 Chapter 2 of Book 4 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 Mae Lowe. Les Miserables, Volume 3 by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood. Book 4, The Friends of the ABC. Chapter 2, Blondos Funeral Oration by Bosway. On a certain afternoon, which had, as will be seen hereafter, some coincidence with the events here too far related, Le Demol was to be seen leaning in a sensual manner against the doorpost of the Café Moussin. He had the air of recarrioted on a vacation. He carried nothing but his reverie, however. He was staring at the plus sent Michel. To lean one's back against a thing is equivalent to lying down while standing erect, which attitude is not hated by thinkers. Le Demol was pondering without melancholy over a little misadventure which had befallen him two days previously at the law school and which had modified his personal plans for the future, plans which were rather indistinct at any case. Reverie does not prevent a cab from passing by, nor the dreamer from taking note of that cab. Le Demol, whose eyes were straying about in a sort of diffuse lounging, perceived a thought his somnambulism, a two-wheeled vehicle proceeding through the place, at a foot pace and apparently in indecision. For whom was this cabriolet? Why was it driving at a walk? Leig took a survey. In it, beside the coachman, sat a young man, and in front of the young man lay a rather bulky handbag. The bag displayed to passers-by the following name inscribed in large black letters on a card which was sewn to the staff. Marius Pontmercy. This name caused Leig to change his attitude. He drew himself up and hurled this apostrophe at the young man in the cabriolet. Monsieur Marius Pontmercy. The cabriolet thus addressed came to a halt. The young man, who also seemed deeply buried in thought, raised his eyes. Hey, said he! You are Monsieur Marius Pontmercy? Certainly! I was looking for you, resumed Leig Demol. How so demanded Marius, for it was he. In fact, he had just quitted his grandfathers, and had before him a face which he now beheld for the first time. I do not know you. Neither do I know you, resumed Leig. Marius thought he had encountered a wag, the beginning of a mystification in the open street. He was not in a very good humour at the moment. He frowned. Leig Demol went on imperturbably. You were not at the school the day before yesterday. That is possible. That is certain. You were a student, demanded Marius. Yes, sir, like yourself. Day before yesterday I entered the school, by chance. You know, one does have such freaks sometimes. The professor was just calling the roll. You are not unaware that they are very ridiculous on such occasions. At the third call, unanswered, your name is erased from the list. Sixty francs in the gulf. Marius began to listen. It was Blondeau who was making the call. You know Blondeau. He has a very pointed and a very malicious nose, and he delights to sent out the absent. He slightly began with the letter P. I was not listening, not being compromised by that letter. The call was not going badly. No erasures. The universe was present. Blondeau was grieved. I said to myself, Blondeau, my love, you will not get the very smallest sort of an execution today. All at once Blondeau calls Marius Pontmercy. No one answers. Blondeau, filled with hope, repeats more loudly. Marius Pontmercy. And he takes his pen. Monsieur, I have the bowels of compassion. I said to myself hastily, He is a brave fellow who is going to get scratched out. Attention! Here is a veritable mortal who is not exact. He is not a good student. Here is none of your heavy sides, a student who studies, a greenhorn pedant, strong on letters, theology, science and sapiens. One of those dull wits cut by the square are pinned by profession. He is an honourable idler who lounges, who practices country joints, who cultivates the grisette, who pays court with the fair sex, who has at this very moment perhaps with my mistress. Let us save him. Death to Blondeau. At that moment Blondeau dipped his pen in, all black with erasures in the ink. Cast his yellow eyes around the audience room and repeated for the third time. Marius Pontmercy. I replied, present. That is why you are not crossed off. Monsieur, said Marius, and why I was, added Legues Demois. I do not understand you, said Marius. Legues resumed. Nothing is more simple. I was close to the desk to reply, and close to the door for the purpose of flight. The professor gazed at me with a certain intensity. All of a sudden Blondeau, who must be the malicious nose alluded to by Boilieu, skipped the letter L. L is my letter. I am from Moe. My name is Legues. Legues interrupted Marius. What a fine name! Monsieur, Blondeau came to this fine name and called Legues. I replied, present. Then Blondeau gazes at me with the gentleness of a tiger, and says to me, if you are Pontmercy, you are not Legues. A phrase which had a disabligic air for you, but which