Les Miserables (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (67 page)

Joly was a young Malade Imaginaire. What he had learned in medicine was rather to be a patient than a physician. At twenty-three, he thought himself a valetudinarian, and passed his time in looking at his tongue in a mirror. He declared that man is a magnet, like the needle, and in his room he placed his bed with the head to the south and the foot to the north, so that at night the circulation of the blood should not be interfered with by the grand magnetic current of the globe. In stormy weather, he felt his pulse. Nevertheless, the gayest of all. All these incoherences, young, notional, sickly, joyous, got along very well together, and the result was an eccentric and agreeable person whom his comrades, prodigal of consonants, called Jolllly. “You can fly upon four L‘s,”
[ailes,
wings] said Jean Prouvaire.

Joly had the habit of rubbing his nose with the end of his cane which is an indication of a sagacious mind.

All these young men, diverse as they were, and of whom, as a whole we ought only to speak seriously, had the same religion: Progress.

All were legitimate sons of the French Revolution. The giddiest became solemn when pronouncing this date: ‘89. Their fathers according to the flesh, were, or had been Feuillants, Royalists, Doctrinaires; it mattered little; this hurly-burly which antedated them, had nothing to do with them; they were young; the pure blood of principles flowed in their veins. They attached themselves without an intermediate shade to incorruptible right and to absolute duty.

Affiliated and initiated, they secretly sketched out their ideas.

Among all these passionate hearts and all these undoubting minds there was one sceptic. How did he happen to be there? from juxtaposition. The name of this sceptic was Grantaire, and he usually signed with the rebus: R
[grand R,
capital R]. Grantaire was a man who took good care not to believe anything. He was, moreover, one of the students who had learned most during their course in Paris; knew that the best coffee was at the Café Lemblin, and the best billiard table at the Café Voltaire; that you could find good rolls and good girls at the hermitage on the Boulevard du Maine, broiled chickens at Mother Saguet‘s, excellent chowders at the Barrière de la Cunette, and a peculiar light white wine at the Barrière du Combat. He knew the good places for everything; furthermore, boxing, tennis, a few dances, and he was a profound cudgel-player. A great drinker to boot. He was frightfully ugly; the prettiest shoebinder of that period, Irma Boissy, revolting at his ugliness, had uttered this sentence: “Grantaire is impossible,” but Grantaire’s self-conceit was not disconcerted. He looked tenderly and fixedly upon every woman, appearing to say of them all:
if I only would;
and trying to make his comrades believe that he was in general demand.

All these words: rights of the people, rights of man, social contract, French Revolution, republic, democracy, humanity, civilisation, religion, progress, were, to Grantaire, very nearly meaningless. He smiled at them. Scepticism, that cries of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind. He lived in irony. This was his axiom: There is
only
one certainty, my full glass. He ridiculed all devotion, under all circumstances, in the brother as well as the father, in Robespierre the younger as well as Loizerolles. “Much good it does them to be dead,” he exclaimed. He said of the cross: “There is a gibbet which has made a success.” A rover, a gambler, a libertine, and often drunk, he displeased these young thinkers by singing incessantly:
“I loves the girls and I loves good wine.”
Tune: Vive Henri IV.

Still, this sceptic had a fanaticism. This fanaticism was neither an idea, nor a dogma, nor an art, nor a science; it was a man: Enjolras. Grantaire admired, loved, and venerated Enjolras. To whom did this anarchical doubter ally himself in this phalanx of absolute minds? To the most absolute. In what way did Enjolras subjugate him? By ideas? No. By character. A phenomenon often seen. A sceptic adhering to a believer; that is as simple as the law of the complementary colours. What we lack attracts us. Nobody loves the light like the blind man. The dwarf adores the drum-major. The toad is always looking up at the sky; why? To see the bird fly. Grantaire, in whom doubt was creeping, loved to see faith soaring in Enjolras. He had need of Enjolras. Without understanding it himself clearly, and without trying to explain it, that chaste, healthy, firm, direct, hard, candid nature charmed him. He admired, by instinct, his opposite. His soft, wavering, disjointed, diseased, deformed ideas, attached themselves to Enjolras as to a backbone. His moral spine leaned upon that firmness. Grantaire, by the side of Enjolras, became somebody again. He was himself, moreover, composed of two apparently incompatible elements. He was ironical and cordial. His indifference was loving. His mind dispensed with belief, yet his heart could not dispense with friendship. A thorough contradiction; for an affection is a conviction. His nature was so. There are men who seem born to be the opposite, the reverse, the counterpart.

