 Chapter 3 of Book 3 of Les Miserables, Volume 3, by Victor Hugo. And the tease, Salon, was all that Marius Paul Merci knew of the world. It was the only opening through which he could get a glimpse of life. This opening was somber, and more cold than warmth, more night than day, came to him through this skylight. This child, who had been all joy and light on entering this strange world, soon became melancholy, and what is still more contrary to his age, grave. Descended by all those singular and imposing personages, he gazed about him with serious amazement. Everything conspired to increase this astonishment in him. There were in Madame Détise Salon some very noble ladies named Mathin, Noë, Lévi, L-E-V-I-S, which was pronounced Lévi, Cambiz, C-A-M-B-I-S pronounced Cambiz, these antique visages and these biblical names mingled in the child's mind with the Old Testament which he was learning by heart. And when they were all there seated in a circle around a dying fire, sparely lighted by a lamp shaded with green, with their severe profiles their gray or white hair, their long gowns of another age, whose legubrious colors could not be distinguished, dropping at rare intervals words which were both majestic and severe, little Marius stared at them with frightened eyes in the conviction that he beheld not women, but patriarchs and magi, not real beings, but phantoms. With these phantoms priests were sometimes mingled, frequenters of this ancient salon, and some gentlemen, the Marquis de Sasse, private secretary to Madame de Berry, the Vicomte de Val, who published under the pseudonym of Charles-Antoine monorimed odes, the Prince de Boeuf, who, very young, had a gray head and a pretty and witty wife, whose very low-necked toilettes of scarlet velvet with gold torsades alarmed these shadows. The Marquis de C. de I, the man in all France who best understood proportioned politeness, the Comte dame, the kindly man with the amiable chin, and the Chevalier de Portugui, a pillar of the library of the Louvre, called the King's Cabinet, M. de Portugui, bald and rather aged than old, was wont to relate that in 1793 at the age of sixteen he had been put in the galleys as refractory and chained with an octogenarian, the Bishop of Mirpoix, also refractory, but as a priest while he was so in the capacity of a soldier. This was at Toulon. Their business was to go at night and gather up on the scaffold the heads and bodies of the persons who had been guillotined during the day. They bore away on their backs these dripping corpses and their red galley-slave blouses had a clot of blood at the back of the neck, which was dry in the morning and wet at night. These tragic tales abounded in M. de T. Céline, and by dint of cursing Marat, they applauded Trestayon. Some deputies of the undiscoverable variety played their wist there, M. de Tibour du Chaleur, M. Lévargent de Gomicour, and the celebrated scoffer of the right, M. Cornet d'Incour. The Bélif de Ferrette, with his short breeches and his thin legs, sometimes traversed this salon on his way to M. de Talirand. He had been M. Le Comte d'Artois's companion in pleasures, and unlike Aristotle crouching under Kampaspe, he had made the Guimard crawl on all fours, and in that way he had exhibited to the ages a philosopher avenged by a Bélif. As for the priests, there was the Abbe Halma, the same to whom M. La Rose, his collaborator en la foudre, said, Bah, who is there who is not fifty years old, a few greenhorns perhaps. The Abbe Le Tournaire, preacher to the king, the Abbe Fressinou, who was not as yet either count or bishop or minister or peer, and who wore an old cassock whose buttons were missing, and the Abbe Caravanon, curé of Saint-Germain-des-Praires. Also the Pope's nuncio, then M. Maki Archbishop of Nassibi, later on cardinal, remarkable for his long pensive nose, and another M. M. entitled thus, Abba-tay Palmieri, domestic prelate, one of the seven participant protonitaries of the Holy See, canon of the illustrious Liberian Basilica, Advocate of the Saints, postulatory d'Eithanti, which refers to matters of canonization and signifies very nearly master of requests of the section of paradise. Lastly, two cardinals, M. de la Luzerne and M. de C. L. T. The cardinal of Luzerne was a writer and was destined to have a few years later the honour of signing in the conservataire articles side by side with Chateaubriand. M. de C. L. T. was Archbishop of Toul and often made trips to Paris to his nephew, the Marquis de T., who was minister of marine and war. The cardinal of C. L. T. was a merry little man who displayed his red stockings beneath his tucked-up cassock, his specialty was a hatred of the encyclopedia, and his desperate play at billiards and persons who, at that epoch, passed through the Rue M. on summer evenings, where the hotel de C. L. T. then stood, halted, to listen to the shock of the balls, and the piercing voice of the cardinal, shouting to his conclavist, M. C. C. L. T. Bishop in Partibus of Cariste, Mark Abbey, I make a canon. The cardinal de C. L. T. had been brought to M. de T. by his most intimate friend, M. de Rochlor, former Bishop of Saint-Ly, and one of the forty. M. de Rochlor was notable for his lofty figure and his assiduity at the academy. Through the glass door of the neighbouring hall of the library where the French Academy then held its meetings, the curious could, on every Tuesday, contemplate the ex-bishop of Saint-Ly, usually standing erect, freshly powdered, in violet hose, with his back turned to the door, apparently for the purpose of allowing a better view of his little collar. All these ecclesiastics, though for the most part as much courtiers as churchmen, added to the gravity of the T. Saint-Ly, whose seniorial aspect was accentuated by five peers of France, the Marquis de Vibre, the Marquis de Tal, the Marquis de Herbe, the Vicomte d'Homme, and the Duc de Val. This Duc de Val, although Prince de Mont, that is to say a reigning prince abroad, had so high an idea of France and its peerage that he viewed everything through their medium. It was he who said, the cardinals are the peers of France of Rome, the lords are the peers of France of England. Moreover, as it is indispensable that the revolution should be everywhere in this century, this feudal salon was, as we have said, dominated by a bourgeois. Monsieur Gilles Normand reigned there. There lay the essence and quintessence of the Parisian White Society. There, reputations, even royalist reputations were held in quarantine. There is always a trace of anarchy in renown. Chateaubriand, had he entered there, would have produced the effect of Père du Chien. Some of the scoffed at did, nevertheless, penetrate lither on sufferance. Conte-Buge was received there, subject to correction. The noble salons of the present day no longer resemble those salons. The Faux-Bourg Saint-Germain reeks of the faggot even now. The royalists of today are demagogues, let us record it to their credit. At Madame de Tise the society was superior, taste was exquisite and haughty, under the cover of a great show of politeness. Manners there admitted of all sorts of involuntary refinements which were the old regime itself buried but still alive. Some of these habits, especially in the matter of language, seem eccentric. Persons but superficially acquainted with them would have taken for provincial that which was only antique. A woman was called Madame la Générale. Madame la Colonel was not entirely disused. The charming Madame de Léon, in memory no doubt of the Duchesse de Longville and de Chèvreuse, preferred this appellation to her title of princesse. The Marquise de Créquis was also called Madame la Colonel. It was this little high society which invented at the Tularies the refinement of speaking to the king in private as the king in the third person and never as your majesty, the designation of your majesty having been soiled by the usurper. Men and deeds were brought to judgment there. They jeered at the age which released them from the necessity of understanding it. They abetted each other in amazement. They communicated to each other that modicum of light which they possessed. Methuselah bestowed information on epimenities. The deaf man made the blind man acquainted with the course of things. They declared that the time which had elapsed since Koblence had not existed. In the same manner that Louis the 18th was by the grace of God in the five and twentieth year of his reign, the emigrants were by rights in the five and twentieth year of their adolescence. All was harmonious. Nothing was too much alive. Speech hardly amounted to a breath. The newspapers agreeing with the salons seemed a papyrus. There were some young people, but they were rather dead. The liveries in the antechamber were antiquated. These utterly obsolete personages were served by domestics of the same stamp. They all had the air of having lived a long time ago and of obstinately resisting the sepulcher. Nearly the whole dictionary consisted of conserver, conservation, conservatère, to be in good odour, that was the point. There are, in fact, aromatics in the opinions of these venerable groups and their ideas smelt of it. It was a mummified society. The masters were embalmed. The servants were stuffed with straw. A worthy old marquis, an emigré and ruined, who had but a solitary maid, continued to say, My people. What did they do in Madame de Tessalon? They were ultra. To be ultra, this word, although what it represents may not have disappeared, has no longer any meaning at the present day. Let us explain it. To be ultra is to go beyond. It is to attack the scepter in the name of the throne and the mitre in the name of the atar. It is to ill-treat the thing which one is dragging. It is to kick over the traces. It is to cavel at the faggot on the score of the amount of cooking received by heretics. It is to reproach the idol with its small amount of idolatry. It is to insult through excess of respect. It is to discover that the pope is not sufficiently paypish, that the king is not sufficiently royal, and that the knight has too little light. It is to be discontented with alabaster, with snow, with the swan and the lily in the name of whiteness. It is to be a partisan of things to the point of becoming their enemy. It is to be so strongly foe as to be against. The ultra spirit especially characterizes the first phase of the restoration. Nothing in history resembles that quarter of an hour which begins in 1814 and terminates about 1820 with the advent of Monsieur de Villal, the practical man of the right. These six years were an extraordinary moment, at one and the same time brilliant and gloomy, smiling and somber, illuminated as by the radiance of dawn and entirely covered at the same time with the shadows of the great catastrophes which still filled the horizon and were slowly sinking into the past. There existed in that light and that shadow a complete little new and old world, comic and sad, juvenile and senile, which was rubbing its eyes. Nothing resembles an awakening like a return, a group which regarded France with ill temper and which France regarded with irony, good old owls of marquises by the streetful who had returned, and of ghosts, the former subjects of amazement at everything, brave and noble gentlemen who smiled at being in France but wept also, delighted to behold their country once more in despair at not finding their monarchy. The nobility of the Crusades, treating