generous heart, and hugged the world. This orphan had adopted the peoples, and as he had no mother, he meditated on his country. He had wished that there should not be in the world a man who had no country, and he brooded over what we now call the "idea of nationalities" with the profound divination of the man of the people. He had studied history expressly that he might be indignant with a knowledge of the fact, and in this youthful assembly of Utopians who were specially interested about France, he represented the foreign element. His specialty was Greece, Poland, Roumania, Hungary, and Italy; he pronounced these names incessantly, in season and out of season, with the tenacity of right. The violations committed by Turkey on Greece and Thessaly, of Russia on Warsaw, and Austria on Venice, exasperated him, and above all the great highway robbery of 1772 aroused him. There can be no more sovereign eloquence than truth in indignation; and he was eloquent with that eloquence. He never left off talking about the infamous date 1772, the noble and valiant people suppressed by treachery, this crime committed by three accomplices, and the monstrous ambush, which is the prototype and pattern of all those frightful suppressions of states, which have since struck several nations, and have, so to speak, erased their name from the baptismal register. All the social assaults of the present day emanate from the division of Poland, and it is a theorem to which all our political crimes are corollaries. There is not a despot or a traitor who for a century past has not revised, confirmed, countersigned, and margined with the words ne varietur, the division of Poland. When we consult the list of modern treasons this appears the first, and the Congress of Vienna consulted this crime ere it consummated its own; 1772 sounds the view-halloo, and 1815 witnesses the quarry of the stag. Such was Feuilly's usual text. This poor workman had made himself the guardian of Justice, and she rewarded him by making him grand. In truth, there is an eternity in justice, and Warsaw can no more be Tartar than Venice can be Teutonic. Kings lose their time and their honor over such things. Sooner or later the submerged country floats on the surface and reappears. Greece becomes Greece once more, and Italy, Italy. The protest of right against deeds persists forever, and there is no law of limitations for the robbery of a nation. Such superior swindles have no future, and the mark cannot be taken out of a nation like a handkerchief.
Courfeyrac had a father who was known as M. de Courfeyrac. One of the incorrect ideas of the bourgeoisie of the Restoration in the matter of the aristocracy and the nobility was a belief in the particle. The particle, as we know, has no meaning but the bourgeois of the time of the Minerve esteemed this poor de so highly that persons thought themselves obliged to abdicate it. M. de Chauvelin called himself M. Chauvelin; M. de Caumartin, M. Caumartin; M. de Constant de Rebecque, Benjamin Constant, and M. de Lafayette, M. Lafayette. Courfeyrac was unwilling to remain behindhand, and called himself Courfeyrac quite short. As concerns this gentleman, we might almost stop here and content ourselves with saying as to the rest, in Courfeyrac you see Tholomyès; Courfeyrac, in fact, had those sallies of youth which might be called a mental beauté du diable. At a later date this expires like the prettiness of the kitten; and all this grace produces, upon two feet the bourgeois, and on four paws the tom-cat.
The generations which pass through the schools, and the successive levies of youth, transmit this species of wit from one to the other, and pass it from hand to hand, quasi cursores, nearly always the same; so that, as we have said, the first comer who had listened to Courfeyrac in 1828 might have fancied he was hearing Tholomyès in 1817. The only thing was that Courfeyrac was an honest fellow, and beneath an apparent external similitude, the difference between Tholomyès and himself was great, and the latent man who existed within them was quite different in the former from what it was in the latter. In Tholomyès there was an attorney, and in Courfeyrac a Paladin; Enjolras was the chief, Combeferre the guide, and Courfeyrac the centre. The others gave more light, but he produced more heat; and he had in truth all the qualities of a centre, in the shape of roundness and radiation.
Bahorel had been mixed up in the sanguinary tumult of June, 1822, on the occasion of the burial of young Lallemand. Bahorel was a being of good temper and bad company, brave and a spendthrift, prodigal and generous, chattering and eloquent, bold and insolent, and the very best clay for the devils moulding imaginable. He displayed daring waistcoats and scarlet opinions; he was a turbulent on a grand scale, that is to say, that he liked nothing so much as a quarrel unless it were an émeute, and nothing so much as an émeute except a revolution. He was ever ready to break a pane of glass, tear up the paving-stones, and demolish a government, in order to see the effect; he was a student in his eleventh year. He sniffed at the law, but did not practise it, and he had taken as his motto, "Never a lawyer," and as his coat of arms a night-table surmounted by a square cap. Whenever he passed in front of the law-school, which rarely happened to him, he buttoned up his frock-coat and took hygienic precautions. He said of the school gate, "What a fierce old man!" and of the Dean M. Devincourt, "What a monument!" He found in his lectures a subject for coarse songs, and in his professors an occasion for laughter. He spent in doing nothing a very considerable allowance, something like three thousand francs. His parents were peasants in whom he had inculcated a respect for their son. He used to say of them, "They are peasants, and not towns-people, that is why they are so intelligent." Bahorel, as a capricious man, visited several cafés; and while the others had habits he had none. He strolled about: to err is human, to stroll is Parisian. Altogether, he had a penetrating mind, and thought more than people fancied. He served as the connecting link between the Friends of the A. B. C. and other groups which were still unformed, but which were to be constituted at a later date.
There was in this assembly of young men a bald-headed member. The Marquis d'Avaray, whom Louis XVIII. made a duke because he helped him to get into a hired cab on the day when he emigrated, used to tell how, when the King landed in 1814 at Calais upon his return to France, a man handed him a petition.
"What do you want?" the King said.
"A postmastership, Sire."
"What is your name?"
"L'Aigle."
