"Jeanne est née à Fougère,
Vrai nid d'une bergère;
J'adore son jupon
Fripon.
"Amour, tu vis en elle;
Car c'est dans sa prunelle
Que tu mets ton carquois,
Narquois!
"Moi, je la chante, et j'aime,
Plus que Diane même,
Jeanne et ses dure tetons
Bretons."
Then he knelt on a chair, and Basque, who was watching him through the crack of the door, felt certain that he was praying. Up to that day he had never believed in God. At each new phase in the improvement of the patient, which went on steadily, the grandfather was extravagant. He performed a multitude of mechanical actions full of delight: he went up and down stairs without knowing why. A neighbor's wife, who was very pretty, by the way, was stupefied at receiving one morning a large bouquet: it was M. Gillenormand who sent it to her, and her husband got up a jealous scene. M. Gillenormand tried to draw Nicolette on his knees: he called Marius Monsieur le Baron, and shouted, "Long live the Republic!" Every moment he asked the medical man, "There is no danger now, is there?" He looked at Marius with a grandmother's eyes, and gloated over him when he slept. He no longer knew himself, no longer took himself into account. Marius was the master of the house; there was abdication in his joy, and he was the grandson of his grandson. In his present state of merriment he was the most venerable of children: through fear of wearying or annoying the convalescent he would place himself behind him in order to smile upon him. He was satisfied, joyous, ravished, charming and young, and his white hair added a gentle majesty to the gay light which he had on his face. When grace is mingled with wrinkles it is adorable; and there is a peculiar dawn in expansive old age.
As for Marius, while letting himself be nursed and petted, he had one fixed idea,—Cosette. Since the fever and delirium had left him he no longer pronounced this name, and it might be supposed that he had forgotten it; but he was silent precisely because his soul was there. He knew not what had become of Cosette: the whole affair of the Rue de la Chanvrerie was like a cloud in his memory; shadows almost indistinct floated through his spirit. Éponine, Gavroche, Mabœuf, the Thénardiers, and all his friends mournfully mingled with the smoke of the barricade; the strange passage of M. Fauchelevent through that blood-stained adventure produced upon him the effect of an enigma in a tempest: he understood nothing of his own life, he knew not how or by whom he had been saved, and no one about knew it either: all they were able to tell him was that he had been brought there at night in a hackney coach. Past, present, future,—all this was to him like the mist of a vague idea; but there was in this mist one immovable point, a clear and precise lineament, something made of granite, a resolution, a will,—to find Cosette again. For him the idea of life was not distinct from the idea of Cosette: he had decreed in his heart that he would not receive one without the other, and he unalterably determined to demand of his grandfather, of destiny, of fate, of Hades itself, the restitution of his lost Eden.
He did not conceal the obstacles from himself. Here let us underline one fact: he was not won or greatly affected by all the anxiety and all the tenderness of his grandfather. In the first place he was not in the secret of them all, and next, in his sick man's reveries, which were perhaps still feverish, he distrusted this gentleness as a strange and new thing intended to subdue him. He remained cold to it, and the poor grandfather lavished his smiles in pure loss. Marius said to himself that it was all very well so long as he did not speak and let matters rest; but when he came to Cosette, he should find another face, and his grandfathers real attitude would be unmasked. Then he would be rough; a warming up of family questions, a comparison of positions, every possible sarcasm and objection at once. Fauchelevent, Coupelevent, fortune, poverty, wretchedness, the stone on the neck, the future a violent resistance, and the conclusion—a refusal. Marius stiffened himself against it beforehand. And then, in proportion as he regained life, his old wrongs reappeared, the old ulcers of his memory reopened, he thought again of the past. Colonel Pontmercy placed himself once more between M. Gillenormand and him, Marius, and he said to himself that he had no real kindness to hope for from a man who had been so unjust and harsh to his father. And with health came back a sort of bitterness against his grandfather, from which the old man gently suffered. M. Gillenormand, without letting it be seen, noticed that Marius, since he had been brought home and regained consciousness, had never once called him father. He did not say Sir, it is true, but he managed to say neither one nor the other, by a certain way of turning his sentences.
A crisis was evidently approaching, and, as nearly always happens in such cases, Marius, in order to try himself, skirmished before offering battle; this is called feeling the ground. One morning it happened that M. Gillenormand, alluding to a newspaper which he had come across, spoke lightly of the Convention, and darted a Royalist epigram at Danton, St. Just, and Robespierre. "The men of '93 were giants," Marius said sternly; the old man was silent, and did not utter another syllable all the day. Marius, who had the inflexible grandfather of his early years ever present to his mind, saw in this silence a profound concentration of anger, augured from it an obstinate struggle, and augmented his preparations for the contest in the most hidden corners of his mind. He determined that in case of refusal he would tear off his bandages, dislocate his collar-bone, expose all the wounds still unhealed, and refuse all food. His wounds were his ammunition; he must have Cosette or die. He awaited the favorable moment with the crafty patience of sick persons, and the moment arrived.
[CHAPTER III.]
MARIUS ATTACKS.
One day M. Gillenormand, while his daughter was arranging the phials and cups on the marble slab of the sideboard, leaned over Marius, and said in his most tender accent,—
"Look you, my little Marius, in your place I would rather eat meat than fish; a fried sole is excellent at the beginning of a convalescence; but a good cutlet is necessary to put the patient on his legs."