was lugubrious only for me. That said, he crossed me off. Marius exclaimed, I am mortified, sir. First of all, interposed Legues, I demand permission to embalm Blondeau in a few phrases of deeply felt eulogium. I will assume that he is dead. There will be no great change required in his gauntness, in his pallor, in his coldness, and in his smell. And I say, erudimini qui eucatis terum. Here lies Blondeau, Blondeau the nose, Blondeau nasica, the ox of discipline, boss discipliné, the bloodhound of the password, the angel of the roll-call, who was upright, square exact, rigid, honest, and hideous. God crossed him off, as he crossed me off. Marius resumed, I am very sorry. Young man, said Legues-demo, let this serve you as a lesson. In future, be exact. I really beg you a thousand pardons. Do not expose your neighbour to the danger of having his name erased again. I am extremely sorry. Legues burst out laughing. And I am delighted. I was on the brink of becoming a lawyer. This erasure saves me. I renounce the triumphs of the bar. I shall not defend the widow, and I shall not attack the orphan. No more toga, no more stage. Here is my erasure, all ready for me. It is to you that I am indebted for it, Monsieur Pontmercy. I intend to pay a solemn call of thanks upon you. Where do you live? In this cab, said Marius. A sign of opulence retorted Legues calmly. I congratulate you. You have there a rent of nine thousand francs per annum. At that moment, Corfeirac emerged from the café. Marius smiled sadly. I have paid this rent for the last two hours, and I aspire to get rid of it. But there is a sort of history attached to it, and I don't know where to go. Come to my place, sir, said Corfeirac. I have the priority, observed Legues, but I have no home. Hold your tongue, Bossway, said Corfeirac. Bossway, said Marius, but I thought that your name was Legues. Demo replied Legues, by metaphor Bossway. Corfeirac entered the cab. Coachman said he—Hotel de la Porte Saint-Jacques. And that very evening Marius found himself installed in a chamber of the hotel de la Porte Saint-Jacques side by side with Corfeirac. End of Chapter 4 Chapter 3 of Book 4 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 Miss Dauphalus. Les Miserables, Volume 3 by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book 4. The Friends of the ABC. Chapter 3. Marius' Assangements. In a few days Marius had become Corfeirac's friend. Youth is a season for prompt welding and a rapid healing of scars. Marius breathed freely in Corfeirac's society. A decidedly new thing for him. Corfeirac put no questions to him. He did not even think of such a thing. At that age, faces disclose everything on the spot. Words are superfluous. These are young men whom it can be said that their confidences chatter. One look at them and one knows them. One morning, however, Corfeirac abruptly addressed this interrogation to him. By the way, have you any political opinions? The idea, said Marius, almost affronted by the question. What are you? A democrat born a partist. The grey hue of a reassured rat, said Corfeirac. On the following day, Corfeirac introduced Marius at the cafe Musang. Then he whispered in his ear with a smile. I must give you your entry to the revolution. And he led him to the hall of the Friends of the ABC. He presented him to the other comrades, saying this simple word which Marius did not understand. A pupil. Marius had fallen into a wasp's nest of wits. However, although he was silent and grave, he was nonetheless, both winged and armed. Marius, up to that time solitary and inclined to soliloquy and to a side, both by habit and by taste, was a little fluttered by this cave of young men around him. All these various initiatives solicited his attention at once and pulled him about. The tumultuous movements of these minds and liberty and at work set his ideas in the world. Sometimes, in his trouble, they led so far from him that he had difficulty in recovering them. He heard them talk of philosophy, of literature, of art, of history, of religion in unexpected fashion. He caught glimpses of strange aspects, and, as he did not please them in proper perspective, he was not altogether sure that it was not chaos that he grasped. On abandoning his grandfather's opinions for the opinions of his father, he had supposed himself fixed with uneasiness and, without daring to avow it to himself, that he was not. The angle at which he saw everything began to be displaced anew. A certain oscillation set all the horizons of his brains in motion. An odd interval upsetting. He almost suffered from it. It seemed as though there were no consecrated things for those young men. Marius heard singular propositions on every sort of subject, which embarrassed his still timid mind. A theatre poster presented itself, adorned with a title of a tragedy from the ancient repertory called Classic. Down with tragedy, dear to the bourgeois, cried Barhowel, and Marius heard