the nobility of the Empire, that is to say, the nobility of the sword, with scorn. Historic races who had lost the sense of history, the sons of the companions of Charlemagne, disdaining the companions of Napoleon. The swords, as we have just remarked, returned the insult. The sword of Fontenoy was laughable and nothing but scrap of rusty iron. The sword of Marengo was odious and was only a saber. Former days did not recognize yesterday. People no longer had the feeling for what was grand. There was someone who called Bonaparte Scappin. This society no longer exists. Nothing of it we repeat exists today. When we select from it some one figure at random, attempt to make it live again in thought, it seems as strange to us as the world before the Deluge. It is because it, too, as a matter of fact, has been engulfed in a Deluge. It has disappeared beneath two revolutions. What billows are ideas? How quickly they cover all that it is their mission to destroy and to bury, and how promptly they create frightful gulfs. Such was the physiognomy of the salons of those distant and candid times when M. Martenville had more wit than Voltaire. These salons had a literature and politics of their own. They believed in Fiedet. M. Agier laid down the law in them. They commented M. Colnay, the old bookseller and publicist of the Quimalaquet. Napoleon was to them thoroughly the Corsican ogre. Later on the introduction into history of M. Le Marquis de Bonaparte, the lieutenant general of the King's armies, was a concession to the spirit of the age. These salons did not long preserve their purity. Beginning with 1818, doctrinarians began to spring up in them, a disturbing shade. Their way was to be royalists and to excuse themselves for being so. Where the altars were very proud, the doctrinarians were rather ashamed. They had wit, they had silence. Their political dogma was suitably impregnated with arrogance they should have succeeded. They indulged, and usefully too, in excesses in the matter of white neckties and tightly buttoned coats. The mistake or the misfortune of the doctrinarian party was to create aged youth. They assumed the poses of wise men. They dreamed of engrafting a temperate power on the absolute and excessive principle. They opposed and sometimes with rare intelligence conservative liberalism to the liberalism which demolishes. They were heard to say, Thanks for royalism it has rendered more than one service. It has brought back tradition, worship, religion, respect. It is faithful, brave, chivalric, loving, devoted. It has mingled, though with regret, the secular granders of the monarchy with the new granders of the nation. Its mistake is not to understand the revolution, the empire, glory, liberty, young ideas, young generations, the age. But this mistake which it makes with regard to us, have we not sometimes been guilty of it towards them? The revolution whose heirs we are ought to be intelligent on all points. To attack royalism is a misconstruction of liberalism. What an error! And what blindness! Revolutionary France is wanting in respect towards historic France, that is to say towards its mother, that is to say towards itself. After the 5th of September the nobility of the monarchy is treated as the nobility of the empire was treated after the 5th of July. They were unjust to the eagle as we are unjust to the fleur-de-lis. It seems that we must always have something to proscribe. Does it serve any purpose to ungild the crown of Louis XIV, to scrape the coat of arms of Henri IV? We scoff at Monsieur de Vaublan for erasing the ends from the bridge of Yéna. What was it that he did? What are we doing? Bouvines belongs to us as well as Marengo. The fleur-de-lis are ours as well as the ends. That is our patrimony. To what purpose shall we diminish it? We must not deny our country in the past any more than in the present. Why not accept the whole of history? Why not love the whole of France? It was thus that Doctrinarians criticized and protected royalism, which was displeased head criticism and furious at protection. The altars marked the first epoch of royalism. Congregation characterized the second. Skill follows Arder. Let us confine ourselves here to this sketch. In the course of this narrative the author of this book has encountered in his path this curious moment of contemporary history. He has been forced to cast a passing glance upon it and to trace once more some of the singular features of this society which is unknown today. But he does it rapidly and without any bitter or derisive idea. Souvenirs both respectful and affectionate, for they touch his mother, attach him to this past. Moreover, let us remark, the same petty world had a grandeur of its own. One may smile at it, but one can neither despise nor hate it. It was the France of former days. Marius Pomerci pursued some studies as all children do. When he emerged from the hands of Antigile Normand, his grandfather confided him to a worthy professor of the most purely classic innocence. This young soul which was expanding passed from a prude to a vulgar pedant. Marius went through his years of college then he entered the law school. He was a royalist, fanatical, and severe. He did not love his grandfather much, as the latter's gaiety and cynicism repelled him, and his feelings towards his father were gloomy. He was on the whole a cold and ardent, noble, generous, proud, religious, enthusiastic lad, dignified to harshness, pure to shyness. CHAPTER 4 END OF THE BRIGAND The conclusion of Marius's classical studies coincided with Monsieur Gilles Normand's departure from society. The old man bade farewell to the Fauxberg Saint-Germain and to Madame de Tiz Salon, and established himself in the Mardis in his house of the Rue des Filles du Calvaires. There he had for servants in addition to the porter, that chambermaid Nicollet who had succeeded to Mignon, and that short breathed and Percy Basque who have been mentioned above. In 1827 Marius had just attained his seventeenth year. One evening on his return home he saw his grandfather holding a letter in his hand. Marius said Monsieur Gilles Normand, you will set out for Vénon tomorrow. Why? said Marius, to see your father. Marius was seized with a trembling fit. He had thought of everything except this, that he should one day be called upon to see his father. Nothing could be more unexpected, more surprising, and, let us admit it, more disagreeable to him. It was forcing estrangement into reconciliation. It was not an affliction, but it was an unpleasant duty. Marius, in addition to his motives of political antipathy, was convinced that his father, the slasher as Monsieur Gilles Normand called him on his amiable days, did not love him. This was evident since he had abandoned him to others. Feeling that he was not beloved, he did not love. Nothing is more simple, he said to himself. He was so astounded that he did not question Monsieur Gilles Normand. The grandfather resumed, it appears that he is ill. He demands your presence. And after a pause he added, set out tomorrow morning. I think there is a coach which leaves the Cour des Fontaines at six o'clock, and which arrives in the evening, take it. He says that here is haste. Then he crushed the letter in his hand and thrust it into his pocket. Marius might have set out that very evening and have been with his father on the following morning. A diligence from the Roues-du-Boulois took the trip to Rouen by night at that date, and passed through Vernon. Neither Marius nor Monsieur Gilles Normand thought of making inquiries about it. The next day at twilight Marius reached Vernon. People were just beginning to light their candles. He asked the first person whom he met for Monsieur Paul Mercy's house. For in his own mind he agreed with the restoration, and like it did not recognize his father's claim to the title of either Colonel or Baron. The house was pointed out to him. He rang. A woman with a little lamp in her hand opened the door. Monsieur Paul Mercy said Marius. The woman remained motionless. Is this his house? demanded Marius. The woman nodded affirmatively. Can I speak with him? The woman shook her head. But I am his son, persisted Marius. He is expecting me. He no longer expects you, said the woman. Then he perceived that she was weeping. She pointed to the door of a room on the ground floor. He entered. In that room, which was lighted by a tallow candle standing on the chimney-piece, there were three men, one standing erect, another kneeling, and one lying had full length on the floor in his shirt. The one on the floor was the Colonel. The other two were the doctor and the priest who was engaged in prayer. The Colonel had been attacked by brain fever three days previously. As he had a foreboding of evil at the very beginning of his illness he had written to Monsieur Gilneau Mall to demand his son. The malady had grown worse. On the very evening of Marius's arrival at Vernon the Colonel had had an attack of delirium. He had risen from his bed in spite of the surface efforts to prevent him, crying, My son is not coming. I shall go to meet him. Then he ran out of his room and fell prostrate on the floor of the antechamber. He had just expired. The doctor had been summoned and the curée. The doctor had arrived too late. The son had also arrived too late. By the dim light of the candle a large tear could be distinguished on the pale and prostrate Colonel's cheek where it had trickled from his dead eye. The eye was extinguished but the tear was not yet dry. That tear was his son's delay. Marius gazed upon that man whom he beheld for the first time, on that venerable and manly face, on those open eyes which saw not, on those white locks, those robust limbs on which here and there brown lines marking sword thrusts and a sort of red stars which indicated bullet holes were visible. He contemplated that gigantic scar which stamped heroism on that countenance upon which God had imprinted goodness. He reflected that this man was his father and that this man was dead and a chill ran over him. The sorrow which he felt was the sorrow which he would have felt in the presence of any other man whom he had chanced to behold stretched out in death. Anguish poignant anguish was in that chamber. The servant woman was lamenting in a corner, the curée was praying and his sobs were audible, the doctor was wiping his eyes, the corpse itself was weeping. The doctor, the priest and the woman gazed at Marius in the midst of their affliction without uttering a word. He was the stranger there. Marius, who was far too little affected, felt ashamed and embarrassed at his own attitude. He held his hat in his hand and he dropped it on the floor in order to produce the impression that grief had deprived him of the strength to hold it. At the same time he experienced remorse and he despised himself for behaving in this manner, but was it his fault? He did not love his father, why should he? The colonel had left nothing, the sale of big furniture barely paid the expenses of his burial. The servant found a scrap of paper which she handed to Marius. It contained the following in the colonel's handwriting. For my son, the emperor made me a baron on the battlefield of Waterloo. Since the restoration disputes my right to this title, which I purchased with my blood, my son shall take it and bear it. That he will be worthy of it is a matter of course. Below the colonel had added, at that same battle of Waterloo, a