The King frowned, but looked at the signature of the petition, and read the name thus written, LESGLE. This, anything but Bonapartist orthography, touched the King, and he began smiling. "Sire," the man with the petition went on, "my ancestor was a whipper-in of the name of Lesgueules, and my name came from that. I called myself Lesgueules, by contraction Lesgle, and by corruption L'Aigle." This remark caused the King to smile still more, and at a later date he gave the man the post-office at Meaux, purposely or through a mistake. The bald Mentor of the group was son of this Lesgle or Legle, and signed himself Legle (of Meaux.) His comrades, to shorten this, called him Bossuet.
Bossuet was a merry fellow, who was unlucky, and his specialty was to succeed in nothing. Per contra, he laughed at everything. At the age of five-and-twenty he was bald; his father left him a house and a field; but the son knew nothing so pressing as to lose them both in a swindling speculation, and nothing was left him. He had learning and sense, but miscarried; he failed in everything, and everything cozened him; whatever he built up broke down under him. If he chopped wood, he cut his fingers; and if he had a mistress, he speedily discovered that she had also a friend. At every moment some misfortune happened to him, and hence came his joviality; and he used to say, "I live under the roof of falling tiles." Feeling but slight astonishment, for every accident was foreseen by him, he accepted ill-luck serenely, and smiled at the pin-pricks of destiny like a man who is listening to a good joke. He was poor, but his wallet of good-temper was inexhaustible; he speedily reached his last halfpenny, but never his last laugh. When adversity entered his room he bowed to his old acquaintance cordially; he tickled catastrophes in the ribs, and was so familiar with fatality as to call it by a nickname.
These persecutions of fate had rendered him inventive, and he was full of resources. He had no money, but contrived to make "an unbridled outlay" whenever he thought proper. One night he went so far as to devour a hundred francs in a supper with a girl, which inspired him in the middle of the orgie with the memorable remark, "Fille de cinq Louis (Saint Louis), pull off my boots." Bossuet was advancing slowly to the legal profession, and studied law much after the fashion of Bahorel. Bossuet had but little domicile, at times none at all, and he lived first with one and then with the other, but most frequently with Joly.
Joly was a student of medicine, of two years' younger standing than Bossuet, and was the young imaginary sick man. What he had gained by his medical studies was to be more a patient than a doctor, for at the age of twenty-three he fancied himself a valetudinarian, and spent his life in looking at his tongue in a mirror. He declared that a man becomes magnetized like a needle, and in his room he placed his bed with the head to the south and the feet to the north, so that at night the circulation of his blood might not be impeded by the great magnetic current of the globe. In storms he felt his pulse, but for all that was the gayest of all. All these incoherences, youth, mania, dyspepsia, and fun, lived comfortably together, and the result was an eccentric and agreeable being, whom his comrades, lavish of liquid consonants, called Jolllly. Joly was accustomed to touch his nose with the end of his cane, which is the sign of a sagacious mind.
All these young men, who differed so greatly, and of whom, after all, we must speak seriously, had the same religion,—Progress. They were all the direct sons of the French Revolution, and the lightest among them became serious when pronouncing the date of '89. Their fathers in the flesh were, or had been, feuilleants, royalists, or doctrinaires, but that was of little consequence; this pell-mell, anterior to themselves, who were young, did not concern them, and the pure blood of principles flowed in their veins; they attached themselves, without any intermediate tinge, to incorruptible right and absolute duty. Confederates and initiated, they secretly sketched the ideal.
Amid all these impassioned hearts and convinced minds there was a sceptic. How did he get there? Through juxtaposition. The name of this sceptic was Grantaire, and he usually wrote it after the manner of a rebus: R—(Grand R., i. e. Grantaire). Grantaire was a man who carefully avoided believing in anything; he was, however, one of these students who had learned the most during a Parisian residence. He knew that the best coffee was at Lemblier's, and the best billiard-table at the Café Voltaire; that excellent cakes and agreeable girls could be found at the Hermitage on the Boulevard du Maine, spatch-cocks at Mother Saquet's, excellent matelottes at the Barrière de la Cunette, and a peculiar white wine at the Barrière du Combat. Besides all this, he was a mighty drinker. He was abominably ugly, and Irma Boissy, the prettiest boot-stitcher of that day, in her indignation at his ugliness, passed the verdict,—"Grantaire is impossible." But Grantaire's fatuity was not disconcerted by this. He looked tenderly and fixedly at every woman, and assumed an expression of "If I only liked!" and he tried to make his companions believe that he was in general request with the sex.
All such words as rights of the people, rights of man, the social contract, the French Revolution, republic, democracy, humanity, civilization, progress, had as good as no meaning with Grantaire, and he smiled at them. Scepticism, that curse of the intellect, had not left him one whole idea in his mind. He lived in irony, and his axiom was, "There is only one thing certain, my full glass." He ridiculed every act of devotion in every party,—the brother as much as the father, young Robespierre as heartily as Loizerolles. "They made great progress by dying," he would exclaim; and would say of the crucifix, "There is a gallows which was successful." Idler, gambler, libertine, and often intoxicated, he annoyed these young democrats by incessantly singing, "J'aimons les filles et j'aimons le bon vin" to the tune of "Long live Henri IV."
This sceptic, however, had a fanaticism; it was neither an idea, a dogma, an act, nor a sense: it was a man,—Enjolras. Grantaire admired, loved, and revered Enjolras. Whom did this anarchical doubter cling to in this phalanx of absolute minds? To the most absolute. In what way did Enjolras subjugate him,—by ideas? No, but by character. This is a frequently-observed phenomenon, and a sceptic who clings to a believer is as simple as the law of complementary colors. What we do not possess attracts us; no one loves daylight like the blind man; the dwarf adores the drum-major, and the frog has its eyes constantly fixed on heaven to see the bird fly. Grantaire, in whom doubt grovelled, liked to see faith soaring in Enjolras, and he felt the want of him, without clearly understanding it, or even dreaming of explaining the fact to himself. This chaste, healthy, firm, upright, harsh, and candid nature charmed him, and he instinctively admired his opposite. His soft, yielding, dislocated, sickly, and shapeless ideas attached themselves to Enjolras as to a spinal column, and his mental vertebra supported itself by this firmness. Grantaire, by the side of Enjolras, became somebody again; and he was, moreover, himself composed of two apparently irreconcilable elements,—he was ironical and cordial. His mind could do without belief, but his heart could not do without friendship. This is a profound contradiction, for an affection is a conviction; but his nature was so. There are some men apparently born to be the reverse of the coin, and their names are Pollux, Patroclus, Nisus, Eudamidas, Ephestion, and Pechmeja. They only live on the condition of being backed by another man; their name is a continuation, and is never written except preceded by the conjunction and; their existence is not their own, but is the other side of a destiny which is not theirs. Grantaire was one of these men.