comfort reply. You are wrong, Barhowel. The bourgeoisie loves tragedy, and the bourgeoisie must be left at peace on that score. Beware, the tragedy has a reason for its existence, and I am not one of those who, by the order of Estriles, contest its right to existence. There are rough outlines in nature. There are, in creation, ready-made parodies. A beak which is not a beak. Wings which are not wings. Gills which are not gills. Paws which are not paws. A cry of pain which arouses a desire to laugh. There is the duck. Now, since paltry exists by the side of the bird, I do not see why classic tragedy should not exist in the face of antique tragedy. Or chance decreed that Marius should traverse Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau between Angelus and Corphe-Rac. Corphe-Rac took his arm. Pay attention. This is the Rue plaitreur, now called Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, on account of a singular household which lived in it sixty years ago. This consisted of Jean-Jacques and Therese. From time to time, little beings were born here. Therese gave birth to them. Jean-Jacques represented them as foundlings. And Angelus addressed Corphe-Rac roughly. Silence in the presence of Jean-Jacques. I admire that man. He denied his own children that maybe, but he adopted the people. Not one of these young men articulated the word the Emperor. Jean-Provère alone sometimes said Napoleon. All the others said Bonaparte. And Angelus pronounced it Buonaparte. Marius was vaguely surprised. In Ithium Sapientie. End of Book 4, Chapter 3. Recording by Mistopholis. Chapter 4 of Book 4 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 4. The Friends of the ABC. Chapter 4. The Back Room of the Café Musée. One of the conversations among the young men at which Marius was present and in which he sometimes joined was a veritable shock to his mind. This took place in the back room of the Café Musée. Nearly all of the Friends of the ABC had convened that evening. The argand lamp was solemnly lighted. They talked of one thing and another without passion and with noise. With the exception of Angiolra and Marius, who held their peace, all were haranguing rather at haphazard. Conversations between comrades sometimes are subject to these peaceable tumults. It was a game and an uproar, as much as a conversation. They tossed words to each other and caught them up in turn. They were chattering in all quarters. No woman was admitted to this back room except Louis-Saint, the dishwasher of the café, who passed through it from time to time to go to her washing in the lavatory. Grantair, thoroughly drunk, was deafening the corner of which he had taken possession, reasoning and contradicting at the top of his lungs and shouting, I am thirsty, mortals, I am dreaming that the ton of Heidelberg has an attack of apoplexy and that I am one of the dozen leeches which will be applied to it. I want a drink. I desire to forget life. Life is a hideous invention of I know not whom. It lasts no time at all and is worth nothing. One breaks one's neck in living. Life is a theatre set in which there are but few practicable entrances. Happiness is an antique reliquary, painted on one side only. Ecclesiastes says all is vanity. I agree with that good man, who never existed perhaps. Zero not wishing to go stark naked clothed himself in vanity. Oh, vanity! The patching up of everything with big words. A kitchen is a laboratory. A dancer is a professor. An acrobat is a gymnast. A boxer is a pugilist. An apothecary is a chemist. A wigmaker is an artist. A hot man is an architect. A jockey is a sportsman. A woodlose is a terrierange. Vanity has a right and a wrong side. The right side is stupid. It is the negro with his glass beads. The wrong side is foolish. It is the philosopher with his rags. I weep over the one and I laugh over the other. What are called honours and dignities, and even dignity and honour, are generally of pinchback. Kings make playthings of human pride. Caligula made a horse a consul. Charles II made a knight of a sirloin. Wrap yourself up now, then, between consul in citatus and baronet roast beef. As for the intrinsic value of people it is no longer respectable in the least. Listen to the panagyric which neighbour makes of neighbour. White on white is ferocious if the lily could speak what a setting down it would give the dove. A bigoted woman, preting of a devout woman, is more venomous than the asp and the cobra. It is a shame that I am ignorant. Otherwise I would quote to you a mass of things, but I know nothing. For instance, I have always been witty when I was a pupil of grove. Instead of dobbing wretched little pictures, I passed my time in pilfering apples. Rapin is the masculine of rapine. So much for myself. As for the rest of you, you are with no more than I am. I scoff at your perfection's excellencies and qualities. Every good quality tends towards a defect. Economy borders on avarice. The