Paris begins with the badaud and ends with the gamin: two beings of which no other city is capable; the passive acceptance which is satisfied with looking, and the inexhaustible initiative; Prudhomme and Fouillou. Paris alone has that in its natural history: all the monarchy is in the badaud, all the anarchy is in the gamin. This pale child of the faubourgs of Paris lives, and is developed, and grows up in suffering, a thoughtful witness in the presence of social realities and human things. He believes himself reckless, but is not so: he looks on, ready to laugh, but also ready for something else. Whoever you may be who call yourself prejudice, abuses, ignominy, oppression, iniquity, despotism, injustice, fanaticism, or tyranny, take care of the yawning gamin.
This little fellow will grow. Of what clay is he made? Of anything. Take a handful of mud, a breath, and you have Adam. It is sufficient for a God to pass, and God has ever passed over the gamin. Fortune toils for this little being, though by the word fortune we mean to some extent chance. Will this pygmy, moulded in the coarse common clay, ignorant, uneducated, brutal, violent, and of the populace, be an Ionian or a Bœotian? Wait a while, dum currit rota, and the genius of Paris, that demon which creates children of accident and men of destiny, will behave exactly contrary to the Latin potter, and make an amphora out of the earthenware jar.
He gained prizes in his youth at the college of Moulins, in which town he was born, and was crowned by the hand of the Due de Nivernais, whom he called the Due de Nevers. Neither the Convention, the death of Louis XVI., Napoleon, nor the return of the Bourbons, had effaced the recollection of this coronation. The Due de Nevers was to him the grand figure of the age. "What a charming nobleman!" he would say, "and how well his blue ribbon became him!" In the eyes of M. Gillenormand, Catherine II. repaired the crime of the division of Poland by purchasing of Bestucheff, for three thousand roubles, the secret of the elixir of gold, and on this point he would grow animated. "The elixir of gold!" he would exclaim. "Bestucheff's yellow tincture and the drops of General Lamotte were, in the 18th century, at one louis the half-ounce bottle, the grand remedy for love catastrophes, the panacea against Venus. Louis XV. sent two hundred bottles of it to the Pope." He would have been greatly exasperated had he been told that the gold elixir is nothing but perchloride of iron. M. Gillenormand adored the Bourbons, and held 1789 in horror; he incessantly described in what way he had escaped during the Reign of Terror, and how he had been obliged to display great gayety and wit in order not to have his head cut off. If any young man dared in his presence to praise the Republic, he turned blue, and grew so angry as almost to faint. Sometimes he alluded to his ninety years, and said, "I trust that I shall not see ninety-three twice." At other times, he informed persons that he intended to live to be a hundred.
The conclusion of Marius's classical studies coincided with M. Gillenormand's retirement from society; the old gentleman bade farewell to the Faubourg St. Germain and Madame de T——'s drawing-room, and proceeded to establish himself in the Marais at his house in the Rue des Filles du Calvaire. His servants were, in addition to the porter, that Nicolette who succeeded Magnon, and that wheezing, short-winded Basque, to whom we have already alluded. In 1827 Marius attained his seventeenth year; on coming home one evening he saw his grandfather holding a letter in his hand.
"Marius," said M. Gillenormand, "you will start to-morrow for Vernon."
"What for?" Marius asked.
"To see your father."
Marius trembled, for he had thought of everything excepting this,—that he might one day be obliged to see his father. Nothing could be more unexpected, more surprising, and, let us add, more disagreeable for him. It was estrangement forced into approximation, and it was not an annoyance so much as a drudgery. Marius, in addition to his motives of political antipathy, was convinced that his father, the trooper, as M. Gillenormand called him in his good-tempered days, did not love him; that was evident, as he had abandoned him thus and left him to others. Not feeling himself beloved, he did not love; and he said to himself that nothing could be more simple. He was so stupefied that he did not question his grandfather, but M. Gillenormand continued,—
"It seems that he is ill, and asks for you."
And after a silence he added,—
"Start to-morrow morning. I believe there is a coach which leaves at six o'clock and gets to Vernon at nightfall. Go by it, for he says that the matter presses."
Then he crumpled up the letter and put it in his pocket. Marius could have started the same night, and have been with his father the next morning; a diligence at that time used to run at night to Rouen, passing through Vernon. But neither M. Gillenormand nor Marius dreamed of inquiring. On the evening of the following day Marius arrived at Vernon, and asked the first passer-by for the house of "Monsieur Pontmercy;" for in his mind he was of the same opinion as the Restoration, and did not recognize either his father's Barony or Colonelcy. The house was shown him; he rang, and a woman holding a small hand-lamp opened the door for him.