sergeant saved my life. The man's name was Tenardier. I think that he has recently been keeping a little in in a village in the neighborhood of Paris, at Chale or Mont-Fermé. If my son meets him he will do all the good he can to Tenardier. Marius took this paper and preserved it not out of duty to his father, but because of that vague respect for death which is always imperious in the heart of man. Nothing remained of the colonel. Monsieur Gilles Normand had his sword and uniform sold to an old clothes dealer. The neighbors devastated the garden and pillaged the rare flowers. The other plants turned to nettles and weeds and died. Marius remained only forty-eight hours at Vernon. After the interment he returned to Paris and applied himself again to his law studies with no more thought of his father than if the latter had never lived. In two days the colonel was buried and in three forgotten. Marius wore crepe on his hat. That was all. Les Miserables. Volume 3 by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood. Book 3. The Grandfather and the Grandson. Chapter 5. The Utility of Going to Mass. In order to become a revolutionist. Marius had preserved the religious habits of his childhood. One Sunday when he went to hear mass at Saint-Supice, at that same chapel of the Virgin, whether his aunt had led him when a small lad, he placed himself behind a pillar. Being more absent-minded and thoughtful than usual on that occasion, and knelt down without paying any special heed upon a chair of Utrecht Velvet, on the back of which was inscribed this name, Monsieur Mabouf Warden. Mass had hardly begun when an old man presented himself in the room, and said to Marius, This is my place, sir. Marius stepped aside promptly, and the old man took possession of his chair. The mass concluded. Marius still stood thoughtfully a few paces distant. The old man approached him again and said, I beg your pardon, sir, for having disturbed you a while ago, and for again disturbing you at this moment. You must have thought me intrusive, and I will explain myself. There is no need of that, sir, said Marius. Yes, went on the old man. I do not wish you to have a bad opinion of me. You see, I am attached to this place. It seems to me that the mass is better from here. Why, I will tell you, it is from this place that I have watched a poor, brave father come regularly, every two or three months, for the last 10 years, since he had no other opportunity and no other way of seeing his child, because he was prevented by family arrangements. He came at the hour when he knew that his son would be brought to mass. The little one never suspected that his father was there. Perhaps he did not even know that he had a father, poor innocent. The father kept behind a pillar so that he might not be seen. He gazed at his child, and he wept. He adored that little fellow, poor man. I could see that. This spot has become sanctified in my sight, and I have contracted a habit of coming hither to listen to the mass. I prefer it to the stall to which I have a right in my capacity of warden. I knew that unhappy gentleman a little too. He had a father-in-law, a wealthy aunt, relatives, I don't know exactly what all, who threatened to disinherit the child if he, the father, saw him. He sacrificed himself in order that his son might be rich and happy one someday. He was separated from him because of political opinions. Certainly, I approve of political opinions, but there are people who do not know where to stop. Mon Dieu, a man is not a monster because he was at Waterloo. A father is not separated from his child for such a reason as that. He was one of Bonaparte's kernels. He's dead, I believe. He lived at Vernon, where I have a brother who is a cure. And his name was something like Pomp Marie or Mont-Persy. He had a fine sword cut on my honor. Pomp-Mercy suggested Marius, turning pale. Precisely, Pomp-Mercy. Did you know him? Sir said Marius. He was my father. The old warden clasped his hands and exclaimed, Ah, you are the child. Yes, that's true. He must be a man by this time. Well, poor child, you may say that you had a father who loved you dearly. Marius offered his arm to the old man and conducted him to his lodgings. On the following day he said to Mr. Jean Normand, I have arranged a hunting party with some friends. Will you permit me to be absent for three days? Four, replied his grandfather, go and amuse yourself. And he said to his daughter in a low tone and with a wink, some love affair. Book 3 of Les Miserables, Vol. 3 by Victor Hugo This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording by Robert Kuiper Les Miserables, Vol. 3 by Victor Hugo, translated by Elizabeth Florence Hapgood, Book 3, The Grandfather and the Grandson. Chapter 6 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, went straight 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 and the Empire. The Memorial de Saint-Héline, all the memoirs, all the newspapers, the bulletins, the proclamations. He devoured everything. The first time that he came across his father's name and the bulletins of the Grand Army, he had a fever for a week. He went to see the generals under whom Georges Pont-Mercy had served. Among others, Count H. Churchwarden Maverfe, whom he went to see again, told him about the life of Vernon, the Colonel's retreat, his flowers, his solitude. Marius came to a full knowledge of that rare, sweet, and sublime man, that species of lion-lam who had been his father. In the meantime, occupied as he was with this study which absorbed all his moments as well as his thoughts, he hardly saw the Gildenormans at all. He made his appearance at meals, then they searched for him, and he was not to be found. Father Gildenorman smiled, BAH! BAH! He's just at 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 an affair of passion. It was a passion, in fact. Marius was on the high road to adoring his father. At the same time, his ideas underwent an extraordinary change. The phases of this change were numerous and successive. As this is the history of many minds of our day, we think it will prove useful to follow 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 only monstrous 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 had expected to find only a chaos of shadows, he had beheld with a sort of unprecedented surprise mingled with fear and joy, stars sparkling. Mirabeau! Veniol! Saint-Just! Robespierre! Camille! Des Moulins! Danton! And a sun-arise Napoleon! He did not know where he stood. He recoiled, blinded by the brilliant lights. Little by little, when his astonishment had passed off, he grew accustomed to this radiance. He contemplated these deeds without dizziness. He examined these personages without terror. The Revolution and the Empire presented themselves luminously in perspective before his mind's eye. He beheld each of these groups of events and of men summed up in two tremendous facts. The Republic in the sovereignty of civil right restored to the masses, the Empire in the sovereignty of the French idea imposed on Europe. He beheld the grand figure of the people emerge from the Revolution and the grand figure of France spring forth from the Empire. He asserted in his conscience that all this had been good. What his dazzled state neglected in this, his first far too synthetic estimation, we do not think it necessary to point out here. It is the state of a mind on the march that we are recording. Progress is not accomplished in one stage, that stated once for all in connection with what precedes as well as with what is to follow we continue. He then perceived that up to that moment he had comprehended his country no more than he had comprehended his father. He had not known either the one or the other, and a sort of voluntary knight had obscured his eyes. Now he saw, and on the one hand he admired while on the other he adored. He was filled with regret and remorse, and reflected in despair that all he had in his soul could now be said only to the tomb. Oh! If his father had still been in existence, if he had still had him, if God in his compassion and his goodness had permitted his father to be still among the living, how he would have run, how he would have precipitated himself, how he would have cried to his father, Father, here I am, it is I, I have the same heart as Thou, I am Thy Son. How he would have embraced that white head, bathed his hair in tears, gazed upon his scar, pressed his hands, adored his garment, kissed his feet. Oh! Why had his father died so early before his time, before the justice, the love of his son had come to him? Marius had a continual sob in his heart, which had said to him every moment, Alas! At the same time he became more truly serious, more truly grave, more sure of his thought and his faith. At each instant gleams of the true came to complete his reason, and inward growth seemed to be in progress within him. He was conscious of a sort of natural enlargement which gave him two things that were new to him, his father and his country. As everything opens when one has a key, so he explained to himself that which he had hated, he penetrated that which he had abhorred. Henceforth he plainly perceived the providential, divine, and human sense of the great things which he had been taught to detest, and of the great men whom he had been instructed to curse. When he reflected on his former opinions, 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 the rehabilitation of Napoleon. But the latter, we will confess, was not affected without labor. From his infancy he had been imbued with the judgments of the party of 1814 on Bonaparte. Now, all the prejudices of the restoration, all its interests, all its instincts tended to disfigure Napoleon. It executed him even more than it did Robespierre. It had very cleverly turned to sufficiently good account the fatigue of the nation and the hatred of mothers. Bonaparte had become an almost fabulous monster, and in order to paint him to the imagination of the people, which, as we lately pointed out, resembles the imagination of children, the party of 1814 made him appear under all sorts of terrifying masks in succession, from that which is terrible, though it remains grandiose, to that which is terrible, and becomes grotesque, from Tiberius to the bugaboo. Thus, in speaking of Bonaparte, one was free to use sob or to puff up with laughter, provided that hatred lay at the bottom. Marius had never entertained about that man, as he was called, any other ideas in his mind. 