generous man is next door to the prodigal. The brave man brubs elbows with the braggart. He who says very pious says a trifle bigoted. There are just as many vices in virtue as there are holes in diogenes cloak. Whom do you admire? The slain or the slayer? Caesar or Brutus? Generally men are in favour of the slayer. Long live Brutus, he has slain. There lies the virtue. Virtue granted, but madness also. There are queer spots on those great men. The Brutus who killed Caesar was in love with the statue of a little boy. This statue was from the hand of the Greek sculptor Strangelion, who also carved that figure of an Amazon known as the Beautiful Leg, Yuknimos, which Nero carried with him in his travels. This Strangelion left but two statues which placed Nero and Brutus in accord. Brutus was in love with the one Nero with the other. All history is nothing but weary some repetition. One century is the plagiarist of the other. The battle of Marengo copies the battle of Pidna. The Tolbiac of Clovie and the Austerlitz of Napoleon are as like each other as two drops of water. I don't attach much importance to victory. Nothing is so stupid as to conquer. True glory lies in convincing. But try to prove something. If you are content with success, what mediocrity? And with conquering, what wretchedness? Alas, vanity and cowardice everywhere. Everything obeys success, even grammar. See, valid usus says Horus. Therefore I disdain the human race. Shall we descend to the party at all? Do you wish me to begin admiring the peoples? What people, if you please? Shall it be Greece? The Athenians, those Parisians of days gone by, slew Phocians, as we might say, Colony, and fawned upon tyrants to such an extent that Anaciferus said of Pisistratus his urine attracts the bees. The most prominent man in Greece for fifty years was that grammarian Phyletus, who was so small and so thin that he was obliged to load his shoes with lead in order not to be blown away by the wind. There stood on the great square in Corinth a statue carved by Selenian and cataloged by Pliny. This statue represented episthetes. What did episthetes do? He invented a trip. That sums up Greece and glory. Let us pass on to others. Shall I admire England? Shall I admire France? France? Why, because of Paris? I've just told you my opinion of Athens. England? Why, because of London? I hate Carthage. And then London, the metropolis of luxury, is the headquarters of wretchedness. There are a hundred deaths a year of hunger in the parish of Charing Cross alone. Such is Albion. I add, as the climax, that I have seen an English woman dancing in a wreath of roses and blue spectacles. A fig, then, for England. If I do not admire John Bull, shall I admire Brother Jonathan? I have but little taste for that slave-holding brother. Take away time is money. What remains of England? Take away cotton is king. What remains of America? Germany is the lymph. Italy is the bile. Shall we go into ecstasy over Russia? Voltaire admired it. He also admired China. I admit that Russia has its beauties, among others, a stout despotism, but I pity the despots. Their health is delicate. A decapitated Alexis, a poignarded Peter, a strangled Paul, another Paul crushed flat with kicks, diverse Ivans strangled with their throats cut, numerous Nicolases and basils poisoned. All this indicates that the palace of the emperors of Russia is in a condition of flagrant insalubrity. All civilized peoples offer this detail to the admiration of the thinker. War. Now, war, civilized war, exhausts and sums up all the forms of ruffianism, from the brigandage of the tribuseros and the gorges of Mount Jackson, to the marauding of the Comanche Indians in the doubtful past. Bah, you will say to me, but Europe is certainly better than Asia. I admit that Asia is a farce, but I do not precisely see what you find to laugh at at Negrand Lama, you peoples of the West who have mingled with your fashions and your elegances all the complicated filth of majesty, from the dirty chemise of Queen Isabella to the chamber-chair of the Dauphin. Gentlemen of the human race, I tell you, not a bit of it. It is at Brussels that the most beer is consumed, at Stockholm the most brandy, at Madrid the most chocolate, at Amsterdam the most gin, at London the most wine, at Constantinople the most coffee, at Paris the most absinthe. These are all the useful notions. Paris carries the day in short, in Paris even the rag pickers are ciberites. Diogenes would have loved to be a rag picker of the Plasmobert better than to be a philosopher at the Piraeus. Learn this in addition, the wine shops of the rag pickers are called bibines. The most celebrated are the saucepan and the slaughterhouse. Tea gardens, goquettes, cabalots, buibuis, mastroquets, basrang, manazin, bibines of the rag pickers, caravanseries of the calyffs. I certify to you, I am a voluptuary. I eat at Richards at Forty-Stu ahead. I must have Persian carpets to roll