"Monsieur Pontmercy?" Marius asked.
The woman stood motionless.
"Is this his house?" Marius continued.
The woman shook her head in the affirmative.
"Can I speak to him?"
The woman made a negative sign.
"Why, I am his son," Marius added; "and he expects me."
"He no longer expects you," the woman said.
Then he noticed that she was crying; she pointed to the door of a parlor, and he went in. In this room, which was lighted by a tallow candle placed on the mantel-piece, there were three men, one standing, one on his knees, and one lying full length upon the floor in his shirt. The one on the floor was the Colonel; the other two were a physician and a priest praying. The Colonel had been attacked by a brain fever three days before, and having a foreboding of evil, he wrote to M. Gillenormand, asking for his son. The illness grew worse, and on the evening of Marius' arrival at Vernon the Colonel had an attack of delirium. He leaped out of bed, in spite of the maid-servant, crying, "My son does not arrive, I will go to meet him." Then he left his bed-room, and fell on the floor of the ante-room; he had just expired. The physician and the curé were sent for, but both arrived too late; the son had also arrived too late. By the twilight gleam of the candle, a heavy tear, which had fallen from the Colonel's dead eye, could be noticed on his pallid cheek. The eye was lustreless, but the tear had not dried up. This tear was his son's delay.
Marius gazed upon this man whom he saw for the first time and the last, upon this venerable and manly face, these open eyes which no longer saw, this white hair, and the robust limbs upon which could be distinguished here and there brown lines which were sabre-cuts, and red stars which were bullet-holes. He gazed at the gigantic scar which imprinted heroism on this face, upon which God had imprinted gentleness. He thought that this man was his father, and that this man was dead, and he remained cold. The sorrow he felt was such as he would have felt in the presence of any other man whom he might have seen lying dead before him.
Mourning and lamentation were in this room. The maid-servant was weeping in a corner, the priest was praying, and could be heard sobbing, the physician wiped his eyes, and the corpse itself wept. The physician, priest, and woman looked at Marius through their affliction without saying a word, for he was the stranger. Marius, who was so little affected, felt ashamed and embarrassed at his attitude, and he let the hat which he held in his hand fall on the ground, in order to induce a belief that sorrow deprived him of the strength to hold it. At the same time he felt a species of remorse, and despised himself for acting thus. But was it his fault? he had no cause to love his father.
The Colonel left nothing, and the sale of the furniture scarce covered the funeral expenses. The maid-servant found a scrap of paper, which she handed to Marius. On it were the following lines, written by the Colonel:—
"For my son. The Emperor made me a Baron on the field of Waterloo, and as the Restoration contests this title, which I purchased with my blood, my son will assume it and wear it. Of course he will be worthy of it." On the back the Colonel had added, "At this same battle of Waterloo a sergeant saved my life; his name is Thénardier, and I believe that he has recently kept a small inn in a village near Paris, either Chelles or Montfermeil. If my son meet this Thénardier he will do all he can for him."
Not through any affection for his father, but owing to that vague respect for death which is ever so imperious in the heart of man, Marius took this paper and put it away. Nothing was left of the Colonel. M. Gillenormand had his sword and uniform sold to the Jews; the neighbors plundered the garden and carried off the rare flowers, while the others became brambles and died. Marius remained only forty-eight hours in Vernon. After the funeral he returned to Paris and his legal studies, thinking no more of his father than if he had never existed. In two days the Colonel was buried, and in three forgotten.
Marius had a crape on his hat, and that was all.
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.
On the day when M. Mabœuf said to Marius, "I certainly approve of political opinions," he expressed the real state of his mind. All political opinions were a matter of indifference to him, and he approved of them all without distinction, that they might leave him at peace, just as the Greeks called the Furies—"the lovely, the kind, the exquisite"—the Eumenides. M. Mabœuf's political opinion was to love plants passionately and books even more. He possessed, like everybody else, his termination in ist, without which no one could have lived at that day; but he was neither Royalist, Bonapartist, Chartist, Orleanist, nor Anarchist,—he was a botanist.
