CHAPTER VI--THE CONSEQUENCES OF HAVING MET A WARDEN

  Where it was that Marius went will be disclosed a little further on.

  Marius was absent for three days, then he returned to Paris, wentstraight to the library of the law-school and asked for the files of the_Moniteur_.

  He read the _Moniteur_, he read all the histories of the Republic andthe Empire, the _Memorial de Sainte-Hélène_, all the memoirs, all thenewspapers, the bulletins, the proclamations; he devoured everything.The first time that he came across his father's name in the bulletins ofthe grand army, he had a fever for a week. He went to see the generalsunder whom Georges Pontmercy had served, among others, Comte H.Church-warden Mabeuf, whom he went to see again, told him about the lifeat Vernon, the colonel's retreat, his flowers, his solitude. Marius cameto a full knowledge of that rare, sweet, and sublime man, that speciesof lion-lamb who had been his father.

  In the meanwhile, occupied as he was with this study which absorbed allhis moments as well as his thoughts, he hardly saw the Gillenormands atall. He made his appearance at meals; then they searched for him, and hewas not to be found. Father Gillenormand smiled. "Bah! bah! He is justof the age for the girls!" Sometimes the old man added: "The deuce!I thought it was only an affair of gallantry, It seems that it is anaffair of passion!"

  It was a passion, in fact. Marius was on the high road to adoring hisfather.

  At the same time, his ideas underwent an extraordinary change. Thephases of this change were numerous and successive. As this is thehistory of many minds of our day, we think it will prove useful tofollow these phases step by step and to indicate them all.

  That history upon which he had just cast his eyes appalled him.

  The first effect was to dazzle him.

  Up to that time, the Republic, the Empire, had been to him onlymonstrous words. The Republic, a guillotine in the twilight; the Empire,a sword in the night. He had just taken a look at it, and where he hadexpected to find only a chaos of shadows, he had beheld, with a sortof unprecedented surprise, mingled with fear and joy, stars sparkling,Mirabeau, Vergniaud, Saint-Just, Robespierre, Camille, Desmoulins,Danton, and a sun arise, Napoleon. He did not know where he stood. Herecoiled, blinded by the brilliant lights. Little by little, when hisastonishment had passed off, he grew accustomed to this radiance, hecontemplated these deeds without dizziness, he examined these personageswithout terror; the Revolution and the Empire presented themselvesluminously, in perspective, before his mind's eye; he beheld each ofthese groups of events and of men summed up in two tremendous facts: theRepublic in the sovereignty of civil right restored to the masses,the Empire in the sovereignty of the French idea imposed on Europe; hebeheld the grand figure of the people emerge from the Revolution, andthe grand figure of France spring forth from the Empire. He assertedin his conscience, that all this had been good. What his dazzled stateneglected in this, his first far too synthetic estimation, we do notthink it necessary to point out here. It is the state of a mind on themarch that we are recording. Progress is not accomplished in one stage.That stated, once for all, in connection with what precedes as well aswith what is to follow, we continue.

  He then perceived that, up to that moment, he had comprehended hiscountry no more than he had comprehended his father. He had not knowneither the one or the other, and a sort of voluntary night had obscuredhis eyes. Now he saw, and on the one hand he admired, while on the otherhe adored.

  He was filled with regret and remorse, and he reflected in despair thatall he had in his soul could now be said only to the tomb. Oh! if hisfather had still been in existence, if he had still had him, if God, inhis compassion and his goodness, had permitted his father to be stillamong the living, how he would have run, how he would have precipitatedhimself, how he would have cried to his father: "Father! Here I am! Itis I! I have the same heart as thou! I am thy son!" How he would haveembraced that white head, bathed his hair in tears, gazed upon his scar,pressed his hands, adored his garment, kissed his feet! Oh! Why had hisfather died so early, before his time, before the justice, the love ofhis son had come to him? Marius had a continual sob in his heart, whichsaid to him every moment: "Alas!" At the same time, he became more trulyserious, more truly grave, more sure of his thought and his faith. Ateach instant, gleams of the true came to complete his reason. An inwardgrowth seemed to be in progress within him. He was conscious of a sortof natural enlargement, which gave him two things that were new tohim--his father and his country.

