A grandnephew is almost the same as a grandson; in default of a lawyer one takes a lancer.
One morning, when M. Gillenormand was about to read something in the Quotidienne, his daughter entered and said to him in her sweetest voice; for the question concerned her favorite:—
“Father, Théodule is coming to present his respects to you this morning.”
“Who’s Théodule?”
“Your grandnephew.”
“Ah!” said the grandfather.
Then he went back to his reading, thought no more of his grandnephew, who was merely some Théodule or other, and soon flew into a rage, which almost always happened when he read. The “sheet” which he held, although Royalist, of course, announced for the following day, without any softening phrases, one of these little events which were of daily occurrence at that date in Paris: “That the students of the schools of law and medicine were to assemble on the Place du Panthéon, at midday,—to deliberate.” The discussion concerned one of the questions of the moment, the artillery of the National Guard, and a conflict between the Minister of War and “the citizen’s militia,” on the subject of the cannon parked in the courtyard of the Louvre. The students were to “deliberate” over this. It did not take much more than this to swell M. Gillenormand’s rage.
He thought of Marius, who was a student, and who would probably go with the rest, to “deliberate, at midday, on the Place du Panthéon.”
As he was indulging in this painful dream, Lieutenant Théodule entered clad in plain clothes as a bourgeois, which was clever of him, and was discreetly introduced by Mademoiselle Gillenormand. The lancer had reasoned as follows: “The old druid has not sunk all his money in a life pension. It is well to disguise one’s self as a civilian from time to time.”
Mademoiselle Gillenormand said aloud to her father:—