He did not understand how men could come to hate each other for trifles like the charter, democracy, legitimacy, monarchy, the republic, etc., when there were in the world all sorts of mosses, grasses, and plants which they could look at, and piles of folios, and even 32mos, whose pages they could turn over. He was very careful not to be useless: his having books did not prevent him reading them, and being a botanist did not prevent him being a gardener. When he knew Colonel Pontmercy, there was this sympathy between them, that the Colonel did for flowers what he did for fruits, M. Mabœuf had succeeded in producing pears as sweet as those of St. Germain; it is one of those combinations from which sprang, as it seems, the autumn Mirabelle plum, which is still celebrated, and no less perfumed than the summer one. He attended Mass more through gentleness than devotion, and because, while he loved men's faces but hated their noise, he found them at church congregated and silent; and feeling that he must hold some position in the State, he selected that of churchwarden. He had never succeeded in loving any woman so much as a tulip bulb, or any man so much as an Elzevir. He had long passed his sixtieth year, when some one asked him one day, "How is it that you never married?" "I forgot it," he said. When he happened to say,—and to whom does it not happen?—"Oh, if I were rich!" it was not when ogling a pretty girl, like Father Gillenormand, but when contemplating a quarto. He lived alone with an old housekeeper; he was rather gouty, and when he slept, his old chalk-stoned fingers formed an arch in the folds of the sheets. He had written and published a "Flora of the Environs of Cauteretz," with colored plates,—a work of some merit, of which he possessed the plates, and sold it himself. People rang at his door in the Rue Mézières two or three times a day to buy a copy; he made a profit of about two thousand francs a year by the book, and that was nearly his whole fortune. Although poor, he had contrived by patience and privations, and with time, to form a valuable collection of all sorts of rare examples. He never went out without a book under his arm, and frequently returned with two. The sole ornaments of his four rooms on the ground-floor, which, with a small garden, formed his lodging, were herbals and engravings by old masters. The sight of a musket or a sabre froze him, and in his life he had never walked up to a cannon, not even at the Invalides. He had a tolerable stomach, a brother a curé very white hair, no teeth left in his mouth or in his mind, a tremor all over him, a Picard accent, a childish laugh, and the air of an old sheep. With all he had no other friend among the living than an old bookseller at the Porte St. Jacques of the name of Royol; and the dream of his life was to naturalize indigo in France.
His maid-servant was also a variety of innocence. The good woman was an old maid, and Sultan, her tom-cat, who might have meowed the Allegri Miserere in the Sistine Chapel, filled her heart, and sufficed for the amount of passion within her. Not one of her dreams had ever gone so far as a man, and had not got beyond her cat; like him, she had moustaches. Her glory was perfectly white caps, and she spent her time on Sunday, after Mass, in counting the linen in her box, and spreading on her bed the gowns which she bought in the piece, and never had made up. She knew how to read, and M. Mabœuf had christened her Mother Plutarch.
M. Mabœuf had taken a fancy to Marius, because the young man, being young and gentle, warmed his old age without startling his timidity. Youth, combined with gentleness, produces on aged people the effect of sun without wind. When Marius was saturated with military glory, gunpowder, marches and counter-marches, and all the prodigious battles in which his father gave and received such mighty sabre-cuts, he went to see M. Mabœuf, who talked to him about the hero in his connection with flowers.
About the year 1830 his brother the curé died, and almost immediately after, as when night arrives, the entire horizon became dark for M. Mabœuf. The bankruptcy of a notary despoiled him of ten thousand francs, all he possessed of his brother's capital and his own, while the revolution of July produced a crisis in the book trade. In times of pressure the first thing which does not sell is a Flora, and that of the Environs of Cauteretz stopped dead. Weeks passed without a purchaser. At times M. Mabœuf started at the sound of the house bell, but Mother Plutarch would say to him sadly, "It is the water-carrier, sir." In a word, M. Mabœuf left the Rue Mézières one day, abdicated his office as churchwarden, gave up St. Sulpice, sold a portion, not of his books, but of his engravings, for which he cared least, and installed himself in a small house on the Boulevard Montparnasse, where, however, he only remained three months, for two reasons,—in the first place, the ground-floor and garden cost three hundred francs, and he did not dare set aside more than two hundred francs for rent; and secondly, as he was close to the Fatou shooting-gallery, he heard pistol-shots, which he could not endure. He carried off his Flora, his copper-plates, his herbals, port-folios, and books and settled down near the Salpêtrière, in a sort of hut, in the village of Austerlitz, where he rented for fifty crowns a year three rooms, a garden enclosed by a hedge, and a well. He took advantage of this removal to sell nearly all his furniture. On the day when he entered his new house he was in very good spirits, and drove in with his own hands the nails on which to hang the engravings; he dug in his garden for the rest of the day, and at night, seeing that Mother Plutarch had an anxious look and was thoughtful, he tapped her on the shoulder and said with a smile, "We have the indigo!" Only two visitors, the publisher and Marius, were allowed admission to his hut of Austerlitz,—a rackety name, by the way, which was most disagreeable to him.