naked Cleopatra in. Where is Cleopatra? Ah! So it is you, Louis-Saint-Guedet. Thus did Gronterre, more than intoxicated, launch into speech catching at the dishwasher in her passage from his corner in the back room of the café-mousain. Busway, extending his hand towards him, tried to impose silence on him, and Gronterre began again, worse than ever. Aigle de mot, down with your pause. You produce on me no effect with your gesture of hypocritees refusing Arteserxes Brickabrac. I excuse you from the task of soothing me. Moreover, I am sad. What do you wish me to say to you? Man is evil, man is deformed. The butterfly is a success. Man is a failure. God made a mistake with that animal. A crowd offers a choice of ugliness. The first comer is a wretch. Fam, woman. Rhymes with infam, infamous. Yes, I have the spleen complicated with melancholy, with homesickness, plus hypochondria, and I am vexed, and I rage, and I yawn, and I am bored, and I am tired to death, and I am stupid. Let God go to the devil. Silence, then, capital R, resumed Busway, who was discussing a point of law behind the scenes, and who was plunged more than waist-high in a phrase of judicial slang, of which this is the conclusion. And as for me, although I am hardly a legist, and at the most an amateur attorney, I maintain this, that in accordance with the terms of the customs of Normandy, that semi-chale and for each year an equivalent must be paid to the prophet of the Lord of the Manor, saving the rights of others, and by all and several the proprietors as well as those seized with inheritance, and that, for all emphatooses, leases, freeholds, contracts of domain, mortgages, echo, plaintive, nymph, hummed grandeur. Near grandeur, an almost silent table, a sheet of paper, an ink-stand, and a pen between two glasses of brandy, announced that a vaudeville was being sketched out, this great affair was being discussed in a low voice, and the two heads at work touched each other. Let us begin by finding names when one has the names one finds the subject. That is true. Dictate I will write. M. Dorimond, an independent gentleman, of course. His daughter, Celestine, teen. What next? Colonel Saint Val. Saint Val is stale. I should say Valse. Beside the vaudeville aspirants, another group, which was also taking advantage of the uproar to talk low, was discussing a duel. An old fellow of thirty was counseling a young one of eighteen and explaining to him what sort of an adversary he had to deal with. The deuce. Look out for yourself. He is a fine swordsman. His play is neat. He has the attack, no wasted feints, wrist, dash, lightning, a just parade, mathematical parries, bigra, and he is left-handed. In the angle opposite Grand Air, Jolie and Baorel were playing dominoes and talking of love. You are in luck that you are, Jolie was saying. You have a mistress who is always laughing. That is a fault of hers, returned Baorel. Once mistress does wrong to laugh, that encourages one to deceive her. To see her gay removes your remorse. If you see her sad, your conscience pricks you. Even great, a woman who laughs is such a good thing, and you never quarrel. That is because of the treaty which we have made. On forming our little holy alliance we assigned ourselves each our frontier which we never cross. What is situated on the side of winter belongs to vaude, on the side of the wind to gax, hence the peace. Peace is happiness digesting. And usually where do you stand in your entanglement with Mamzal? You know whom I mean. She sulks at me with cruel patience. Yet you are a lover to soften the heart with gauntness. Alas! In your place I would let her alone. That is easy enough to say. And to do is not her name Musiceta? Yes, ah, my poor Baorel, she is a superb girl, very literary, with tiny feet, little hands. She dresses well, and is white and dimpled, with the eyes of a fortune teller. I am wild over her. My dear fellow, then in order to please her you must be elegant, and produce effects with your knees. Buy a good pair of trousers of double milled cloth at stops. That will assist. At what price shouted Grantair? The third corner was delivered up to a poetical discussion. Pagan mythology was giving battle to Christian mythology. The question was about Olympus, whose part was taken by Jean Prouvert out of pure romanticism. Jean Prouvert was timid only in repose. Once excited, he burst forth a sort of mirth accentuated his enthusiasm, and he was at once both laughing and lyric. Let us not insult the gods, said he. The gods may not have taken their departure. Jupiter does not impress me as dead. The gods are dreams, you say? Well, even in nature, such as it is today, after the flight of these dreams, we still find all the grand old Pagan myths. Such and such a mountain with the profile of a citadel, like the Veen Mah, for example, is still, to me, the headdress of Sibley. It has not been proved to me that Pan does not come at night to breathe into the