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 and materials for history, the veil which concealed Napoleon from the eyes of Marius was gradually rent. He caught a glimpse of something immense, and he suspected that he had been deceived up to that moment, on the score of Bonaparte, as about all the rest. Each day he saw more distinctly, and he set about mounting slowly, step by step, almost regretfully, in the beginning, then with intoxication, and as though attracted by an irresistible fascination, first the somber steps, then the vaguely illuminated steps, at last the luminous and splendid steps of enthusiasm. One night he was alone in his little chamber near the roof. His candle was burning. He was reading with his elbows resting on his table close to the open window. All sorts of reveries reached him from space and mingled with his thoughts. What a spectacle is the night! One hears dull sounds without knowing once they proceed. One beholds Jupiter, which is 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 strophes penned on the field of battle. There, at intervals, he beheld his father's name. Always the name of the Emperor. The whole of that great empire presented itself to him. He felt a flood, swelling and rising within him. It seemed to him at moments that his father passed close to him, like a breath, and whispered in his ear. He gradually got into a singular state. He thought that he heard drums, cannon, trumpets, the measured tread of battalions, the dull and distant gallop of the cavalry. From time to time his eyes were raised heavenward, and gazed upon the colossal constellations as they gleamed in the measureless depths of space. Then they fell upon his book once more, and there they beheld other colossal things moving, confusedly. His heart contracted within him. He was in a transport, trembling, panting. All at once without himself knowing what was in him, and what impulse he was obeying, he sprang to his feet, stretched both arms out of the window, gazed intently into the gloom, the silence, the infinite darkness, the eternal immensity, and exclaimed, Long live the Emperor! From that moment forth all was over. The ogre of Corsica, the usurper, the tyrant, the monster who was the lover of his own sisters, the actor who took lessons of Talma, the poisoner of Jaffa, the tiger, Bonaparte, all this vanished, and gave place in his mind to a vague and brilliant radiance in which shone at an inaccessible height the pale marble phantom of Caesar. The Emperor had been for his father only the well-beloved Captain whom one admires, for whom one sacrifices oneself. He was something more to Marius. He was the predestined conductor of the French group, succeeding the Roman group in the domination of the universe. He was a prodigious architect of a destruction, the continuum of Charmagne, of Louis-Hons, of Henri Quatre, of Richelieu, of Louis-Catois, 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 the Great Nation. He was better than that. He was the very incarnation of France, conquering Europe by the sword which he grasped and the world by the light which he shed. Marius saw in Bonaparte the dazzling specter which will always rise upon the frontier and which will guard the future. Despot but dictator, a despot resulting from a republic and summing up a revolution. Napoleon became for him the man people as Jesus Christ is the man God. It will be perceived that like all new converts to a religion, his conversion intoxicated him. He hurled himself headlong into adhesion and he went too far. His nature was so constructed, once on the downward slope, it was almost impossible for him to put on the drag. Fanaticism for the sword took possession of him and complicated in his mind his enthusiasm for the idea. He did not perceive that along with genius and pel mel he was admitting force. That is to say that he was installing in two compartments of his idolatry, on the one hand that which is divine, on the other that which is brutal. In many respects he had said about deceiving himself otherwise. He admitted everything. There is a way of encountering error while on one's way to the truth. He had a violent sort of good faith which took everything in the lump. In the new path which he had entered on in judging the mistakes of the old regime as in measuring the glory of Napoleon he neglected the attenuating circumstances. At all events a tremendous step had been taken. Where he had formally beheld the fall of the monarchy he now saw the advent of France. His orientation had changed. What had been his east became the west. He had turned squarely round. All these revolutions were accomplished within him without his family obtaining an inkling of the case. When, during this mysterious labor, he had entirely shed his old bourbon and ultra-skin, when he had cast off the aristocrat, the Jacobite and the royalist. When he had become thoroughly a revolutionist, profoundly democratic and republican. He went to an engraver on the Cadet-sur-Fivre and ordered a hundred cards bearing this name, Le Beren Marius Pomerci. This was only the strictly logical consequence of the change which had taken place in him, a change in which everything gravitated round his father. Only as he did not know anyone and could not sew his cards with any porter he put them in his pocket. By another natural consequence, in proportion as he drew nearer to his father, to the latter's memory and to the things for which the Colonel had fought five and twenty years before, he receded from his grandfather. We have long ago said that Mr. Guilinoman's temper did not please him. There already existed between them all the dissonances of the grave young man and the frivolous old man. The gaiety of Gérante shocks and exasperates the melancholy of Werther. So long as the same political opinions and the same ideas had been common to them both, Marius had met Mr. Guilinoman there as on a bridge. When the bridge fell an abyss was formed. And then, over and above all, Marius experienced unutterable impulses to revolt. When he reflected that it was Mr. Guilinoman who had, from stupid motives, torn him ruthlessly from the Colonel, thus depriving the father of the child and the child of the father. By dint of pity for his father, Marius had nearly arrived at aversion for his grandfather. Nothing of this sort, however, was betrayed on the exterior, as we have already said. Only he grew colder and colder, laconic at meals and rare in the house. When his aunt scolded him for it, he was very gentle and alleged 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 to Mont-Fermille in order to obey the injunction which his father had left him, and he sought the old sergeant to Waterloo, the innkeeper Thernodier. Thernodier had failed, the inn was closed, and no one knew what had become of him. Marius was away from the house for four days on this quest. He's 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. End of Les Miserables, Volume 3, Book 3, Chapter 6. Chapter 7 of Book 3 of Les Miserables, Volume 3 by Victor Hugo. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording by Robert Kuiper. Les Miserables, Volume 3 by Victor Hugo, translated by Elizabeth Florence Hapgood, Book 3, The Grandfather and the Grandson. Chapter 7. Some Petticoat. We have mentioned Alanser. He was a great grand-nevue of Mr. Gil-Norman, on the paternal side, who led a garrison life, outside the family, and far from the domestic hearth. Lieutenant Theodore Gil-Norman fulfilled all the conditions required to make what is called a fine officer. He had a lady's waist, a victorious manner of trailing his sword and of twirling his moustache in a hook. He visited Paris very rarely, and so rarely, that Marius had never seen him. The cousins knew each other only by name. We think we have said that Theodore was the favorite of Aunt Gil-Norman, who preferred him because she did not see him. Not seeing people permits one to attribute to them all possible perfections. One morning Mademoiselle Gil-Norman, the elder, returned to her apartment as much disturbed as her placidity was capable of allowing. Marius had just asked his grandfather's permission to take a little trip, adding that he meant to set out that very evening. Gull had been his grandfather's reply. And Mr. Gil-Norman had added, in an aside, as he raised his eyebrows to the top of his forehead, Here he is passing the night out again. Mademoiselle Gil-Norman had ascended to her chamber, greatly puzzled, and on the staircase had dropped this exclamation. This is too much. And this interrogation. But where is it that he goes? She aspired some adventure of the heart, more or less illicit, a woman in the shadow, a rendezvous, a mystery, and she would not have been sorry to thrust her spectacles into the affair. Tasting a mystery resembles getting the first flavor of a scandal. Sainted souls do not detest this. There is some curiosity about scandal in the secret compartments of bigotry. So she was the prey of a vague appetite for learning a history. In order to get rid of this curiosity, which agitated her a little beyond her want, she took refuge in her talents, and set about scalloping one layer of cotton after another, one of those embroideries of the empire in the restoration in which there are numerous cartwheels. The work was clumsy. The worker cross. She had been seated at this for several hours when the door opened. Mademoiselle Gil-Norman raised her nose. Lieutenant Theodore stood before her, making the regulation salute. She uttered a cry of delight. One may be old, one may be a prude, one may be pious, one may be an aunt. But it is always agreeable to see a lancer enter one's chamber. You there, Theodore, she exclaimed. On my way through town, aunt. Embrace me. Here goes, said Theodore, and he kissed her. Aunt Gil-Norman went to her writing desk and opened it. You will remain with us a week, at least? I leave this very evening, aunt. It is not possible. Mathematically. Remain, my little Theodore, I beseech you. My heart says yes, but my orders say no. The matter is simple. We are changing our garrison. We have been in Mellon. We are being transferred to Galiant. It is necessary to pass through Paris in order to get from the old post to the new one. I said, I am going to see my aunt. Here is something for your trouble. And she put Ten-Louis into his hand. For my pleasure, you mean to say, my dear aunt. The adult kissed her again, and she experienced the joy of having some of the skin scratched from her neck by the braiding on his uniform. Are you making the journey on horseback with your regiment? She asked him. No, aunt. I wanted to see you. I have special permission. My servant is taking my horse. I am travelling by diligence. And by the way, I want to ask you something. What is it? Is my cousin, Marius Pomercy, travelling so, too? How do you know that? Said his aunt, suddenly pricked to the quick with a lively curiosity. On my arrival I went to the diligence to engage my seat in the coupe. Well, a traveller had already come to engage a seat in the imperial. I saw his name on the card. What name? Marius Pomercy. The wicked fellow, exclaimed his aunt. Your cousin is not a steady lad like yourself. To think that he is to pass the night in a diligence. Just as I am going to do. But you, it is your duty. In his case, it is wildness. Bosch, said the adult. Here an event occurred to Mademoiselle Gil-Norman the Elder. An idea struck her. If she had been a man, she would have slapped her brow. She apostrophized Theodore. Are you aware whether your cousin knows you? No, I have seen him. But he has never deigned to notice me. So you are going to travel together. He in the imperial, I in the coupe. Where does this diligence run? To Andelais. Then that is where Marius is going. Unless, like myself, he should stop on the way. I get down at Bernon in order to take the branch coach to Galon. I know nothing of Marius' plan of travel. Marius, what an ugly name. What possessed them to name him Marius? Are you, at least, are called Theodore? I would rather be called Alfred, said the officer. Listen, Theodore, I am listening at pay attention. I am paying attention. You understand? Yes. Well, Marius absents himself. Ah, ah, he travels. Ah, ah, he spends the night. Out. Oh, oh, we should like to know what there is behind all this. Theodore replied with the composure of a man of bronze, some petticoat or other, and