  As everything opens when one has a key, so he explained to himself thatwhich he had hated, he penetrated that which he had abhorred; henceforthhe plainly perceived the providential, divine and human sense of thegreat things which he had been taught to detest, and of the great menwhom he had been instructed to curse. When he reflected on his formeropinions, which were but those of yesterday, and which, nevertheless,seemed to him already so very ancient, he grew indignant, yet he smiled.

  From the rehabilitation of his father, he naturally passed to therehabilitation of Napoleon.

  But the latter, we will confess, was not effected without labor.

  From his infancy, he had been imbued with the judgments of the party of1814, on Bonaparte. Now, all the prejudices of the Restoration, all itsinterests, all its instincts tended to disfigure Napoleon. It execratedhim even more than it did Robespierre. It had very cleverly turned tosufficiently good account the fatigue of the nation, and the hatred ofmothers. Bonaparte had become an almost fabulous monster, and in orderto paint him to the imagination of the people, which, as we latelypointed out, resembles the imagination of children, the party of 1814made him appear under all sorts of terrifying masks in succession, fromthat which is terrible though it remains grandiose to that which isterrible and becomes grotesque, from Tiberius to the bugaboo. Thus, inspeaking of Bonaparte, one was free to sob or to puff up withlaughter, provided that hatred lay at the bottom. Marius had neverentertained--about _that man_, as he was called--any other ideas in hismind. They had combined with the tenacity which existed in his nature.There was in him a headstrong little man who hated Napoleon.

  On reading history, on studying him, especially in the documents andmaterials for history, the veil which concealed Napoleon from the eyesof Marius was gradually rent. He caught a glimpse of something immense,and he suspected that he had been deceived up to that moment, onthe score of Bonaparte as about all the rest; each day he saw moredistinctly; and he set about mounting, slowly, step by step, almostregretfully in the beginning, then with intoxication and as thoughattracted by an irresistible fascination, first the sombre steps, thenthe vaguely illuminated steps, at last the luminous and splendid stepsof enthusiasm.

  One night, he was alone in his little chamber near the roof. His candlewas burning; he was reading, with his elbows resting on his table closeto the open window. All sorts of reveries reached him from space, andmingled with his thoughts. What a spectacle is the night! One hears dullsounds, without knowing whence they proceed; one beholds Jupiter, whichis twelve hundred times larger than the earth, glowing like a firebrand,the azure is black, the stars shine; it is formidable.

  He was perusing the bulletins of the grand army, those heroic strophespenned on the field of battle; there, at intervals, he beheld hisfather's name, always the name of the Emperor; the whole of that greatEmpire presented itself to him; he felt a flood swelling and risingwithin him; it seemed to him at moments that his father passed closeto him like a breath, and whispered in his ear; he gradually got intoa singular state; he thought that he heard drums, cannon, trumpets,the measured tread of battalions, the dull and distant gallop of thecavalry; from time to time, his eyes were raised heavenward, and gazedupon the colossal constellations as they gleamed in the measurelessdepths of space, then they fell upon his book once more, and there theybeheld other colossal things moving confusedly. His heart contractedwithin him. He was in a transport, trembling, panting. All at once,without himself knowing what was in him, and what impulse he wasobeying, he sprang to his feet, stretched both arms out of the window,gazed intently into the gloom, the silence, the infinite darkness, theeternal immensity, and exclaimed: "Long live the Emperor!"

  From that moment forth, all was over; the Ogre of Corsica,--theusurper,--the tyrant,--the monster who was the lover of his ownsisters,--the actor who took lessons of Talma,--the poisoner ofJaffa,--the tiger,--Buonaparte,--all this vanished, and gave placein his mind to a vague and brilliant radiance in which shone, at aninaccessible height, the pale marble phantom of Cæsar. The Emperor hadbeen for his father only the well-beloved captain whom one admires, forwhom one sacrifices one's self; he was something more to Marius. He wasthe predestined constructor of the French group, succeeding the Romangroup in the domination of the universe. He was a prodigious architect,of a destruction, the continuer of Charlemagne, of Louis XI., of HenryIV., of Richelieu, of Louis XIV., and of the Committee of Public Safety,having his spots, no doubt, his faults, his crimes even, being a man,that is to say; but august in his faults, brilliant in his spots,powerful in his crime.