Grantaire, a true satellite of Enjolras, lived in this circle of young people; he dwelt in it; he took pleasure only in it; he followed them everywhere. His delight was to see these forms coming and going in the fumes of the wine. He was tolerated for his good-humour.

Enjolras, being a believer, disdained this sceptic, and being sober, scorned this drunkard. He granted him a little haughty pity. Grantaire was an unaccepted Pylades. Always rudely treated by Enjolras, harshly repelled, rejected, yet returning, he said of Enjolras: “What a fine statue!”

ON A CERTAIN AFTERNOON, which had, as we shall see, some coincidence with events before related, Laigle de Meaux was leaning lazily back against the doorway of the Café Musain. He had the appearance of a caryatid on vacation; he was supporting nothing but his reverie. He was looking at the Place Saint Michel. Leaning back is a way of lying down standing which is not disliked by dreamers. Laigle de Meaux was thinking, without melancholy, of a little mishap which had befallen him the day before at the law-school, and which modified his personal plans for the future—plans which were, moreover, rather indefinite.

Reverie does not hinder a carriage from going by, nor the dreamer from noticing the carriage. Laigle de Meaux, whose eyes were wandering in a sort of general stroll, perceived, through all his somnambulism, a two-wheeled vehicle turning into the square, which was moving at a walk, as if undecided. What did this carriage want? why was it moving at a walk? Laigle looked at it. There was inside, beside the driver, a young man, and before the young man, a large carpet-bag. The bag exhibited to the passers-by this name, written in big black letters upon a card sewed to the cloth: MARIUS PONTMERCY.

This name changed Laigle’s attitude. He straightened up and addressed this apostrophe to the young man in the cabriolet:

“Monsieur Marius Pontmercy?”

The cabriolet, thus called upon, stopped.

The young man, who also seemed to be profoundly musing, raised his eyes.

“Well?” said he.

“You are Monsieur Marius Pontmercy?”

“Certainly.”

“I was looking for you,” said Laigle de Meaux.

“How is that?” inquired Marius; for he it was, in fact he had just left his grandfather‘s, and he had before him a face which he saw for the first time. “I do not know you.”

“Nor I either. I do not know you,” answered Laigle.

Marius thought he had met a buffoon, and that this was the beginning of a mystification in the middle of the street. He was not in a pleasant humour just at that moment. He knit his brows; Laigle de Meaux, imperturbable, continued:

“You were not at school yesterday”

“It is possible.”

“It is certain.”

“You are a student?” inquired Marius.

“Yes, Monsieur. Like you. The day before yesterday I happened to go into the school. You know, one sometimes has such notions. The professor was about to call the roll. You know that they are very ridiculous just at that time. If you miss the third call, they erase your name. Sixty francs gone.”

Marius began to listen. Laigle continued:

“It was Blondeau who was calling the roll. You know Blondeau; he has a very sharp and very malicious nose, and delights in smelling out the absent. He slily commenced with the letter P. I was not listening, not being concerned in that letter. The roll went on well, no erasure, the universe was present, Blondeau was sad. I said to myself, Blondeau, my love, you won’t do the slightest execution to-day Suddenly, Blondeau calls
Marius Pontmercy;
nobody answers. Blondeau, full of hope, repeats louder:
Marius
Pontmercy? And he seizes his pen. Monsieur, I have bowels. I said to myself rapidly: Here is a brave fellow who is going to be erased. Attention. This is a real live fellow who is not punctual. He is not a good boy. He is not a book-worm, a student who studies, a white-billed pedant strong on science, letters, theology, and wisdom, one of those numskulls drawn out with four pins, a pin for each faculty. He is an honourable idler who loafs, who likes to rusticate, who cultivates the grisette, who pays his court to beauty, who is perhaps, at this very moment, with my mistress. Let us save him. Death to Blondeau! At that moment Blondeau dipped his pen, black with erasures into the ink, cast his tawny eye over the room, and repeated for the third time:
Marius Pontmercy!
I answered:
Present!
In that way you were not erased.”

“Monsieur!—” said Marius.

“And I was,” added Laigle de Meaux.

“I do not understand you,” said Marius.

Laigle resumed:

“Nothing more simple. I was near the chair to answer, and near the door to escape. The professor was looking at me with a certain fixedness. Suddenly, Blondeau, who must be the malignant nose of which Boileau speaks, leaps to the letter L. L is my letter; I am of Meaux, and my name is Lesgle.”