with that inward laugh which denotes certainty, he added, no less. That is evident, exclaimed his aunt, who thought she heard the Monsieur Gilnorman speaking, and who felt her conviction become irresistible at that word filet. Accentuated in almost the very same fashion by the granduncle and the grandnephew, she resumed. Do us a favor. Follow Marius a little. He does not know you, it will be easy. Since alas there is, try to get a sight of her. You must write us the tale. It will amuse your grandfather. Theodell had no excessive taste for this sort of spying, but he was much touched by the ten louis, and he thought he saw a chance for a possible sequel. He accepted the commission and said, as you please, aunt. And he added in an aside to himself, here I am a dwenna. Madwanzel Gilnorman embraced him. You are not the man to play such pranks, Theodell. You obey discipline. You are the slave of orders. You are a man of scruples and duty. You would not quit your family to go and see a creature. The Lancer made the pleased grimace of a cartouche, when praised for his probity. Marius, on the evening following this dialogue, mounted the diligence without suspecting that he was watched. As for the watcher, the first thing he did was to fall asleep. His slumber was complete and conscientious. Argus ignored all night long. At daybreak, the conductor of the diligence shouted, vernon, relay of vernon, travelers for vernon, and Lieutenant Theodell woke. Good, he growled, still half asleep. This is where I get out. Then, as his memory cleared by degrees, the effect of waking, he recalled his aunt, the ten Louis, and the account which he had undertaken to render of the deeds and proceedings of Marius. This set him to laughing. Perhaps he is no longer in the coat, she thought, as he rebuttoned the waistcoat of his undress uniform. He may have stopped at Poissy. He may have stopped at Freel. If he did not get out at Moulin, he may have got out at Mance, unless he got out at Roleboise, or if he did not go on as far as Poissy with the choice of turning to the left at Avrys or to the right at La Roche-Gouillon. Run after him, auntie. What the devil am I to write to that good old soul? At that moment, a pair of black trousers descending from the imperial made its appearance at the window of the coupe. Can that be Marius? said the lieutenant. It was Marius. A little peasant girl, all entangled with the horses and the pastillions at the end of the vehicle, was offering flowers to the travellers. Give your ladies flowers, she cried. Marius approached her and purchased the finest flowers in her flat basket. Come now, said the adult, leaping down from the coupe. This peaks my curiosity. Who the deuce is he going to carry those flowers to? She must be a splendidly handsome woman for so fine a bouquet. I want to see her. And no longer in pursuance of orders, but from personal curiosity, like dogs who hunt on their own account, he set out to follow Marius. Marius paid no attention to Theodore. Elegant women descended from the diligence. He did not glance at them. He seemed to see nothing around him. He is pretty deeply in love, thought Theodore. Marius directed his steps towards the church. Capital, said Theodore to himself, rendezvous seasoned with a bit of mass are the best sort. Nothing is so exquisite as an ogle which passes over the good God's head. On arriving at the church, Marius did not enter it but skirted the apps. He disappeared behind one of the angles of the apps. The rendezvous is appointed outside, said Theodore. Let's have a look at the lass. And he advanced on the tips of his boots toward the corner where Marius had turned. On arriving there, he halted in amazement. Marius, with his forehead clasped in his hands, was kneeling upon the grass on a grave. He had strewn his bouquet there. At the extremity of the grave, on a little swelling which marked the head, there stood a cross of black wood with this name in white letters. Colonel Baron Pomercy. Marius' sobs were audible. The lass was a grave. End of Book 3, Chapter 7. Chapter 8 of Book 3 of Les Miserables, Volume 3 by Victor Hugo. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Bruce Peary. Les Miserables, Volume 3 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood. Book 3, The Grandfather and the Grandson. Chapter 8, Marble Against Granite. It was hither that Marius had come on the first occasion of his absenting himself from Paris. It was hither that he had come every time that Monsieur Jules Normand had said he's sleeping out. Lieutenant Théodule was absolutely put out of countenance by this unexpected encounter with a sepulcher. He experienced a singular and disagreeable sensation which he was incapable of analyzing and which was composed of respect for the tomb mingled with respect for the colonel. He retreated, leaving Marius alone in the cemetery and there was discipline in this retreat. Death appeared to him with large epaulettes and he almost made the military salute to him. Not knowing what to write to his aunt, he decided not to write at all. And it is probable that nothing would have resulted from the discovery made by Théodule as to the love affairs of Marius. If by one of those mysterious arrangements which are so frequent in chance, the scene at Vernault had not had an almost immediate counter-shock at Paris. Marius returned from Vernault on the third day in the middle of the morning, descended at his grandfather's door and wearied by the two knights spent in the diligence and feeling the need of repairing his loss of sleep by an hour at the swimming-school. He mounted rapidly to his chamber, took merely time enough to throw off his travelling coat and the black ribbon which he wore round his neck and went off to the bath. Monsieur Gilnomon, who had risen be times like all old men in good health, had heard his entrance and had made haste to climb as quickly as his old legs permitted. The stairs to the upper story where Marius lived in order to embrace him and to question him while so doing and to find out where he had been. But the youth had taken less time to descend than the old man had to ascend and when Father Gilnomon entered the attic, Marius was no longer there. The bed had not been disturbed and on the bed lay, outspread but not defiantly, the great coat and the black ribbon. I like this better, said Monsieur Gilnomon. And a moment later he made his entrance into the salon where Mademoiselle Gilnomon was already seated, busily embroidering her cartwheels. The entrance was a triumphant one. Monsieur Gilnomon held in one hand the great coat and in the other the neck ribbon and exclaimed, victory, we are about to penetrate the mystery. We are going to learn the most minute details. We are going to lay our finger on the debaucheries of our sly friend. Here we have the romance itself. I have the portrait. In fact, a case of black chagrin resembling a medallion portrait was suspended from the ribbon. The old man took this case and gazed at it for some time without opening it, with that air of enjoyment, rapture, and wrath, with which a poor, hungry fellow beholds an admirable dinner, which is not for him, pass under his very nose. For this evidently is a portrait. I know all about such things. That is worn tenderly on the heart, how stupid they are, some abominable fright that will make us shudder, probably. Young men have such bad taste nowadays. Let us see, father, said the old spinster. The case opened by the pressure of a spring. They found in it nothing but a carefully folded paper. From the same to the same, said Monsieur Gilles Normand, bursting with laughter, I know what it is, a billet d'eau. Ah, let us read it, said the aunt, and she put on her spectacles. They unfolded the paper and read as follows. For my son, the emperor made me a baron on the battlefield of Waterloo. Since the restoration disputes my right to this title, which I purchased with my blood, my son shall take it and bear it. That he will be worthy of it is a matter of course. The feelings of father and daughter cannot be described. They felt, chilled, as by the breath of a death's head. They did not exchange a word. Only, Monsieur Gilles Normand said in a low voice, and as though speaking to himself, it is the slasher's handwriting. The aunt examined the paper, turned it about in all directions, then put it back in its case. At the same moment, a little oblong packet, enveloped in blue paper, fell from one of the pockets of the great coat. Ban Moussel Gilles Normand picked it up and unfolded the blue paper. It contained Marius' hundred cards. She handed one of them to Monsieur Gilles Normand, who read, Loup-Baron, Marius, Pour Merci. The old man rang the bell, Nicolette came. Monsieur Gilles Normand took the ribbon, the case and the coat, flung them all on the floor in the middle of the room and said, carry those duds away. A full hour passed in the most profound silence. The old man and the old spinster had seated themselves with their backs to each other and were thinking, each on his own account, the same things in all probability. At the expiration of this hour, Aunt Gilles Normand said, a pretty state of things. A few moments later, Marius made his appearance. He entered. Even before he had crossed the threshold, he saw his grandfather holding one of his own cards in his hand and on catching sight of him, the latter exclaimed with his air of bourgeois and grinning superiority, which was something crushing. Well, well, well, well, well, so you are a Baron now. I present you my compliments. What is the meaning of this? Marius reddened slightly and replied, it means that I am the son of my father. Monsieur Gilles Normand ceased to laugh and said harshly, I am your father. My father retorted Marius with downcast eyes and a severe air, was a humble and heroic man who served the Republic and France gloriously, who was great in the greatest history that men have ever made, who lived in the Bivouac for a quarter of a century beneath grapeshot and bullets in snow and mud by day, beneath rain at night, who captured two flags, who received twenty wounds, who died forgotten and abandoned, and who never committed but one mistake which was to love too fondly, too ingrates, his country and myself. This was more than Monsieur Gilles Normand could bear to hear. At the word Republic he rose or to speak more correctly, he sprang to his feet. Every word that Marius had just uttered produced on the visage of the old royalist the effect of the puffs of air from a forge upon a blazing brand. From a dull hue he had turned red, from red, purple and from purple, flame colored. Marius, he cried, abominable child, I do not know what your father was, I do not wish to know, I know nothing about that and I do not know him, but what I do know is that there never was anything but scoundrels among those men, they were all rascals, assassins, redcaps, thieves, I say all, I say all, I know not one, I say all. Do you hear me, Marius? See here, you are no more a baron than my slipper is. They were all bandits in the service of Robespierre. All who served Buona part were brigands. They were all traitors who betrayed, betrayed, betrayed their legitimate king. All cowards who flew before the Prussians and the English at Waterloo, that is what I do know. Whether, Monsieur, your father comes in that category, I do not know. I am sorry for it so much the worse, your humble servant. In his turn it was Marius who was the firebrand and