hollow trunks of the willows, stopping up the holes in turn with his fingers, and I have always believed that Io had something to do with the cascade of piece vache. In the last corner they were talking politics. The charter which had been granted was getting roughly handled. Homme Faire was upholding it weekly. Cours Férac was energetically making a breach in it. On the table lay an unfortunate copy of the famous Touquet charter. Cours Faire had seized it and was brandishing it, mingling with his arguments the rattling of this sheet of paper. In the first place I won't have any kings. If it were only from an economical point of view, I don't want any. A king is a parasite. One does not have king's gratis. Listen to this, the dearness of kings. At the death of François I, the national debt of France amounted to an income of thirty thousand leavers. At the death of Louis XIV it was two milliards, six hundred millions, at twenty-eight leavers the mark, which was equivalent in 1760 according to Des Marais, to four milliards, five hundred millions, which would today be equivalent to twelve milliards. In the second place, and no offence to Homme Faire, a charter granted is but a poor expedient of civilisation, to save the transition, to soften the passage, to deaden the shock, to cause the nation to pass insensibly from the monarchy to democracy by the practice of constitutional fictions. What detestable reasons all those are. No, no, let us never enlighten the people with false daylight. Principles dwindle and pale in your constitutional cellar. No illegitimacy, no compromise, no grant from the king to the people. In all such grants there is an article fourteen. By the side of the hand which gives there is the claw which snatches back. I refuse your charter point blank. A charter is a mask. The lie lurks beneath it. A people which accepts a charter abdicates. The law is only the law when entire. No, no charter. It was winter. A couple of faggots were crackling in the fireplace. This was tempting, and Courfe-Rac could not resist. He crumpled the poor 2K charter in his fist and flung it in the fire. The paper flashed up. Homme Faire watched the masterpiece of Louis XVIII burn philosophically and contented himself with saying, the charter metamorphosed into flame. And sarcasms, sallies, jests, that French thing which is called entrain and that English thing which is called humour, good and bad taste, good and bad reasons, all the wild pyrotechnics of dialogue mounting together and crossing from all points of the room produced a sort of merry bombardment over their heads. End of book 4, CHAPTER IV ENLARGEMENT OF HORIZON Just suffices to open the field to the unexpected. These are conversations with abrupt turns in which the perspective changes suddenly. Chance is the stage manager of such conversations. A severe thought, starting oddly from a clash of words, suddenly traversed the conflict of quips in which Granterre, Baorel, Prüvert, Basouet, Comphère and Courfe-Rac were confusedly fencing. How does a phrase crop up in a dialogue? Whence comes it that it suddenly impresses itself on the attention of those who hear it? We have just said that no one knows anything about it. In the midst of the uproar, Basouet all at once terminated some apostrophe to Comphère with this date. June 18th, 1815, Waterloo At this name of Waterloo, Marius, who was leaning his elbows on a table beside a glass of water, removed his wrist from beneath his chin and began to gaze fixedly at the audience. Pargeux exclaimed Courfe-Rac. Parbleux was falling into disuse at this period. That number eighteen is strange and strikes me. It is Bonaparte's fatal number. Place Louis in front and Brumère behind and you have the whole destiny of the man, with this significant peculiarity that the end treads close on the heels of the commencement. Angereux, who had remained mute up to that point, broke the silence and addressed this remark to Comphère. You mean to say the crime and the expiation. This word crime overpassed the measure of what Marius, who was already greatly agitated by the abrupt evocation of Waterloo, could accept. He rose, walked slowly to the map of France spread out on the wall and at whose base an island was visible in a separate compartment, laid his finger on this compartment and said, Corsica, a little island which has rendered France very great. This was like a breath of icy air, all ceased talking. They felt that something was on the point of occurring. Baural, replying to Basseway, was just assuming an attitude of the torso to which he was addicted. He gave it up to listen. Angereux, whose blue eye was not fixed on anyone and who seemed to be gazing at space, replied, without glancing at Marius, France needs no Corsica to be great. France is great because she is France, qui a nominaleo. Marius felt no desire to retreat. He turned towards Angereux and his voice burst forth with a vibration which came from a quiver