As we have remarked, things of this world permeate very slowly brains absorbed in wisdom, or mania, or, as often happens, in both at once, and their own destiny is remote from them. The result of such concentrations is a passiveness which, were it of a reasoning nature, would resemble philosophy. Men decline, sink, glide out, and even collapse, without exactly noticing, though this always ends with a re-awaking, but one of a tardy character. In the mean while it appears as if they are neutral in the game which is being played between their happiness and misery; they are the stakes, and look on at the game with indifference. It was thus that M. Mabœuf remained rather childishly but most profoundly serene, in the obscurity that was enveloping him gradually, and while his hopes were being extinguished in turn. The habits of his mind had the regular movement of a clock, and when he was once wound up by an illusion he went for a very long time, even when the illusion had disappeared. A clock does not stop at the precise moment when the key is lost.
M. Mabœuf had innocent pleasures, which cost but little and were unexpected, and the slightest accident supplied him with them. One day Mother Plutarch was reading a novel in the corner of the room; she was reading aloud, for she fancied that she understood better in that way. There are some persons who read very loud, and look as if they were pledging themselves their word of honor about what they are reading. Mother Plutarch read her novel with an energy of this nature, and M. Mabœuf listened to her without hearing. While reading, Mother Plutarch came to the following passage, relating to a bold dragoon and a gushing young lady:—
"La belle bouda, et Le Dragon—"
Here she broke off to wipe her spectacles.
"Bouddha and the dragon," M. Mabœuf repeated in a low voice; "yes, that is true; there was a dragon, which lived in a cavern, belched flames, and set fire to the sky. Several stars had already been burned up by this monster, which had tiger-claws, by the bye, when Bouddha went into its den and succeeded in converting the dragon. That is an excellent book you are reading, Mother Plutarch, and there cannot be a finer legend."
And M. Mabœuf fell into a delicious reverie.
The next day, at the accustomed hour, Marius took out of the drawers his new coat, his new trousers, his new hat, and his new boots; he dressed himself in this complete panoply, put on gloves,—an extraordinary luxury,—and went off to the Luxembourg. On the road he met Courfeyrac, and pretended not to see him. Courfeyrac on reaching home said to his friends,—
"I have just met Marius's new hat and new coat and Marius inside them. He was going, I fancy, to pass some examination, for he looked so stupid."
On reaching the Luxembourg Marius walked round the basin and gazed at the swans; then he stood for a long time contemplating a statue all black with mould, and which had lost one hip. Near the basin was a comfortable bourgeois of about forty, holding by the hand a little boy, and saying to him,—"Avoid all excesses, my son; keep at an equal distance from despotism and anarchy." Marius listened to this bourgeois, then walked once again round the basin, and at length proceeded toward "his walk" slowly, and as if regretfully. He seemed to be at once forced and prevented from going, but he did not explain this to himself, and fancied he was behaving as he did every day. On turning into the walk he saw M. Leblanc and the young lady at the other end, seated on "their bench." He buttoned up his coat to the top, pulled it down so that it should make no creases, examined with some complacency the lustre of his trousers, and marched upon the bench. There was attack in this march, and assuredly a desire for conquest, and hence I say that he marched upon this bench, as I would say Hannibal marched on Rome.
Still, all his movements were mechanical, and he had not in any way altered the habitual preoccupation of his mind and labors. He was thinking at this moment that the Manuel de Baccalaureat was a stupid book, and that it must have been edited by wondrous ignoramuses, who analyzed as masterpieces of the human mind three tragedies of Racine and only one comedy of Molière. He had a shrill whistling in his ear, and while approaching the bench he pulled down his coat, and his eyes were fixed on the maiden. He fancied that she filled the whole end of the walk with a vague blue light. As he drew nearer his pace gradually decreased. On coming within a certain distance of the bench, though still some distance from the end of the walk, he stopped, and did not know how it was that he turned back. The young lady was scarce able to notice him, and see how well he looked in his new suit. Still he held himself very erect, for fear any one behind might be looking at him.