We might almost say that affinities commence with the letters of the alphabet, and in the series, O and P are almost inseparable. You may, as you please, say O and P, or Orestes and Pylades. Grantaire, a true satellite of Enjolras, dwelt in this circle of young men; he lived there, he solely enjoyed himself there, and he followed them everywhere. His delight was to see their shadows coming and going through the fumes of wine, and he was tolerated for his pleasant humor. Enjolras, as a believer, disdained this sceptic, and as a sober man loathed this drunkard, but he granted him a little haughty pity. Grantaire was an unaccepted Pylades: constantly repulsed by Enjolras, harshly rejected, and yet returning, he used to say of him, "What a splendid statue!"
[CHAPTER II.]
BOSSUET'S FUNERAL ORATION ON BLONDEAU.
On a certain afternoon, which, as we shall see, has some coincidence with the events recorded above, Laigle de Meaux was sensually leaning against the door-post of the Café Musain. He looked like a caryatid out for a holiday, and having nothing to carry but his reverie. Leaning on one's shoulder is a mode of lying down upright which is not disliked by dreamers. Laigle de Meaux was thinking, without melancholy, of a slight misadventure which had occurred to him on the previous day but one at the Law-school, and modified his personal plans for the future, which, as it was, were somewhat indistinct.
Reverie does not prevent a cabriolet from passing, or a dreamer from noticing the cabriolet. Laigle, whose eyes were absently wandering, saw through this somnambulism a two-wheeled vehicle moving across the Place St. Michel at a foot-pace and apparently undecided. What did this cab want? Why was it going so slowly? Laigle looked at it, and saw inside a young man seated by the side of the driver, and in front of the young man a carpet-bag. The bag displayed to passers-by this name, written in large black letters on the card sewn to the cloth, MARIUS PONTMERCY. This name made Laigle change his attitude: he drew himself up, and shouted to the young man in the cab, "M. Marius Pontmercy!"
The cab stopped, on being thus hailed, and the young man, who also appeared to be thinking deeply, raised his eyes.
"Hilloh!" he said.
"Are you M. Pontmercy?"
"Yes."
"I was looking for you," Laigle of Meaux continued.
"How so?" asked Marius, for it was really he, who had just left his grandfather's and had before him a face which he saw for the first time. "I do not know you."
"And I don't know you either."
Marius fancied that he had to do with a practical joker, and, as he was not in the best of tempers at the moment, frowned. Laigle imperturbably continued,—
"You were not at lecture the day before yesterday!"
"Very possibly."
"It is certain."
"Are you a student?" Marius asked.
"Yes, sir, like yourself. The day before yesterday I entered the Law-school by chance; as you know, a man has an idea like that sometimes. The Professor was engaged in calling over the names, and you are aware how ridiculously strict they are in the school at the present moment. Upon the third call remaining unanswered, your name is erased from the list, and sixty francs are gone."
Marius began to listen, and Laigle continued,—
"It was Blondeau who was calling over. You know Blondeau has a pointed and most malicious nose, and scents the absent with delight. He craftily began with the letter P, and I did not listen, because I was not compromised by that letter. The roll-call went on capitally, there was no erasure, and the universe was present. Blondeau was sad, and I said to myself aside, 'Blondeau, my love, you will not perform the slightest execution to-day,' All at once Blondeau calls out, 'Marius Pontmercy!' No one answered, and so Blondeau, full of hope, repeats in a louder voice,'Marius Pontmercy!' and takes up his pen. I have bowels, sir, and said to myself hurriedly, 'The name of a good fellow is going to be erased. Attention! he is not a proper student, a student who studies, a reading man, a pedantic sap, strong in science, literature, theology, and philosophy. No, he is an honorable idler, who lounges about, enjoys the country, cultivates the grisette, pays his court to the ladies, and is perhaps with my mistress at this moment. I must save him: death to Blondeau!' At this moment Blondeau dipped his pen, black with erasures, into the ink, looked round his audience, and repeated for the third time, 'Marius Pontmercy!' I answered,'Here!' and so your name was not erased."
"Sir!" Marius exclaimed.
"And mine was," Laigle of Meaux added.
"I do not understand you," said Marius.
Laigle continued,—
"And yet it was very simple. I was near the desk to answer, and near the door to bolt. The Professor looked at me with a certain fixedness, and suddenly Blondeau, who must be the crafty nose to which Boileau refers, leaps to the letter L, which is my letter, for I come from Meaux, and my name is L'Aigle."
"L'Aigle!" Marius interrupted, "what a glorious name!"
"Blondeau arrives, sir, at that glorious name, and exclaims 'L'Aigle!' I answer,'Here!' Then Blondeau looks at me with the gentleness of a tiger, smiles, and says,—'If you are Pontmercy you are not Laigle, 'a phrase which appears offensive to you, but which was only lugubrious for me. After saying this, he erased me."