of his very being. God forbid that I should diminish France, but amalgamating Napoleon with her is not diminishing her. Come, let us argue the question. I am a newcomer among you, but I will confess that you amaze me. Where do we stand? Who are we? Who are you? Who am I? Let us come to an explanation about the emperor. I hear you say Buona part, accentuating the you like the royalists. I warn you that my grandfather does better still, he says Buona parta. I thought you were young men. Where then is your enthusiasm? And what are you doing with it? Whom do you admire if you do not admire the emperor? And what more do you want? If you will have none of that great man, what great man would you like? He had everything. He was complete. He had in his brain the sum of human faculties. He made codes like Justinian. He dictated like Caesar. His conversation was mingled with the lightning flash of Pascal, with the thunder clap of Tacitus. He made history and he wrote it. His bulletins are Iliads. He combined the cipher of Newton with the metaphor of Muhammad. He left behind him in the east words as great as the pyramids. At Tilset he taught emperor's majesty. At the Academy of Sciences he replied to Laplace. In the Council of State he held his own against Merlin. He gave a soul to the geometry of the first and to the chicanery of the last. He was a legist with the attorneys and sidereal with the astronomers. Like Cromwell blowing out one of two candles, he went to the temple to bargain for a curtain tassel. He saw everything. He knew everything. Which did not prevent him from laughing good-naturedly beside the cradle of his little child. And all at once frightened Europe lent an ear. Armies put themselves in motion. Parks of artillery rumbled. Pond-tunes stretched over the rivers. Clouds of cavalry galloped in the storm. Cries, trumpets, a trembling of thrones in every direction. The frontiers of kingdoms oscillated on the map. The sound of a superhuman sword was heard as it was drawn from its sheath. They beheld him, him, rise erect on the horizon with a blazing brand in his hand and a glow in his eyes. Unfolding amid the thunder his two wings, the Grand Army and the Old Guard, and he was the archangel of war. All held their peace, and Anjolra bowed his head. Silence always produces somewhat the effect of acquiescence, of the enemy being driven to the wall. Marius continued with increased enthusiasm and almost without pausing for breath. Let us be just, my friends, what a splendid destiny for a nation to be the empire of such an emperor, when that nation is France, and when it adds its own genius to the genius of that man. To appear and to reign, to march and to triumph, to have for halting places all capitals, to take his grenadiers and to make kings of them, to decree the falls of dynasties, and to transfigure Europe at the pace of a charge, to make you feel that when you threaten you lay your hand on the hilt of the sword of God, to follow in a single man, Hannibal, Caesar, Charlemagne, to be the people of some one who mingles with your dawns the startling announcement of a battle one, to have the canon of the Envalide to rouse you in the morning, to hurl you into abysses of light prodigious words which flame forever, Marengo, Arcola, Austerlitz, Jena, Wagram, to cause constellations of victories to flash forth at each instant from the zenith of the centuries, to make the French Empire a pendant to the Roman Empire, to be the great nation and to give birth to the grand army, to make its legions fly forth over all the earth as a mountain sends out its eagles on all sides to conquer, to dominate, to strike with lightning, to be in Europe a sort of nation gilded through glory, to sound a thwart to the centuries a trumpet blast of titans, to conquer the world twice by conquest and by dazzling. That is sublime and what greater thing is there. To be free, said Combe Faire, Marius lowered his head in his turn, that cold and simple word had traversed his epic effusion like a blade of steel, and he felt it vanishing within him. When he raised his eyes Combe Faire was no longer there. Probably satisfied with his reply to the apotheosis he had just taken his departure and all with the exception of Angel Ra had followed him. The room had been emptied. Angel Ra, left alone with Marius, was gazing gravely at him. Marius, however, having rallied his ideas to some extent, did not consider himself beaten. There lingered in him a trace of inward fermentation which was on the point, no doubt, of translating itself into syllogisms arrayed against Angel Ra and all of a sudden they heard someone singing on the stairs as he went. It was Combe Faire and this is what he was singing. Si César m'avait donné la gloire et la guerre, et qu'il me fallait quitter l'amour de ma mère, je dirais aux grands César reprends ton septre étanchard. J'aime mieux ma mère. Au goé, j'aime mieux ma mère. The wild and tender accents with which