He reached the opposite end, then returned, and this time approached a little nearer to the bench. He even got within the distance of three trees, but then he felt an impossibility of going farther, and hesitated. He fancied he could see the young lady's face turned toward him; however, he made a masculine, violent effort, subdued his hesitation, and continued to advance. A few moments after he passed in front of the bench, upright and firm, but red up to the ears, and not daring to take a glance either to the right or left, and with his hand thrust into his coat like a statesman. At the moment when he passed under the guns of the fort he felt his heart beat violently. She was dressed as on the previous day, and he heard an ineffable voice which must "be her voice." She was talking quietly, and was very beautiful; he felt it, though he did not attempt to look at her, "and yet," he thought, "she could not fail to have esteem and consideration for me if she knew that I am the real author of the dissertation on Marcos Obregon de La Ronda, which M. Francois de Neufchâteau appropriated, at the beginning of his edition of Gil Bias."
He passed the bench, went to the end of the walk which was close by, then turned and again passed the young lady. This time he was very pale, and his feelings were most disagreeable. He went away from the bench and the maiden, and while turning his back, he fancied that she was looking at him, and this made him totter. He did not again attempt to pass the bench; he stopped at about the middle of the walk and then sat down,—a most unusual thing for him,—taking side glances, and thinking in the innermost depths of his mind that after all it was difficult for a person whose white bonnet and black dress he admired to be absolutely insensible to his showy trousers and new coat. At the end of a quarter of an hour he rose, as if about to walk toward this bench which was surrounded by a glory, but he remained motionless. For the first time in fifteen months he said to himself that the gentleman who sat there daily with his daughter must have noticed him, and probably considered his assiduity strange. For the first time, too, he felt it was rather irreverent to designate this stranger, even in his own thoughts, by the nickname of M. Leblanc.
He remained thus for some minutes with hanging head, making sketches in the sand with the stick he held in his hand. Then he suddenly turned in the direction opposed to the bench and went home. That day he forgot to go to dinner; he noticed the fact at eight in the evening, and, as it was too late to go to the Rue St. Jacques, he ate a lump of bread. He did not go to bed till he had brushed and carefully folded up his coat.
These four bandits formed a species of Proteus, winding through the police ranks and striving to escape the indiscreet glances of Vidocq "under various shapes,—tree, flame, and fountain,"—borrowing one another's names and tricks, asylums for one another, laying aside their personality as a man removes a false nose at a masquerade; at times simplifying themselves so as to be only one man, at others multiplying themselves to such an extent that Coco-Latour himself took them for a mob. These four men were not four men; they were a species of four-headed robber working Paris on a grand scale; the monstrous polype of evil inhabiting the crypt of society. Owing to their ramifications and the subjacent network of their relations, Babet, Gueulemer, Claquesous, and Montparnasse had the general direction of all the foul play in the department of the Seine. The finders of ideas in this style, the men with nocturnal imaginations, applied to them to execute them; the four villains were supplied with the canvas, and they produced the scenery. They were always in a position to supply a proportionate and proper staff for every robbery which was sufficiently lucrative and required a stout arm. If a crime were in want of persons to carry it out, they sub-let the accomplices, and they always had a band of actors at the service of all the tragedies of the caverns.
They generally met at nightfall, the hour when they awoke, on the steppes that border the Salpêtrière. There they conferred, and, as they had the twelve dark hours before them, they settled their employment. Patron Minette was the name given in the subterranean lurking-places to the association of these four men. In the old and fantastic popular language, which is daily dying out, Patron Minette signifies the morning, just as "between dog and wolf" signifies night. This appellation was probably derived from the hour when their work finished, for dawn is the moment for spectres to fade away and for bandits to part. These four men were known by this title. When the President of the Assizes visited Lacenaire in prison, he questioned him about a crime which the murderer denied. "Who committed it?" the President asked; and Lacenaire gave this answer, which was enigmatical for the magistrate, but clear for the police,—"It is, perhaps, Patron Minette."
The plot of a play may be at times divined from the list of names; and a party of bandits may perhaps be appreciated in the same way. Here are the names to which the principal members of Patron Minette answered, exactly as they survive in special memoirs.