Marius exclaimed,—
"I am really mortified, sir—"
"Before all," Laigle interrupted, "I ask leave to embalm Blondeau in a few phrases of heart-felt praise. I will suppose him dead, and there will not be much to alter in his thinness, paleness, coldness, stiffness, and smell, and I say, Erudimini qui judicatis terram. Here lies Blondeau the nosy, Blondeau Nasica, the ox of discipline, bos disciplinœ, the mastiff of duty, the angel of the roll-call, who was straight, square, exact, rigid, honest, and hideous. God erased him as he erased me."
Marius continued, "I am most grieved—"
"Young man," said Laigle, "let this serve you as a lesson; in future be punctual."
"I offer you a thousand apologies."
"And do not run the risk of getting your neighbor erased."
"I am in despair—"
Laigle burst into a laugh. "And I am enchanted. I was on the downward road to become a lawyer, and this erasure saves me. I renounce the triumphs of the bar. I will not defend the orphan or attack the widow. I have obtained my expulsion, and I am indebted to you for it, M. Pontmercy. I intend to pay you a solemn visit of thanks. Where do you live?"
"In this cab," said Marius.
"A sign of opulence," Laigle remarked calmly; "I congratulate you, for you have apartments at nine thousand francs a year."
At this moment Courfeyrac came out of the café Marius smiled sadly.
"I have been in this lodging for two hours, and am eager to leave it; but I do not know where to go."
"Come home with me," Courfeyrac said to him.
"I ought to have the priority," Laigle observed; "but then I have no home."
"Hold your tongue, Bossuet," Courfeyrac remarked.
"Bossuet!" said Marius. "Why, you told me your name was Laigle."
"Of Meaux," Laigle answered; "metaphorically, Bossuet."
Courfeyrac got into the cab.
"Hôtel de la Porte St Jacques, driver," he said.
The same evening Marius was installed in a room in this house, next door to Courfeyrac.
[CHAPTER III.]
MARIUS IS ASTONISHED.
In a few days Marius was a friend of Courfeyrac, for youth is the season of prompt weldings and rapid cicatrizations. Marius by the side of Courfeyrac breathed freely, a great novelty for him. Courfeyrac asked him no questions, and did not even think of doing so, for at that age faces tell everything at once, and words are unnecessary. There are some young men of whose countenances you may say that they gossip,—you look at them and know them. One morning, however, Courfeyrac suddenly asked him the question,—
"By the way, have you any political opinion?"
"Of course!" said Marius, almost offended by the question.
"What are you?"
"Bonapartist democrat."
"The gray color of the reassured mouse," Courfeyrac remarked.
On the next day he led Marius to the Café Musain, and whispered in his ear with a smile, "I must introduce you to the Revolution," and he led him to the room of the Friends of the A. B. C. He introduced him to his companions, saying in a low voice, "A pupil," which Marius did not at all comprehend Marius had fallen into a mental wasps' nest, but though he was silent and grave, he was not the less winged and armed.
Marius, hitherto solitary, and muttering soliloquies and asides through habit and taste, was somewhat startled by the swarm of young men around him. The tumultuous movement of all these minds at liberty and at work made his ideas whirl, and at times, in his confusion, they flew so far from him that he had a difficulty in finding them again. He heard philosophy, literature, art, history, and religion spoken of in an unexpected way; he caught a glimpse of strange aspects, and as he did not place them in perspective, he was not sure that he was not gazing at chaos. On giving up his grandfather's opinions for those of his father, he believed himself settled; but he now suspected, anxiously, and not daring to confess it to himself, that it was not so. The angle in which he looked at everything was beginning to be displaced afresh, and a certain oscillation shook all the horizons of his brain. It was a strange internal moving of furniture, and it almost made him ill.
It seemed as if there were no "sacred things" for these young men, and Marius heard singular remarks about all sorts of matters which were offensive to his still timid mind. A play-bill came under notice, adorned with the title of an old stock tragedy, of the so-called classical school. "Down with the tragedy dear to the bourgeois!" Bahorel shouted, and Marius heard Combeferre reply,—
"You are wrong, Bahorel. The cits love tragedy, and they must be left at peace upon that point. Periwigged tragedy has a motive, and I am not one of those who for love of Æschylus contests its right to exist. There are sketches in nature and ready-made parodies in creation; a beak which is no beak, wings which are no wings, gills which are no gills, feet which are no feet, a dolorous cry which makes you inclined to laugh,—there you have the duck. Now, since poultry exist by the side of the bird, I do not see why classic tragedy should not exist face to face with ancient tragedy."
Or else it happened accidentally that Marius passed along the Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau between Enjolras and Courfeyrac, and the latter seized his arm.
"Pay attention I this is the Rue Plûtrière, now called Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau, on account of a singular family that lived here sixty years back, and they were Jean Jacques and Thérèse. From time to time little creatures were born; Thérèse fondled them, and Jean Jacques took them to the Foundling."
And Enjolras reproved Courfeyrac.
"Silence before Jean Jacques! I admire that man. I grant that he abandoned his children, but he adopted the people."
Not one of these young men ever uttered the words,—the Emperor; Jean Prouvaire alone sometimes said Napoleon; all the rest spoke of Bonaparte. Enjolras pronounced it Buonaparte. Marius was vaguely astonished.—Initium sapientiœ
[CHAPTER IV.]
THE BACK ROOM OF THE CAFÉ MUSAIN.
One of the conversations among the young men at which Marius was present, and in which he mingled now and then, was a thorough shock for his mind. It came off in the back room of the Café Musain, and nearly all the Friends of the A. B. C. were collected on that occasion, and the chandelier was solemnly lighted. They talked about one thing and another, without passion and with noise, and with the exception of Enjolras and Marius, who were silent, each harangued somewhat hap-hazard. Conversations among chums at times display these peaceful tumults. It was a game and a jumble as much as a conversation; words were thrown and caught up, and students were talking in all the four corners.