Monsieur Gilnerment who was the bellows. Marius quivered in every limb. He did not know what would happen next. His brain was on fire. He was the priest who beholds all his sacred wafers cast to the winds, the faker who beholds a passerby spit upon his idol. It could not be that such things had been uttered in his presence. What was he to do? His father had just been trampled underfoot and stamped upon in his presence, but by whom? By his grandfather. How was he to avenge the one without outraging the other? It was impossible for him to insult his grandfather and it was equally impossible for him to leave his father unevenged. On the one hand was a sacred grave. On the other, hoary locks. He stood there for several moments, staggering as though intoxicated with all this whirlwind dashing through his head. Then he raised his eyes, gazed fixedly at his grandfather and cried in a voice of thunder, down with the bourbons and that great hog of a Louis XVIII. Louis XVIII had been dead for four years, but it was all the same to him. The old man who had been crimson turned whiter than his hair. He wheeled round towards a bust of Monsieur Leduc de Berry which stood on the chimney-piece and made a profound bow with a sort of peculiar majesty. Then he paced twice, slowly and in silence, from the fireplace to the window and from the window to the fireplace, traversing the whole length of the room and making the polished floor creak as though he had been a stone statue walking. On his second turn he bent over his daughter who was watching this encounter with the stupefied air of an antiquated lamb and said to her with a smile that was almost calm, a barren like this gentleman and a bourgeois like myself cannot remain under the same roof. And drawing himself up all at once, pallid, trembling, terrible, with his brow rendered more lofty by the terrible radiance of wrath, he extended his arm towards Marius and shouted to him, "'Be off!' Marius left the house. On the following day, Monsieur Gilles Normand said to his daughter, "'You will send sixty pistols every six months to that blood-drinker and you will never mention his name to me.'" Having an immense reserve fund of wrath to get rid of and not knowing what to do with it, he continued to address his daughter as you instead of thou for the next three months. Marius on his side had gone forth in indignation. There was one circumstance which it must be admitted aggravated his exasperation. There are always petty fatalities of the sort which complicate domestic dramas. They augment the grievances in such cases, although in reality the wrongs are not increased by them. While carrying Marius's duds precipitately to his chamber at his grandfather's command, Nicolette had inadvertently let fall, probably on the attic staircase, which was dark, that medallion of black chagrin which contained the paper penned by the colonel. Neither paper nor case could afterwards be found. Marius was convinced that Monsieur Jules Normand, from that day forth he never alluded to him otherwise, had flung his father's testament in the fire. He knew by heart the few lines which the colonel had written and consequently nothing was lost, but the paper, the writing, that sacred relic, all that was his very heart, what had been done with it. Marius had taken his departure without saying whether he was going and without knowing where, with thirty francs his watch and a few clothes in a handbag. He had entered a hackney coach, had engaged it by the hour and had directed his course at haphazard towards the Latin Quarter. What was to become of Marius? End of Book Three, Chapter Eight. Chapter One of Book Four of Les Misérables, Volume Three by Victor Hugo. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Adam Ringuth. Les Misérables, Volume Three by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book Four, The Friends of the ABC. Chapter One, A Group Which Barely Missed Becoming Historic. At that epoch, which was, to all appearances indifferent, a certain revolutionary quiver was vaguely current. Breaths which had started forth from the depths of eighty-nine and ninety-three were in the air. Youth was on the point, may the reader pardon us the word, of molting. People were undergoing a transformation, almost without being conscious of it, through the movement of the age. The needle which moves round the compass also moves in souls. Each person was taking that step in advance which he was bound to take. The royalists were becoming liberals. Liberals were turning Democrats. It was a flood of tide, complicated with a thousand ebb movements. The peculiarity of ebb's is to create intermixtures, hence the combination of very singular ideas. People adored both Napoleon and Liberty. We are making history here. These were the mirages of that period. Opinions traversed phases. Voltarian royalism, a quaint variety, had a no less singular sequel, Bonapartist liberalism. Other groups of minds were more serious. In that direction, they sounded principles. They attached themselves to the right. They grew enthusiastic for the absolute. They caught glimpses of infinite realizations. The absolute, by its very rigidity, urges spirits towards the sky and causes them to float in a limitable space. There's nothing like dogma for bringing forth dreams and there is nothing like dreams for engendering the future. Utopia today, flesh and blood tomorrow. These advanced opinions had a double foundation. A beginning of mystery menaced the established order of things which was suspicious and underhand. A sign which was revolutionary to the highest degree. The second thoughts of power meet the second thoughts of the populace in the mind. The incubation of insurrections gives the retort to the premeditation of coup d'état. There did not, as yet, exist in France any of those vast underlying organizations like the German Tuggenbund and Italian Carbonerism. But here and there, there were dark undermindings which were in process of throwing off shoots. The Cougoud was being outlined at A. There existed at Paris, among other affiliations of that nature, the society of the friends of the ABC. What were these friends of the ABC? A society which had, for its object, apparently the education of children. In reality, the elevation of man. They declared themselves the friends of the ABC, the ABC, the debased, that is to say, the people. They wished to elevate the people. It was a pun which we would do wrong to smile at. Puns are sometimes serious factors in politics. Witness the castratus ad castra which made a general of the army of Narcissus. Witness Barbary et Barbarini. Witness Tuas Petrus et Super Honk Petrum et cetera, et cetera. The friends of the ABC were not numerous. It was a secret society in the state of Embryo. We might almost say a coterie if coteries ended in heroes. They assembled in Paris in two localities, near the fish market in a wine shop called Coranthe, of which more will be heard later on, and near the pantheon in a little cafe in the rue Saint-Michel called the Café Moussain, now torn down. The first of these meeting places was close to the working man, the second to the students. The assemblies of the friends of the ABC were usually held in a back room of the Café Moussain. This hall, which was tolerably remote from the café, with which it was connected by an extremely long corridor, had two windows and an exit with a private stairway on the little rue de Grey. There they smoked and drank and gambled and laughed. There they conversed in very loud tones about everything and in whispers of other things. An old map of France under the Republic was nailed to the wall, a sign quite sufficient to excite the suspicion of a police agent. The greater part of the friends of the ABC were students who were on cordial terms with the working classes. Here are the names of the principal ones. They belong in a certain measure to history. Angel-Rah, Comphère, Jean-Prouvert, Foyillie, Coeur-Férac, Bahrelle, Leglet, or Legle, Jolie, Grandeur. These young men formed a sort of family through the bond of friendship. All, with the exception of Legle, were from the South. This was a remarkable group. It vanished in the invisible depths which lie behind us. At the point of this drama we have now reached, it will not perhaps be superfluous to throw a ray of light upon these youthful heads before the reader beholds them plunging into the shadow of a tragic adventure. Angel-Rah, whose name we have mentioned first of all, the reader shall see why later on, was an only son and wealthy. Angel-Rah was a charming young man who was capable of being terrible. He was angelically handsome. He was a savage Antinoas. One would have said to see the pensive thoughtfulness of his glance that he had already, in some previous state of existence, traversed the revolutionary apocalypse. He possessed the tradition of it as though he had been a witness. He was acquainted with all the minute details of the Great Affair, a pontifical and war-like nature, a singular thing in a youth. He was an officiating priest and a man of war, from the immediate point of view, a soldier of the democracy. Above the contemporary movement, the priest of the ideal. His eyes were deep. His lids a little red. His lower lip was thick and easily became disdainful. His brow was lofty. A great deal of brow and a face is like a great deal of horizon in a view. Like certain young men at the beginning of this century and at the end of the last, who became illustrious at an early age, he was endowed with excessive youth and was as rosy as a young girl, although subject to hours of pallor. Already a man, he still seemed a child. His two and 20 years appeared to be but 17. He was serious. It did not seem as though he were aware there was on earth a thing called woman. He had but one passion, the right, but one thought to overthrow the obstacle. On Mount Aventine, he would have been Gracchus. In the convention, he would have been Saint-Just. He hardly saw the roses. He ignored spring. He did not hear the caroling of the birds. The bare throat of Avadne would have moved him no more than it would have moved Aristigaten. He, like harmonious, thought flowers good for nothing, except to conceal the sword. He was severe in his enjoyments. He chastely dropped his eyes before everything which was not the Republic. He was the marble lover of liberty. His speech was harshly inspired and had the thrill of a hymn. He was subject to unexpected outbursts of soul. Woe to the love affair which should have risked itself beside him. If Eddie Grisette of the Place Cambrai or the Rue Saint-Jean de Beauvais, seeing that face of a youth escaped from college, that page was mien, those long golden lashes, those blue eyes, that hair billowing in the wind, those rosy cheeks, those fresh lips, those exquisite teeth, had conceived an appetite for that complete aurora and had tried her beauty on Anjolra, an astounding and terrible glance would have promptly shown her the abyss and would have taught her not to confound the mighty cherub of Ezekiel with the gallant cherubino of Beaumarchais. By the side of Anjolra, who represented the logic of the revolution, Comphère represented its philosophy. Between the logic of the revolution and its philosophy, there exists this difference, that its logic may end in war, whereas its philosophy can end only in peace. Comphère complimented and rectified Anjolra. He was less lofty, but broader. He desired to pour into