  He was the predestined man, who had forced all nations to say: "Thegreat nation!" He was better than that, he was the very incarnation ofFrance, conquering Europe by the sword which he grasped, and the worldby the light which he shed. Marius saw in Bonaparte the dazzling spectrewhich will always rise upon the frontier, and which will guard thefuture. Despot but dictator; a despot resulting from a republic andsumming up a revolution. Napoleon became for him the man-people as JesusChrist is the man-God.

  It will be perceived, that like all new converts to a religion, hisconversion intoxicated him, he hurled himself headlong into adhesionand he went too far. His nature was so constructed; once on the downwardslope, it was almost impossible for him to put on the drag. Fanaticismfor the sword took possession of him, and complicated in his mind hisenthusiasm for the idea. He did not perceive that, along with genius,and pell-mell, he was admitting force, that is to say, that he wasinstalling in two compartments of his idolatry, on the one hand thatwhich is divine, on the other that which is brutal. In many respects, hehad set about deceiving himself otherwise. He admitted everything. Thereis a way of encountering error while on one's way to the truth. He had aviolent sort of good faith which took everything in the lump. In the newpath which he had entered on, in judging the mistakes of the old regime,as in measuring the glory of Napoleon, he neglected the attenuatingcircumstances.

  At all events, a tremendous step had been taken. Where he had formerlybeheld the fall of the monarchy, he now saw the advent of France. Hisorientation had changed. What had been his East became the West. He hadturned squarely round.

  All these revolutions were accomplished within him, without his familyobtaining an inkling of the case.

  When, during this mysterious labor, he had entirely shed his old Bourbonand ultra skin, when he had cast off the aristocrat, the Jacobite andthe Royalist, when he had become thoroughly a revolutionist, profoundlydemocratic and republican, he went to an engraver on the Quai desOrfévres and ordered a hundred cards bearing this name: _Le Baron MariusPontmercy_.

  This was only the strictly logical consequence of the change which hadtaken place in him, a change in which everything gravitated round hisfather.

  Only, as he did not know any one and could not sow his cards with anyporter, he put them in his pocket.

  By another natural consequence, in proportion as he drew nearer to hisfather, to the latter's memory, and to the things for which thecolonel had fought five and twenty years before, he receded from hisgrandfather. We have long ago said, that M. Gillenormand's temper didnot please him. There already existed between them all the dissonancesof the grave young man and the frivolous old man. The gayety of Géronteshocks and exasperates the melancholy of Werther. So long as the samepolitical opinions and the same ideas had been common to them both,Marius had met M. Gillenormand there as on a bridge. When the bridgefell, an abyss was formed. And then, over and above all, Mariusexperienced unutterable impulses to revolt, when he reflected that itwas M. Gillenormand who had, from stupid motives, torn him ruthlesslyfrom the colonel, thus depriving the father of the child, and the childof the father.

  By dint of pity for his father, Marius had nearly arrived at aversionfor his grandfather.

  Nothing of this sort, however, was betrayed on the exterior, as we havealready said. Only he grew colder and colder; laconic at meals, and rarein the house. When his aunt scolded him for it, he was very gentle andalleged his studies, his lectures, the examinations, etc., as a pretext.His grandfather never departed from his infallible diagnosis: "In love!I know all about it."

  From time to time Marius absented himself.

  "Where is it that he goes off like this?" said his aunt.

  On one of these trips, which were always very brief, he went toMontfermeil, in order to obey the injunction which his father hadleft him, and he sought the old sergeant to Waterloo, the inn-keeperThénardier. Thénardier had failed, the inn was closed, and no one knewwhat had become of him. Marius was away from the house for four days onthis quest.

  "He is getting decidedly wild," said his grandfather.

  They thought they had noticed that he wore something on his breast,under his shirt, which was attached to his neck by a black ribbon.