No female was admitted into this back room, excepting Louison, the washer-up of caps, who crossed it from time to time to go from the wash-house to the "laboratory." Grantaire, who was perfectly tipsy, was deafening the corner he had seized upon, by shouting things, reasonable and unreasonable, in a thundering voice:—
"I am thirsty, mortals; I have dreamed that the tun of Heidelberg had a fit of apoplexy, and that I was one of the dozen leeches applied to it. I want to drink, for I desire to forget life. Life is a hideous invention of somebody whom I am unacquainted with. It lasts no time and is worth nothing, and a man breaks his neck to live. Life is a scenery in which there are no practicables, and happiness is an old side-scene only painted on one side. Ecclesiastes says, 'All is vanity,' and I agree with the worthy gentleman, who possibly never existed. Zero, not liking to go about naked, clothed itself in vanity. Oh, vanity! the dressing up of everything in big words! A kitchen is a laboratory, a dancer a professor, a mountebank a gymnast, a boxer a pugilist, an apothecary a chemist, a barber an artist, a bricklayer an architect, a jockey a sportsman, and a woodlouse a pterygibranch. Vanity has an obverse and a reverse; the obverse is stupid,—it is the negro with his glass beads; the reverse is ridiculous,—it is the philosopher in his rags. I weep over the one and laugh at the other. What are called honors and dignities, and even honor and dignity, are generally pinchbeck. Kings make a toy of human pride. Caligula made a horse a consul, and Charles II. knighted a sirloin of beef. Drape yourselves, therefore, between the consul Incitatus and the baronet Roastbeef. As to the intrinsic value of people, it is not one bit more respectable; just listen to the panegyric which one neighbor makes of another. White upon white is ferocious. If the lily could talk, how it would run down the dove; and a bigoted woman talking of a pious woman is more venomous than the asp and the whip-snake. It is a pity that I am an ignoramus, for I would quote a multitude of things; but I know nothing. But for all that I have always had sense; when I was a pupil of Gros, instead of daubing sketches, I spent my time in prigging apples. Rapin is the male of rapine. So much for myself; but you others are as good as I, and I laugh at your perfections, excellency, and qualities, for every quality has its defect. The saving man is akin to the miser, the generous man is very nearly related to the prodigal, and the brave man trenches on the braggart. When you call a man very pious, you mean that he is a little bigoted, and there are just as many vices in virtue as there are holes in the mantle of Diogenes. Which do you admire, the killed or the killer, Cæsar or Brutus? People generally stick up for the killer: Long live Brutus! for he was a murderer. Such is virtue; it may be virtue, but it is folly at the same time. There are some queer spots on these great men; the Brutus who killed Cæsar was in love with the statue of a boy. This statue was made by the Greek sculptor Strongylion, who also produced that figure of an Amazon called Finelegs, Euchnemys, which Nero carried about with him when travelling. This Strongylion only left two statues, which brought Brutus and Nero into harmony; Brutus was in love with one and Nero with the other. History is but one long repetition, and one century is a plagiarism of another. The battle of Marengo is a copy of the battle of Pydna; the Tolbiae of Clovis and the Austerlitz of Napoleon are as much alike as two drops of blood. I set but little value on victory. Nothing is so stupid as conquering; the true glory is convincing. But try to prove anything; you satisfy yourself with success; what mediocrity! and with conquering; what a wretched trifle! Alas! vanity and cowardice are everywhere, and everything obeys success, even grammar. Si volet usus, as Horace says. Hence I despise the whole human race. Suppose we descend from universals to particulars? Would you wish me to begin admiring the peoples? What people, if you please? Is it Greece,—the Athenians? Parisians of former time killed Phocion, as you might say Coligny, and adulated tyrants to such a pitch that Anacephorus said of Pisistratus, 'His urine attracts the bees.' The most considerable man in Greece for fifty years was the grammarian Philetas, who was so short and small that he was obliged to put lead in his shoes to keep the wind from blowing him away. On the great square of Corinth there was a statue sculptured by Selamon, and catalogued by Pliny, and it represented Episthatus. What did Episthatus achieve? He invented the cross-buttock. There you have a summary of Greece and glory, and now let us pass to others. Should I admire England? Should I admire France? France, why,—on account of Paris? I have just told you my opinion of the Athenians. England, why,—on account, of London? I hate Carthage, and, besides, Loudon, the metropolis of luxury, is the headquarters of misery: in the single parish of Charing Cross one hundred persons die annually of starvation. Such is Albion, and I will add, as crowning point, that I have seen an Englishwoman dancing in a wreath of roses and with blue spectacles. So, a groan for England. If I do not admire John Bull, ought I to admire Brother Jonathan with his peculiar institution? Take away 'Time is money,' and what remains of England? Take away 'Cotton is king,' and what remains of America? Germany is lymph and Italy bile. Shall we go into ecstasies about Russia? Voltaire admired that country, and he also admired China. I allow that Russia has its beauties, among others a powerful despotism; but I pity the despots, for they have a delicate health. An Alexis decapitated, a Peter stabbed, a Paul strangled, another Paul flattened out with boot-heels, sundry Ivans butchered, several Nicholases and Basils poisoned,—all this proves that the palace of the Emperor of Russia is in a flagrantly unhealthy condition. All the civilized nations offer to the admiration of the thinker one detail, war: now, war, civilized war, exhausts and collects all the forms of banditism, from the brigandages of the trabuceros in the gorges of Mont Jaxa down to the forays of the Comanche Indians in the Doubtful Pass. 'Stuff!' you will say to me, 'Europe is better than Asia after all,' I allow that Asia is absurd, but I do not exactly see what cause you have to laugh at the Grand Lama, you great western nations, who have blended with your fashions and elegances all the complicated filth of majesty, from the dirty chemise of Queen Isabelle down to the chaise percée of the Dauphin. At Brussels the most beer is consumed, at Stockholm the most brandy, at Madrid the most chocolate, at Amsterdam the most gin, at London the most wine, at Constantinople the most coffee, and at Paris the most absinthe,—these are all useful notions. Paris, after all, bears away the bell, for in that city the very rag-pickers are sybarites: and Diogenes would as soon have been a rag-picker on the Place Maubert as a philosopher at the Piræus. Learn this fact also: the wine-shops of the rag-pickers are called 'bibines,' and the most celebrated are the Casserole and the Abattoir. Therefore O restaurants, wine-shops, music-halls, tavern-keepers, brandy and absinthe dispensers, boozing-kens of the rag-pickers, and caravansaries of caliphs, I call you to witness, I am a voluptuary. I dine at Richard's for fifty sous, and I want Persian carpets in which to roll the naked Cleopatra. Where is Cleopatra? Ah, it is you, Louison. Good-evening."