Panchaud called Spring, alias Bigrenaille, Brujon (there was a dynasty of Brujons, about whom we may still say a word); Boulatruelle, the road-mender, of whom we have caught a glimpse; Laveuve; Finistère; Homer-Hogu, a negro; Tuesday night; Make haste; Fauntleroy, alias Flower-girl; Glorious, a liberated convict; Stop the coach, alias Monsieur Dupont; The Southern Esplanade; Poussagrive; Carmagnolet; Kruideniers, alias Bizarro; Lace-eater; Feet in the air; Half farthing, alias Two Milliards, etc. etc.
These names have faces, and express not merely beings but species. Each of these names responds to a variety of the poisonous fungi which grow beneath human civilization. These beings, very careful about showing their faces, were not of those whom we may see passing by day, for at that period, weary of their night wanderings, they went to sleep in the lime-kilns, the deserted quarries of Montmartre or Montrouge, or even in the snow. They ran to earth.
What has become of these men? They still exist, and have ever existed. Horace alludes to them in his Ambubaiarum collegia, pharmacopolœ, mendici, mimœ, and so as long as society is what it is they will be what they are. Under the obscure vault of their cellar they are even born again from the social leakage; they return as spectres, but ever identical. The only difference is that they no longer bear the same names and are no longer in the same skins; though the individuals are extirpated, the tribe exists. They have always the same qualities, and from vagrant to prowler, the race ever remains pure. They guess purses in pockets and scent watches in fobs; and gold and silver have a peculiar smell for them. There are simple cits of whom we might say that they have a robbable look, and these men patiently follow these cits. When a foreigner or a countryman passes, they quiver like the spider in its web.
These men, when we catch a glimpse of them upon a deserted boulevard at midnight, are frightful; they do not seem to be men, but forms made of living fog; we might say that they are habitually a portion of the darkness, that they are not distinct, that they have no other soul but shadow, and that they have become detached from night momentarily, and in order to live a monstrous life for a few moments. What is required to make these phantoms vanish? light, floods of light. Not a single bat can resist the dawn. Light up the lower strata of society.
A very young girl was standing in the half-open door. The sky-light, through which light entered, was exactly opposite the door, and threw upon this face a sallow gleam. She was a pale, wretched, fleshless creature, and had only a chemise and a petticoat upon her shivering and frozen nudity. For waist-belt she had a piece of string, for head-dress another; pointed shoulders emerged from her chemise; she was of a yellow lymphatic pallor, cadaverous collar-bones, hands red, mouth half open and degraded, with few teeth, the eye was sunken and hollow, and she had the outline of an abortive girl and the look of a corrupted old woman, or fifty years blended with fifteen. She was one of those beings who are at once weak and horrible, and who make those shudder whom they do not cause to weep.
Marius had risen, and was gazing with a species of stupor at this being, who almost resembled the shadows that traverse dreams. What was most crushing of all was, that this girl had not come into the world to be ugly, and in her childhood she must even have been pretty. The grace of youth was still struggling with the hideous and premature senility of debauchery and poverty. A remnant of beauty was expiring on this countenance of sixteen, like the pallid sun which dies out under the frightful clouds on the dawn of a winter's day. This face was not absolutely strange to Marius, and he fancied that he had already seen it somewhere.
"What do you want, miss?" he asked.
The girl replied, with her drunken galley-slave's voice,—
"It is a letter for you, Monsieur Marius."
She addressed him by name, and hence he could not doubt but that she had business with him; but who was this girl, and how did she know his name? Without waiting for any authority, she walked in, walked in boldly, looking around her with a sort of assurance that contracted the heart, at the whole room and the unmade bed. Her feet were bare, and large holes in her petticoat displayed her long legs and thin knees. She was shivering, and held in her hand a letter, which she offered to Marius. On opening the letter, he noticed that the large, clumsy wafer was still damp, which proved that the missive had not come a long distance, and he read:—
"MY AMIABLE NEIGHBOR AND YOUNG SIR,—I have herd of your kindness to me, and that you paid my half-year's rent six months ago. I bless you for it, young sir. My eldest daughter will tell you that we have been without a morsel of bread for two days,—four persons, and my wife ill. If I am not deseived in my opinion, I dare to hope that your generous heart will be affected by this statement, and will subject you to the desire to be propicious to me, by daining to lavish on me a trifling charity,
"I am, with the distinguished consideration which is due to the benefactors of humanity,
"JONDRETTE.
"P.S. My daughter will wait for your orders, my dear Monsieur Marius."