“L‘Aigle!” interrupted Marius, “what a fine name.”

“Monsieur, the Blondeau re-echoes this fine name and cries:
‘Laigle!’
I answer:
Present!
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 is uncomplimentary to you, but which brought me only to grief. So saying, he erases me.”

Marius exclaimed:

“Monsieur, I am mortified—”

“First of all,” interrupted Laigle, “I beg leave to embalm Blondeau in a few words of feeling eulogy. I suppose him dead. There wouldn’t be much to change in his thinness, his paleness, his coldness, his stiffness, and his odour. And I say:
Erudimini qui judicatis terram.
Here lies Blondeau, Blondeau the Nose, Blondeau Nasica, the ox of discipline,
bos disciplinœ,
the Molossus of his orders, the angel of the roll, who was straight, square, exact, rigid, honest, and hideous. God has erased him as he erased me.”

Marius resumed:

“I am very sorry—”

“Young man,” said Laigle of Meaux, “let this be a lesson to you. In future, be punctual.”

“I really must give a thousand excuses.”

“Never expose yourself again to having your neighbour erased.”

“I am very sorry.”

Laigle burst out laughing.

“And I, in raptures; I was on the brink of being a lawyer. This rupture saves me. I renounce the triumphs of the bar. I shall not defend the widow, and I shall not attack the orphan. No more toga, no more probation. Here is my erasure obtained. It is to you that I owe it, Monsieur Pontmercy. I intend to pay you a solemn visit of thanks. Where do you live?”

“In this cabriolet,” said Marius.

“A sign of opulence,” replied Laigle calmly. “I congratulate you. You have here rent of nine thousand francs a year.”

Just then Courfeyrac came out of the café.

Marius smiled sadly.

“I have been paying this rent for two hours, and I hope to get out of it; but, it is the usual story, I do not know where to go.”

“Monsieur,” said Courfeyrac, “come home with me.”

“I should have priority,” observed Laigle, “but I have no home.”

“Silence, Bossuet,” replied Courfeyrac.

“Bossuet,” said Marius, “but I thought you called yourself Laigle.

“Of Meaux,” answered Laigle; “metaphorically, Bossuet.”

Courfeyrac got into the cabriolet.

“Driver,” said he, “Hôtel de la Porte Saint Jacques.”

And that same evening, Marius was installed in a room at the Hotel de la Porte Saint Jacques, side by side with Courfeyrac.

IN A FEW DAYS, Marius was the friend of Courfeyrac. Youth is the season of prompt weldings and rapid cicatrisations. Marius, in Courfeyrac’s presence, breathed freely, a new thing for him. Courfeyrac asked him no questions. He did not even think of it. At that age, the countenance tells all at once. Speech is useless. There are some young men of whom we might say their physiog nomies are talkative. They look at one another, they know one another.

One morning, however, Courfeyrac abruptly put this question to him.

“By the way, have you any political opinions?”

“What do you mean?” said Marius, almost offended at the question.

“What are you?”

“Bonapartist democrat.”

“Grey shade of quiet mouse colour,” said Courfeyrac.

The next day, Courfeyrac introduced Marius to the Café Musain. Then he whispered in his ear with a smile: “I must give you your admission into the revolution.” And he took him into the room of the Friends of the A B C. He presented him to the other members, saying in an undertone this simple word which Marius did not understand: “A pupil.”

Marius had fallen into a mental wasps’ nest. Still, although silent and serious, he was not the less winged, nor the less armed.

Marius, up to this time solitary and inclined to speak in soliloquies and asides by habit and by taste, was a little bewildered at this flock of young men about him. All these different progressives attacked him at once, and perplexed him. The tumultuous sweep and sway of all these minds at liberty and at work set his ideas in a whirl. Sometimes, in the confusion, they went so far from him that he had some difficulty in finding them again. He heard talk of philosophy, of literature, of art, of history, of religion, in a style he had not looked for. He caught glimpses of strange appearances; and, as he did not bring them into perspective, he was not sure that it was not a chaos that he saw. On abandoning his grandfather’s opinions for his father’s he had thought himself settled; he now suspected, with anxiety, and without daring to confess it to himself, that he was not. The angle under which he saw all things was beginning to change anew. A certain oscillation shook the whole horizon of his brain. A strange internal moving-day He almost suffered from it.