Thus poured forth Grantaire, more than drunk, as he seized the plate-washer as she passed his corner. Bossuet, stretching out his hand toward him, strove to make him be silent, but Grantaire broke out afresh:—
"Eagle of Meaux, down with your paws! You produce no effect upon me with your gesture of Hippocrates refusing the bric-à-brac of Artaxerxes. You need not attempt to calm me; and besides, I am melancholy. What would you have me say? Man is bad, man is a deformity; the butterfly is a success, but man a mistake. God made a failure with that animal. A crowd is a choice of uglinesses: the first comer is a scoundrel. Femme rhymes with infâme. Yes, I have the spleen, complicated with melancholy, home-sickness, and a dash of hypochondria, and I fret, I rage, I yawn, I weary myself, I bore myself, and I find it horribly dull."
"Silence, Big R," Bossuet remarked again, who was discussing a legal point with some chums, and was sunk to his waist in a sentence of judicial slang, of which the following is the end:—
"For my part, although I am scarce an authority, and at the most an amateur lawyer, I assert this, that, according to the terms of the customs of Normandy, upon the Michaelmas day and in every year an equivalent must be paid to the lord of the manor, by all and singular, both by landowners and tenants, and that for every freehold, long lease, mortgage—"
"Echo, plaintive nymph!" Grantaire hummed, dose to Grantaire, at an almost silent table, a quire of paper, an inkstand, and a pen between two small glasses announced that a farce was being sketched out. This great affair was discussed in a low voice, and the heads of the workers almost touched.
"Let us begin with the names, for when you have the names you have the plot."
"That is true: dictate, and I will write."
"Monsieur Dorimon?"
"An annuitant?"
"Of course. His daughter Celestine."
"-tine. Who next?"
"Colonel Sainval."
"Sainval is worn out. Say Valsin."
By the side of these theatrical aspirants another group, which also took advantage of the noise to talk low, were discussing a duel. An old student of thirty was advising a young man of eighteen, and explaining with what sort of adversary he had to deal.
"Hang it! you will have to be careful, for he is a splendid swordsman. He can attack, makes no useless feints, has a strong wrist, brilliancy, and mathematical parries. And then he is left-handed."
In the corner opposite to Grantaire, Joly and Bahorel were playing at dominos and talking of love affairs.
"You are happy," said Joly; "you have a mistress who is always laughing."
"It is a fault she commits," Bahorel answered; "a man's mistress does wrong to laugh, for it encourages him to deceive her, for seeing her gay saves you from remorse. If you see her sad you have scruples of conscience."
"Ungrateful man! a woman who laughs is so nice, and you never quarrel."
"That results from the treaty we made; on forming our little holy alliance, we gave each other a frontier which we never step beyond. Hence comes peace."
"Peace is digesting happiness."
"And you, Jolllly, how does your quarrel stand with Mamselle—you know whom I mean?"
"Oh! she still sulks with a cruel patience."
"And yet you are a lover of most touching thinness."
"Alas!"
"In your place, I would leave her."
"It's easy to say that."
"And to do. Is not her name Musichetta?"
"Yes; ah, my dear Bahorel, she is a superb girl, very literary, with little hands and feet, dresses with taste, is white and plump, and has eyes like a gypsy fortune-teller. I am wild about her."
"My dear boy, you must please her; be fashionable, and make your knees effective. Buy fine trousers of Staub."
"At how much?" cried Grantaire.
In the third corner a poetical, discussion was going on, and Pagan Mythology was quarrelling with Christian Mythology. The point was Olympus, whose defence Jean Prouvaire undertook through his romantic nature. Jean Prouvaire was only timid when in repose; once excited, he broke out into a species of gayety, accentuated his enthusiasm, and he was at once laughing and lyrical.
"Let us not insult the gods," he said, "for perhaps they have not all departed, and Jupiter does not produce the effect of a dead man upon me. The gods are dreams, you say; well, even in nature such as it is at the present day, and after the flight of these dreams, we find again all the old Pagan myths. A mountain with the profile of a citadel, like the Vignemale, for instance, is still for me the head-dress of Cybele. It has not yet been proved to me that Pan does not come at night to whistle in the hollow trunks of the willows, while stopping their holes with his fingers in turn, and I have ever believed that he had some connection with the cascade of Pissevache."
In the last corner politics were being discussed, and the conceded charter was abused. Combeferre supported it feebly, while Courfeyrac attacked it energetically. There was on the table an unlucky copy of the Charte Touquet. Courfeyrac had seized it and was shaking it, mixing with his argument the rustling of this sheet of paper.