This letter, in the midst of the obscure adventure which had been troubling Marius since the previous evening, was like a candle in a cellar; all was suddenly lit up. This letter came from where the other letters came. It was the same handwriting, the same style, the same orthography, the same paper, and the same tobacco smell. They were five letters, five stories, five names, five signatures, and only one writer. The Spanish captain Don Alvarez, the unhappy mother Balizard, the dramatic author Genflot, and the old comedian Fabantou, were all four Jondrette, if, indeed, Jondrette's name were really Jondrette.
During the lengthened period that Marius had lived in this house, he had, as we stated, but rare occasions to see, or even catch a glimpse of, his very low neighbors; His mind was elsewhere, and where the mind is there is the eye. He must have passed the Jondrettes more than once in the passage and on the stairs, but they were to him merely shadows. He had paid so little attention to them, that on the previous evening he had run against the Jondrette girls on the boulevard without recognizing them, for it was evidently they, and it was with great difficulty that the girl, who had just entered the room, aroused in him, through disgust and pity, a vague fancy that he had met her somewhere before.
Now he saw everything clearly. He comprehended that his neighbor Jondrette had hit upon the trade in his distress of working upon the charity of benevolent persons, that he procured addresses and wrote under supposititious names, to people whom he supposed to be rich and charitable, letters which his children delivered at their risk and peril, for this father had attained such a stage that he hazarded his daughters; he was gambling with destiny and staked them. Marius comprehended that, in all probability, judging from their flight of the previous evening, their panting, their terror, and the slang words he overheard, these unfortunates carried on some other dark trades, and the result of all this was, in the heart of human society such as it is constituted, two wretched beings, who were neither children, nor girls, nor women, but a species of impure and innocent monsters, which were the produce of wretchedness; melancholy beings without age, name, or sex, to whom neither good nor evil is any longer possible, and who, on emerging from childhood, have nothing left in the world, not liberty, nor virtue, nor responsibility; souls that expanded yesterday and are faded to-day, like the flowers which have fallen in the street and are plashed by the mud while waiting till a wheel crushes them.
While Marius was bending on the young girl an astonished and painful glance, she was walking about the garret with the boldness of a spectre, and without troubling herself in the slightest about her state of nudity. At some moments her unfastened and torn chemise fell almost to her waist. She moved the chairs about, disturbed the toilette articles on the chest of drawers, felt Marius's clothes, and rummaged in every corner.
"Why," she said, "you have a looking-glass!"
And she hummed, as if she had been alone, bits of vaudeville songs and wild choruses, which her guttural and hoarse voice rendered mournful. But beneath this boldness there was something constrained, alarmed, and humiliated, for effrontery is a disgrace. Nothing could well be more sad than to see her fluttering about the room with the movement of a broken-winged bird startled by a dog. It was palpable that with other conditions of education and destiny, the gay and free demeanor of this girl might have been something gentle and charming. Among animals, the creature born to be a dove is never changed into an osprey; that is only possible with men. Marius was thinking, and left her alone, and she walked up to the table.
"Ah!" she said, "books."
A gleam darted from her glassy eye: she continued, and her accent expressed the attitude of being able to boast of something to which no human creature is insensible,—
"I know how to read."
She quickly seized the book lying on the table, and read rather fluently,—
"General Bauduin received orders to carry with the five battalions of his brigade the Château of Hougomont, which is in the centre of the plain of Waterloo—"
She broke off.
"Ah, Waterloo, I know all about that. It was a battle in which my father was engaged, for he served in the army. We are thorough Bonapartists, we are. Waterloo was fought against the English."
She laid down the book, took up a pen, and exclaimed, "And I can write, too."
She dipped the pen in the ink, and turned to Marius, saying,—
"Would you like a proof? Stay, I will write a line to show you."
And ere he had time to answer she wrote on a sheet of white paper in the middle of the table, "Here are the slops." Then throwing down the pen, she added,—
"There are no errors in spelling, as you can see, for my sister and I were well educated. We have not always been what we are now, we were not made—"
Here she stopped, fixed her glassy eye on Marius, and burst into a laugh, as she said, with an intonation which contained every possible agony, blended with every possible cynicism,—
"Bah!"
And then she began humming these words, to a lively air,—
"J'ai faim, mon père,
Pas de fricot.
J'ai froid, ma mère,
Pas de tricot.
Grelotte,
Lolotte!
Sanglote,
Jacquot!"