all minds the extensive principles of general ideas. He said, revolution, but civilization. And around the mountain peak, he opened out a vast view of the blue sky. The revolution was more adapted for breathing with Comphère than with Anjolra. Anjolra expressed its divine right and Comphère, its natural right. The first attached himself to Robespierre, the second confined himself to Condorcet. Comphère lived the life of all the rest of the world more than did Anjolra. If it had been granted to these two young men to attain to history, the one would have been the just, the other, the wise man. Anjolra was the more virile. Comphère, the more humane. Homo and vir, that was the exact effect of their different shades. Comphère was as gentle as Anjolra was severe, through natural whiteness. He loved the word citizen, but he preferred the word man. He would gladly have said, hombre, like the Spanish. He read everything, went to the theaters, attended the courses of public lectures, learned of the polarization of light from Aragot, grew enthusiastic over a lesson in which Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire explained the double function of the external carotid artery and the internal, the one which makes the face and the one which makes the brain. He kept up with what was going on, followed science step by step, compared Saint-Simon with Fourier, deciphered hieroglyphics, broke the pebble which he found and reasoned on geology, drew from memory a silkworm moth, pointed out the faulty French in the dictionary of the academy, studied Puy-Sagur and Deleuze, affirmed nothing, not even miracles, denied nothing, not even ghosts, turned over the files of the monitor, reflected. He declared that the future lies in the hand of the schoolmaster and busied himself with educational questions. He desired that society should labor without relaxation at the elevation of the moral and intellectual level, at coining science, at putting ideas into circulation, at increasing the mind in youthful persons. And he feared lest the present poverty of method, the paltriness from a literary point of view confined to two or three centuries called classic, the tyrannical dogmatism of official pedants, scholastic prejudices and routines should end by converting our colleges into artificial oyster beds. He was learned, a purist, exact, a graduate of the polytechnic, a close student, and at the same time thoughtful, even to chimeras, so his friends said. He believed in all dreams, railroads, the suppression of suffering in surgical operations, the fixing of images in the dark chamber, the electric telegraph, the steering of balloons. Moreover, he was not much alarmed by the citadels erected against the human mind in every direction, by superstition, despotism, and prejudice. He was one of those who think that science will eventually turn the position. Anjalra was a chief, Comfair was a guide. One would have liked to fight under the one and to march behind the other. It is not that Comfair was not capable of fighting. He did not refuse a hand-to-hand combat with the obstacle and to attack it by main force and explosively. But it suited him better to bring the human race into accord with its destiny gradually, by means of education, the inculcation of axioms, the promulgation of positive laws. And between two lights, his preference was rather for illumination than for conflagration. A conflagration can create an aurora, no doubt, but why not await the dawn? A volcano illuminates, but daybreak furnishes a still better illumination. Possibly Comfair preferred the whiteness of the beautiful to the blaze of the sublime. A light troubled by smoke, progress purchased at the expense of violence, only half satisfied this tender and serious spirit. The headlong precipitation of a people into the truth, and 93 terrified him. Nevertheless, stagnation was still more repulsive to him. In it, he detected putrefaction and death. On the whole, he preferred scum to miasma, and he preferred the torrent to the cesspool, and the falls of Niagara to the lake of Montfaucon. In short, he desired neither halt nor haste, while his tumultuous friends, captivated by the absolute, adored and invoked splendid revolutionary adventures. Comfair was inclined to let progress, good progress, take its own course. He may have been cold, but he was pure, methodical, but irreproachable, phlegmatic, but imperturbable. Comfair would have knelt and clasped his hands to enable the future to arrive in all its candor, and that nothing might disturb the immense and virtuous evolution of the races. The good must be innocent, he repeated incessantly. And in fact, if the grandeur of the revolution consists in keeping the dazzling ideal fixedly in view, and of soaring thither, a thwart the lightnings with fire and blood in its talons, the beauty of progress lies in being spotless. And there exists between Washington, who represents the one, and Danton, who incarnates the other, that difference which separates the swan from the angel with the wings of an eagle. Jean Prouvert was a still softer shade than Comfair. His name was Jehan, owing to that petty momentary freak which mingled with a powerful and profound movement which sprang the very essential study of the Middle Ages. Jean Prouvert was in love. He cultivated a pot of flowers, played on the flute, made verses, loved the people, pitted women, wept over the child, confounded God and the future in the same confidence, and blamed the revolution for having caused the fall of a royal head that of André Cheignet. His voice was ordinarily delicate, but suddenly grew manly. He was learned even to erudition and almost an orientalist. Above all, he was good. And a very simple thing to those who know how nearly goodness borders on grandeur. In the matter of poetry, he preferred the immense. He knew Italian, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. And these served him only for the perusal of four poets, Dante, Juvenal, Escalus, and Isaiah. In French, he preferred Cornet to Racine and Agrippa d'Aubigne to Cornet. He loved to saunter through fields of wild oats and cornflowers and busied himself with clouds nearly as much as with events. His mind had two attitudes, one on the side towards man, the other on that towards God. He studied or he contemplated. All day long, he buried himself in social questions, salary, capital, credit, marriage, religion, liberty of thought, education, penal servitude, poverty, association, property, production, and sharing, the enigma of this lower world which covers the human anthill with darkness. And at night, he gazed upon the planets, those enormous beings. Like Angel Ra, he was wealthy and an only son. He spoke softly, bowed his head, lowered his eyes, smiled with embarrassment, dressed badly, had an awkward air, blushed at a mere nothing, and was very timid. Yet, he was intrepid. Foyi was a working man, a fan maker, orphaned both of father and mother who earned with difficulty three francs a day and had but one thought, to deliver the world. He had one other preoccupation, to educate himself. He called this also, delivering himself. He had taught himself to read and write, everything that he knew he had learned by himself. Foyi had a generous heart. The range of his embrace was immense. This orphan had adopted the peoples. As his mother had failed him, he meditated on his country. He brooded with the profound divination of the man of the people over what we now call the idea of the nationality, had learned history with the express object of raging with full knowledge of the case. In this club of young utopians, occupied chiefly with France, he represented the outside world. He had for his specialty, Greece, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Italy. He uttered these names incessantly, appropriately and inappropriately with a tenacity of right. The violations of Turkey on Greece and Thessaly, of Russia on Warsaw, of Austria on Venice, enraged him. Above all things, the great violence of 1772 aroused him. There is no more sovereign eloquence than the true in indignation. He was eloquent with that eloquence. He was inexhaustible on that infamous date of 1772, on the subject of that noble and valiant race suppressed by treason and that three-sided crime on that monstrous ambush, the prototype and pattern of all those horrible suppressions of states, which since that time have struck many a noble nation and have annulled their certificate of birth, so to speak. All contemporary social crimes have their origin in the partition of Poland. The partition of Poland is a theorem of which all present political outrages are the corollaries. There has not been a despot nor a traitor for nearly a century back who has not signed, approved, and counter-signed and copied, ne variator, the partition of Poland. When the record of modern treasons was examined, that was the first thing which made its appearance. The Congress of Vienna consulted that crime before consummating its own. 1772 sounded the onset. 1815 was the death of the game. Such was Foye's habitual text. This poor working man had constituted himself the tutor of justice, and she recompensed him by rendering him great. The fact is that there is eternity in right. Warsaw can no more be tartar than Venice can be tootin'. Kings lose their pains and their honor in the attempt to make them so. Sooner or later, the submerged part floats to the surface and reappears. Greece becomes Greece again. Italy is once more Italy. The protest of right against the deed persists forever. The theft of a nation cannot be allowed by prescription. These lofty deeds of rascality have no future. A nation cannot have its mark extracted like a pocket handkerchief. Kurferak had a father who was called Monsieur de Kurferak. One of the false ideas of the bourgeoisie under the restoration, as regards aristocracy and the nobility, was to believe in the particle. The particle, as everyone knows, possesses no significance. But the bourgeois of the epoch of laminarve estimated so highly that poor duh that they thought themselves bound to abdicate it. Monsieur de Chauvelin had called himself Monsieur Chauvelin. Monsieur de Comartin, Monsieur Comartin. Monsieur de Constant de Robeck, Benjamin Constant. Monsieur de Lafayette, Monsieur Lafayette. Kurferak had not wished to remain behind the rest and called himself Plain Kurferak. We might almost, so far as Kurferak is concerned, stop here and confine ourselves to sing with regard to what remains for Kurferak si Tolomiers. Kurferak had, in fact, that animation of youth, which may be called the Botte du diable of the mind. Later on, this disappears like the playfulness of the kitten, and all this grace ends with the bourgeois on two legs, and with the tomcat on four paws. This sort of wit is transmitted from generation to generation of the successive levies of youth who traverse the schools, who pass it from hand to hand, quasi cursores, and is almost always exactly the same. So that, as we have just pointed out, anyone who had listened to Kurferak in 1828 would have thought he heard Tolomiers in 1817. Only Kurferak was an honorable fellow. Beneath the apparent similarities of the exterior mind, the difference between him and Tolomiers was very great. The latent man, which existed in the two, was totally different in the first from what it was in the second. There was in Tolomiers a district attorney, and in Kurferak a paladin. Anjolra was the