"In the first place, I do not want kings; even from the economic point of view alone I do not want them, for a king is a parasite, and there are no gratis monarchs. Listen to this,—kings are an expensive luxury. On the death of Francis I. the public debt of France was thirty thousand livres; on the death of Louis XIV. it was two milliards six hundred millions, at twenty-eight livres the marc, which in 1740 was equivalent, according to Desmarets, to four milliards five hundred millions, and at the present day would be equal to twelve milliards. In the second place,—no offence to Combeferre,—a conceded charter is a bad expedient of civilization, for saving the transaction, softening the passage, deadening the shock, making the nation pass insensibly from monarchy to democracy by the practice of constitutional fictions,—all these are detestable fictions. No, no; let us never give the people a false light, and principles pine and grow pale in your constitutional cellar. No bastardizing, no compromise, no concession, from a king to people! In all these concessions there is an Article XIV., and by the side of the hand that gives is the claw that takes back again. I distinctly refuse your charter; for a charter is a mask, and there is falsehood behind it. A people that accepts a charter abdicates, and right is only right when entire. No charter, then, I say."
It was winter time, and two logs were crackling on the hearth; this was tempting, and Courfeyrac did not resist. He crumpled up the poor Charte Touquet and threw it in the fire; the paper blazed, and Combeferre philosophically watched the masterpiece of Louis XVIII. burning, contenting himself with saying,—
"The charter metamorphosed into flame."
And sarcasms, sallies, jests, that French thing which is called entrain, that English thing which is called humor, good taste and bad, sound and unsound reasoning, all the rockets of dialogue ascending together and crossing each other in all parts of the room, produced above their heads a species of merry explosion.
[CHAPTER V.]
ENLARGEMENT OF THE HORIZON.
The collision of young minds has this admirable thing about it, that the spark can never be foreseen or the lightning divined. What will shoot forth presently, no one knows. The burst of laughter is heard, and at the next moment seriousness makes its entrance. The impetus is given by the first word that comes, and everybody's fancy reigns. A joke suffices to open an unforeseen subject. The conversation takes a sudden turn, and the perspective changes all at once. Chance is the scene-shifter of conversations. A stern thought, which strangely issued from a clash of words, suddenly flashed through the medley in which Grantaire, Bahorel, Prouvaire, Bossuet, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac were blindly slashing and pointing. How is it that a phrase suddenly springs up in conversation, and underlines itself at once in the attention of those who trace it? As we have just said, no one knows. In the midst of the general confusion Bossuet concluded some remark he made to Combeferre with the date, "June 18, 1815, Waterloo."
At this name of Waterloo, Marius, who had been leaning over a glass of water, removed his hand from under his chin, and began looking intently at the company.
"Pardieu!" Courfeyrac exclaimed (Parbleu at this period was beginning to grow out of fashion). "That number eighteen is strange, and strikes me, for it is Bonaparte's fatal number. Place Louis before and Brumaire behind, and you have the man's whole destiny, with this expressive peculiarity, that the beginning is closely pursued by the end."
Enjolras, who had hitherto been dumb, now broke the silence, and said,—
"Courfeyrac, you mean the crime by the expiation."
This word crime exceeded the measure which Marius, who was already greatly affected by this sudden reference to Waterloo, could accept. He rose, walked slowly to the map of France hanging on the wall, on the bottom of which could be seen an island in a separate compartment; he placed his finger on this and said,—
"Corsica, a small island which made France very great."
This was the breath of frozen air; all broke off, for they felt that something was about to begin. Bahorel, who was assuming a victorious attitude in answering Bossuet, gave it up in order to listen; and Enjolras, whose blue eye was fixed on no one and seemed to be examining space, answered without looking at Marius,—
"France requires no Corsica to be great. France is great because she is France, quia nominor leo."
Marius felt no desire to give way; he turned to Enjolras, and his voice had a strange vibration, produced by his internal emotion.
"Heaven forbid that I should diminish France; but it is not diminishing her to amalgamate Napoleon with her. Come, let us talk; I am a new-comer among you, but I confess that you astonish me. Where are we? who are we? who are you? who am I? Let us come to an understanding about the Emperor. I hear you call him Buonaparte, laying a stress on the u, like the Royalists, but I must tell you that toy grandfather does better still, for he says, 'Buonaparté'. I fancied you young men, but where do you keep your enthusiasm, and what do you do with it? Whom do you admire, if it is not the Emperor, and what more do you want? If you will not have that great man, what great man would you have? He had everything; he was complete, and in his brain was the cube of human faculties. He made codes like Justinian, and dictated like Cæsar; his conversation blended the lightning of Pascal with the thunder of Tacitus; he made history and wrote it, and his bulletins are Iliads; he combined the figures of Newton with the metaphor of Mahomet. He left behind him in the East words great as the Pyramids; at Tilsit he taught majesty to Emperors; at the Academy of Sciences he answered Laplace; at the Council of State he held his own against Merlin; he gave a soul to the geometry of one and to the sophistry of others; he was legist with the lawyers, sidereal with the astronomers. Like Cromwell, blowing out one of two candles, he went to the Temple to bargain for a curtain tassel; he saw everything, knew everything, but that did not prevent him from laughing heartily by the cradle of his new-born son. And all at once startled Europe listened, armies set out, parks of artillery rolled along, bridges of boats were thrown over rivers, clouds of cavalry galloped in the hurricane, and shouts, bugles, and the crashing of thrones could be heard all around! The frontiers of kingdoms oscillated on the map, the sound of a super-human sword being drawn from its scabbard could be heard, and he was seen, standing erect on the horizon, with a gleam in his hand, and a splendor in his eyes, opening in the thunder his two wings, the grand army and the old Guard. He was the archangel of war!"