She had scarce completed this verse, ere she exclaimed,—
"Do you ever go to the play, Monsieur Marius? I do so. I have a brother who is a friend of the actors, and gives me tickets every now and then. I don't care for the gallery much, though, for you are so squeezed up; at times too there are noisy people there, and others who smell bad."
Then she stared at Marius, gave him a strange look, and said to him,—
"Do you know, M. Marius, that you are a very good-looking fellow!"
And at the same moment the same thought occurred to both, which made her smile and him blush. She walked up to him, and laid a hand upon his shoulder,—"You don't pay any attention to me, but I know you, M. Marius. I meet you here on the staircase, and then I see you go into the house of the one called Father Mabœuf, who lives over at Austerlitz, sometimes when I go that way. Your curly hair becomes you very well."
Her voice tried to be very soft, and only succeeded in being very low; a part of her words was lost in the passage from the larynx to the lips, as on a piano-forte some keys of which are broken. Marius had gently recoiled.
"I have a packet," he said, with his cold gravity, "which, I believe, belongs to you. Allow me to deliver it to you."
And he handed her the envelope which contained the four letters; she clapped her hands and said,—
"We looked for it everywhere."
Then she quickly seized the parcel and undid the envelope, while saying,—
"Lord of Lords! how my sister and I did look for it! And so you found it,—on the boulevard, did you not? It must have been there. You see, it was dropped while we were running, and it was my brat of a sister who was such an ass. When we got home we could not find it, and as we did not wish to be beaten,—which is unnecessary, which is entirely unnecessary, which is absolutely unnecessary,—we said at home that we had delivered the letters, and that the answer was Nix! And here are the poor letters! Well, and how did you know that they were mine? Ob, yes, by the writing. So, then, it was you that we ran against last night? We could not see anything, and I said to my sister, 'Is it a gentleman?' and she answered, 'Yes, I think it is a gentleman.'"
While saying this she had unfolded the petition addressed "To the Benevolent gentleman of the church of St. Jacques du Haut-pas."
"Hilloh!" she said, "this is the one for the old swell who goes to Mass. Why, 't is just the hour, and I will carry it to him. He will perhaps give us something for breakfast."
Then she burst into a laugh, and added,—
"Do you know what it will be if we breakfast to-day? We shall have our breakfast of the day before yesterday, our dinner of the day before yesterday, our breakfast of yesterday, our dinner of yesterday, all at once this morning. Well, hang it all! if you are not satisfied, rot, dogs!"
This reminded Marius of what the hapless girl had come to get from him; he fumbled in his waistcoat, but found nothing. The girl went on, and seemed speaking as if no longer conscious of the presence of Marius.
"Sometimes I go out at night. Sometimes I do not come home. Before we came here last winter we lived under the arches of the bridges, and kept close together not to be frozen. My little sister cried. How sad the water is! When I thought of drowning myself, I said, 'No, it is too cold,' I go about all alone when I like, and sleep at times in ditches. Do you know, at night, when I walk along the boulevard, I see trees like forks, I see black houses as tall as the towers of Notre Dame, I fancy that the white walls are the river, and I say to myself, 'Why, there is water!' The stars are like illumination lamps, and you might say that they smoke, and the wind puts them out I feel stunned, as if my hair was lashing my ears; however the night may be, I hear barrel-organs and spinning machinery, but what do I know? I fancy that stones are being thrown at me, and I run away unconsciously, for all turns round me. When you have not eaten it is funny."
And she gazed at him with haggard eyes.
After feeling in the depths of all his pockets, Marius succeeded in getting together five francs sixteen sous; it was at this moment all that he possessed in the world. "Here is my to-days dinner," he thought, "and to-morrow will take care of itself." He kept the sixteen sous, and gave the girl the five-franc piece, which she eagerly clutched.
"Good!" she said, "there is sunshine."
And, as if the sunshine had the property of melting in her brain avalanches of slang, she went on,—
"Five francs! a shiner! a monarch! in this crib! that's stunning! Well, you 're a nice kid, and I do the humble to you. Two days' drink and a bully feed,—a feast; we 're well fixed. Hurrah, pals!"
She pulled her chemise up over her shoulders, gave Marius a deep courtesy and a familiar wave of the hand, and walked toward the door, saying,—
"Good day, sir; but no matter, I'll go and find my old swell."
As she passed she noticed on the drawers an old crust of dry bread mouldering in the dust; she caught it up, and bit into it savagely, grumbling,—
"It is good, it is hard; it breaks my teeth!"
Then she left the room.