chief. Komfer was the guide. Kurferak was the center. The others gave more light. He shed more warmth. The truth is that he possessed all the qualities of a center, roundness and radiance. Bajorel had figured in the bloody tumult of June 1822 on the occasion of the burial of young Lalamond. Bajorel was a good-natured mortal who kept bad company. Brave, a spend-thrift, prodigal, and, to the verge of generosity, talkative and at times eloquent, bold to the verge of a frontery, the best fellow possible. He had daring waistcoats and scarlet opinions, a wholesale blusterer that is to say loving nothing so much as a quarrel unless it were an uprising, and nothing so much as an uprising unless it were a revolution, always ready to smash a windowpane, then to tear up the pavement, then to demolish a government, just to see the effect of it. A student in his 11th year. He had knowsed about the law but did not practice it. He had taken for his device never a lawyer, and for his armorial bearings, a nightstand in which was visible a square cap. Every time that he passed the law school, which rarely happened, he buttoned up his frockcoat, the palatot had not yet been invented, and took hygienic precautions. Of the school porter, he said, what a fine old man, and of the dean, Monsieur Delvincor, what a monument. In his lectures, he aspired subjects for ballads, and in his professors, occasions for caricature. He wasted a tolerably large allowance, something like 3,000 francs a year, in doing nothing. He had peasant parents, whom he had contrived to imbue with respect for their son. He said of them, they are peasants and not bourgeois, that is the reason they are intelligent. Bajorel, a man of Caprice, was scattered over numerous cafes. The others had habits, he had none. He sauntered. To stray is human. To saunter is Parisian. In reality, he had a penetrating mind, and it was more of a thinker than appeared to view. He served as a connecting link between the friends of the ABC, and other still unorganized groups, which were destined to take form later on. In this conclave of young heads, there was one bald member. The Marquis d'Avare, whom Louis the 18th made a duke for having assisted him to enter a hackney coach on the day when he emigrated, was warned to relate, that in 1814, on his return to France, as the king was disembarking at Calais, a man handed him a petition. What is your request? said the king. Sire, a post office. What is your name? Legle. The king frowned, glanced at the signature of the petition, and beheld the name written thus, L-E-S-G-L-E. This non-bonopart orthography touched the king, and he began to smile. Sire resumed the man with the petition. I had for ancestor a keeper of the hounds, surnamed Leguel. This surname furnished my name. I am called Leguel. By contraction Leguel, and by corruption Leguel. This caused the king to smile broadly. Later on, he gave the man the posting office of Moe, either intentionally or accidentally. The bald member of the group was the son of this Leguel, or Leguel, and he signed himself Leguel de Moe. As an abbreviation, his companions called him Bossway. Bossway was a gay but unlucky fellow. His specialty was not to succeed in anything. As an offset, he laughed at everything. At five and twenty, he was bald. His father had ended by owning a house and a field, but he, the son, had made haste to lose that house and field in a bad speculation. He had nothing left. He possessed knowledge and wit, but all he did miscarried. Everything failed him and everybody deceived him. What he was building tumbled down on top of him. If he were splitting wood, he cut off a finger. If he had a mistress, he speedily discovered that he had a friend also. Some misfortune happened to him every moment, hence his joviality. He said, He was not easily astonished because, for him, an accident was what he had foreseen. He took his bad luck serenely and smiled at the teasing of fate like a person who was listening to pleasantries. He was poor, but his fund of good humor was inexhaustible. He soon reached his last sue, never his last burst of laughter. When adversity entered his doors, he saluted this old acquaintance cordially. He tapped all catastrophes on the stomach. He was familiar with fatality to the point of calling it by its nickname. Good day, Guignan, he said to it. These persecutions of fate had rendered him inventive. He was full of resources. He had no money, but he found means when it seemed good to him to indulge in unbridled extravagance. One night he went so far as to eat a hundred francs in a supper with a wench, which inspired him to make this memorable remark in the midst of the orgy. Pull off my boots, you five Louis jade. Basway was slowly directing his steps towards the profession of a lawyer. He was pursuing his law studies after the manner of Bajorel. Basway had not much domicile, sometimes not at all. He lived now with one, now with another, and most often with Jolie. Jolie was studying medicine. He was two years younger than Basway. Jolie was the malade-imaginaire junior. What he had won in medicine was to be more of an invalid than a doctor. At three and twenty he thought himself a valetudinarian and passed his life in inspecting his tongue in the mirror. He affirmed that man becomes magnetic, like a needle, and remember he placed his bed with its head to the south and the foot to the north, so that at night the circulation of his blood might not be interfered with by the great electric current of the globe. During thunderstorms he felt his pulse. Otherwise he was the gayest of them all. All these young, maniacal, puny, merry incoherences lived in harmony together, and the result was an eccentric and agreeable being, whom his comrades, who were prodigal of winged consonants, called Jolie. You may fly away on the four L's, Jean Prouvert said to him. Jolie had a trick of touching his nose with the tip of his cane, which is an indication of a seditious mind. All these young men, who differed so greatly, and who, on the whole, can only be discussed seriously, held the same religion. Progress. All were the direct sons of the French Revolution. The most giddy of them became solemn when they pronounced that date, 89. Their fathers in the flesh had been either royalists, doctrinaires, it matters not what. This confusion anterior to themselves, who were young, did not concern them at all. The pure blood of principle ran in their veins. They attached themselves without intermediate shades to incorruptible right and absolute duty. Affiliated and initiated, they sketched out the ideal underground. Among all these glowing hearts and thoroughly convinced minds, there was one skeptic. How came he there? By juxtaposition. This skeptic's name was Grantere, and he was in the habit of signing himself with this rebus, R. Grantere was a man who took good care not to believe in anything. Moreover, he was one of the students who had learned the most during their courses at Paris. He knew that the best coffee was to be had at the Café L'Hemblan and the best billiards at the Café Voltaire, that good cakes and laces were to be found at the Hermitage on the Boulevard Domaine, spatchcocked chickens at M. Sauget's excellent Matelots in the Barrière de la Cunette, and a certain thin white wine at the Barrière du Comte Pat. He knew the best place for everything. In addition, boxing and foot fencing and some dances. And he was a thorough single-stick player. He was a tremendous drinker to boot. He was inordinately homely. The prettiest bootstitcher of that day, Irma Boissy, enraged with his homeliness, pronounced sentence on him as follows, Grantere is impossible. But Grantere's fatuity was not to be disconcerted. He stared tenderly and fixately at all women, with the air of saying to them all, if I only chose, and of trying to make his comrades believe that he was in general demand. All those words, rights of the people, rights of man, the social contract, the French Revolution, the Republic, democracy, humanity, civilization, religion, progress, came very near to signifying nothing whatever to Grantere. He smiled at them. Skepticism that carries of the intelligence had not left him a single whole idea. He lived with irony. This was his axiom. There is but one certainty, my full glass. He sneered at all devotion in all parties, the father as well as the brother, Robespierre Jr. as well as Lois-Roll. They are greatly in advance to be dead, he exclaimed. He said of the crucifix, there is a give-it which has been a success. A rover, a gambler, a libertine, often drunk, he displeased these young dreamers by humming incessantly, j'ai mon les fill et j'ai mon le bon vent. Air vive Henri IV. However, this skeptic had one fanaticism. This fanaticism was neither a dogma, nor an idea, nor an art, nor a science. It was a man, Angel Ra. Grantere admired, loved, and venerated Angel Ra. To whom did this anarchical scoffer unite himself in this phalanx of absolute minds? To the most absolute. In what manner had Angel Ra subjugated him? By his ideas? No. By his character. A phenomenon which is often observable. A skeptic who adheres to a believer is as simple as the law of complementary colors. That which we lack attracts us. No one loves the light like the blind man. The dwarf adores the drum major. The toad always has his eyes fixed on heaven. Why? In order to watch the bird in its flight. Grantere, in whom writhed doubt, loved to watch faith soar in Angel Ra. He had need of Angel Ra. That chaste, healthy, firm, upright, hard, candid nature charmed him without his clearly being aware of it, and without the idea of explaining it to himself, having occurred to him. He admired his opposite by instinct. His soft, yielding, dislocated, sickly, shapeless ideas attached themselves to Angel Ra as to a spinal column. His moral backbone leaned on that firmness. Grantere, in the presence of Angel Ra, became someone once more. He was, himself, moreover, composed of two elements, which were, to all appearances, incompatible. He was ironical and cordial. His indifference loved. His mind could get along without belief, but his heart could not get along without friendship. A profound contradiction, for an affection is a conviction. His nature was thus constituted. There are men who seem to be born to be the reverse, the obverse, the wrong side. They are Pollux, Patrocles, Nysus, Urimides, Afestion, Peshmeha. They only exist on condition that they are backed up with another man. Their name is a sequel, and is only written preceded by the conjunction and. And their existence is not their own. It is the other side of an existence which is not theirs. Grantere was one of these men. He was the obverse of Angel-Rah. One might almost say that affinities begin with the letters of the alphabet. In the series, O and P are inseparable. You can, at will, pronounce O and P, or, orrestes and pilates. Grantere, Angel-Rah's true satellite, inhabited the circle of young men. He lived there. He took no pleasure anywhere but there. He followed them everywhere. His joy was to see these forms go and come through the fumes of wine. They tolerated him on account of his good humor. Angel-Rah, the believer, disdained this skeptic, and a sober man himself, scorned this drunkard. He accorded him a little lofty pity. Grantere was unaccepted by ladies. Always harshly treated by Angel-Rah. Roughly repulsed. Rejected yet ever returning to the charge. He said of Angel-Rah, What fine marble!