All were silent, and Enjolras hung his head. Silence always produces to some extent the effect of acquiescence, or a species of setting the back against the wall. Marius, almost without drawing breath, continued with increased enthusiasm,—
"Let us be just, my friends! What a splendid destiny it is for a people to be the empire of such an Emperor, when that people is France and adds its genius to the genius of that man! To appear and reign; to march and triumph; to have as bivouacs every capital; to select grenadiers and make kings of them; to decree the downfall of dynasties; to transfigure Europe at double-quick step; to feel when you threaten that you lay your hand on the sword-hilt of God; to follow in one man Hannibal, Cæsar, and Charlemagne; to be the people of a ruler who accompanies your every daybreak with the brilliant announcement of a battle gained; to be aroused in the morning by the guns of the Invalides; to cast into the abysses of light prodigious words which are eternally luminous,—Marengo, Areola, Austerlitz, Jena, and Wagram! to produce at each moment on the zenith of centuries constellations of victories: to make the French Empire a counterpart of the Roman Empire; to be the great nation, and give birth to the great army; to send legions all over the world, as the mountain sends its eagles in all directions to conquer, rule, and crush; to be in Europe a people gilded by glory; to sound a Titanic flourish of trumpets through history; to conquer the world twice, by conquest and by amazement,—all this is sublime, and what is there greater?"
"To be free!" said Combeferre.
Marius in his turn hung his head. This simple and cold remark had traversed his epical effusion like a steel blade, and he felt it fainting away within him. When he raised his eyes, Combeferre was no longer present; probably satisfied with his reply to the apotheosis, he had left the room, and all excepting Enjolras had followed him. Enjolras, alone with Marius, was looking at him gravely. Marius, however, having slightly collected his ideas, did not confess himself defeated, and he was in all probability about to begin afresh upon Enjolras, when he suddenly heard some one singing on the staircase. It was Combeferre, and this is what he sung:—
"Si César m'avait donné
La gloire et la guerre,
Et qu'il me fallut quitter
L'amour de ma mère,
Je dirais an grand César:
Reprends ton sceptre et ton char,
J'aime mieux ma mère, ô gué!
J'aime mieux ma mère!"
The tender and solemn accent with which Combeferre sang this verse imparted to it a species of strange grandeur. Marius, with his eye pensively fixed on the ceiling, repeated almost mechanically, "My mother!"
At this moment he felt Enjolras' hand on his shoulder.
"Citizen," he said to him, "my mother is the Republic."
[CHAPTER VI.]
RES ANGUSTA.
This evening left a sad obscurity and a profound shock in the mind of Marius, and he felt what the earth probably feels when it is opened by the plough-share that the grain may be deposited; it only feels the wound, and the joy of giving birth does not arrive till later.
Marius was gloomy; he had only just made himself a faith, and must he reject it again? He declared to himself that he would not: he resolved not to doubt, and began doubting involuntarily. To stand between two religions, one of which you have not yet lost, and the other which you have not yet entered, is unendurable, and twilight only pleases bat-like souls. Marius had an open eyeball and wanted true light; and the semi-lustre of doubt hurt him. Whatever might be his desire to remain where he was and cling to it, he was invincibly constrained to continue, to advance, to think, to go farther. Whither would this lead him? He feared lest, after taking so many steps which had drawn him near his father, he was now going to take steps which would carry him away from him. His discomfort increased with all the reflections that occurred to him, and an escarpment became formed around him. He agreed neither with his grandfather nor his friends; he was rash for the one and backward for the others; and he found himself doubly isolated,—on the side of old age and on the side of youth. He left off going to the Café Musain.
In the troubled state of his conscience he did not think at all of certain serious sides of existence; but the realities of life will not allow themselves to be forgotten, and so they suddenly came to jog his memory. One morning the landlord came into Marius's room, and said to him,—
"Monsieur Courfeyrac recommended you?"
"Yes."
"But I want my money."
"Ask Courfeyrac to come and speak to me," said. Marius.
When Courfeyrac arrived the landlord left them, and Marius told his friend what he had not dreamed of telling him yet,—that he was, so to speak, alone in the world, and had no relations.
"What will become of you?" said Courfeyrac.
"I do not know," Marius answered.
"What do you intend doing?"
"I do not know."
"Have you any money?"
"Fifteen francs."
"Are you willing to borrow from me?"
"Never."
"Have you clothes?"
"There they are."
"Any jewelry?"
"A gold watch."
"I know a second-hand clothesman who will take your overcoat and a pair of trousers."
"Very good."
"You will only have a pair of trousers, a waistcoat, a hat, and coat left."
"And my boots."
"What? You will not go barefoot? What opulence!"
"That will be enough."
"I know a jeweller who will buy your watch."
"All right."
"No, it is not all right; what will you do after?"
"Anything I can that is honest."
"Do you know English?"
"No."
"Or German?"
"No."
"All the worse."
"Why so?"
"Because a friend of mine, a publisher, is preparing a sort of Encyclopædia, for which you could have translated English or German articles. The pay is bad, but it is possible to live on it."
"I will learn English and German."
"And in the mean while?"
"I will eat my clothes and my watch."
"The clothes-dealer was sent for, and gave twenty francs for the coat and trousers; next they went to the jeweller's, who bought the watch for forty-five francs.
"That's not so bad," said Marius to Courfeyrac, on returning to the hotel; "with my fifteen francs that makes eighty."
"And your bill here?" Courfeyrac observed.
"Oh, I forgot that," said Marius.
The landlord presented his bill, which Marius was bound to pay at once; it amounted to seventy francs.
"I have ten francs left," said Marius.
"The deuce!" Courfeyrac replied; "you will spend five francs while learning English, and five while learning German. That will be swallowing a language very quickly, or a five-franc piece very slowly."
In the mean time Aunt Gillenormand, who was a good soul in the main upon sad occasions, discovered her nephew's abode, and one morning, when Marius returned from college, he found a letter from his aunt and the "sixty pistoles," that is to say, six hundred francs in gold, in a sealed-up box. Marius sent the thirty louis back to his aunt with a respectful note, in which he stated that he would be able in future to take care of himself—at that moment he had just three francs left. The aunt did not tell grandpapa of this refusal, through fear of raising his exasperation to the highest pitch; besides, had he not said, "Never mention that blood-drinker's name in my presence"? Marius quitted the Hôtel of the Porte St. Jacques, as he did not wish to run into debt.