Combe Faire sang communicated to this couplet a sort of strange grandeur. Marius, thoughtfully and with his eyes daked on the ceiling, repeated almost mechanically. My mother? At that moment he felt Angel Ra's hand on his shoulder. Citizens said Angel Ra to him. My mother is the Republic. That evening left Marius profoundly shaken and with a melancholy shadow in his soul. He felt what the earth may possibly feel at the moment when it is torn open with the iron in order that grain may be deposited within it. It feels only the wound. The quiver of the germ, the joy of the fruit only arrived later. Marius was gloomy. He had but just acquired a faith. Must he then reject it already? He affirmed to himself that he would not. And he began to doubt, in spite of himself, to stand between two religions, from one of which you have not as yet emerged and another into which you have not yet entered is intolerable. And twilight is pleasing only to bat-like souls. Marius was clear-eyed, and he required the true light. The half-lights of doubt pained him. Whatever may have been his desire to remain where he was, he could not halt there. He was irresistibly constrained to continue, to advance, to examine, to think, to march further. Wither would this lead him. He feared, after having taken so many steps which had brought him nearer to his father, to now take a step which would estrange him from that father. His discomfort was augmented by all the reflections which occurred to him, and escarpment rose around him. He was in accord neither with his grandfather nor with his friends. Daring in the eyes of the one, he was behind the times in the eyes of the other. And he recognized the fact that he was doubly isolated, on the side of age and on the side of youth. He ceased to go to the Café Moussin. In the troubled state of his conscience, he no longer thought of certain serious sides of existence. The realities of life do not allow themselves to be forgotten. They soon elbowed him, abruptly. One morning the proprietor of the hotel entered Marius's room and said to him, Mr. Kurfarak answered for you? Yes, but I must have my money. Request Kurfarak to come and talk with me, said Marius. Kurfarak, having made his appearance, the host left them. Marius then told him what had then not before occurred to him to relate that he was the same as alone in the world, and had no relatives. What is to become of you? said Kurfarak. I do not know in the least, replied Marius. What are you going to do? I do not know. Have you any money? Fifteen francs. Do you want me to lend you some? Never. Have you clothes? Here is what I have. Have you trinkets? A watch. Silver? Gold. Here it is. I know a clothes dealer who will take your frock coat and a pair of trousers. That is good. You will then have only a pair of trousers, a waistcoat, a hat, and a coat. And my boots. What? You will not go barefoot? What opulence? That will be enough. I know a watchmaker who will buy your watch. That is good. No, it is not good. What will you do after that? Whatever is necessary, anything honest, that is to say. Do you know English? No. Do you know German? No. So much the worse. Why? Because one of my friends, a publisher, is getting up a sort of an encyclopedia for which you might have translated English or German articles. It is badly paid work, but one can live by it. I will learn English and German. And in the meanwhile, I will live on my clothes and my watch. The clothes dealer was sent for. He paid twenty francs for the cast-off garments. They went to the watchmakers. He bought the watch for forty-five francs. That is not bad, St. Mary's to Kerferac on their return to the hotel. With my fifteen francs, that makes eighty. And the hotel bill observed Kerferac. Hello. I had forgotten that, St. Mary's. The landlord presented his bill, which had to be paid on the spot. It amounted to seventy francs. I have ten francs left, St. Mary's. The deuce! exclaimed Kerferac. You will eat up five francs while you are learning English and five while learning German. That will be swallowing a tongue very fast or a hundred soon, very slowly. In the meantime, Aunt Guy-No-Main, a rather good-hearted person at bottom in difficulties, had finally hunted up Mary's as a bode. One morning, on his return from the law school, Mary's found a letter from his aunt and a sixty-pistol, that is to say six hundred francs in gold, in a sealed box. Mary sent back the thirty Louis to his aunt with a respectful letter, in which she stated that he had sufficient means of subsistence and that he should be able, then, to supply all his needs. At that moment, he had three francs left. His aunt did not inform his grandfather of this refusal, for fear of exasperating him. Besides, had he not said, let me never hear the name of that blood-drinker again, Mary's left the hotel de la Porte Saint-Jacques, as he did not wish to run and get there. End of book four, chapter six. Chapter one, book five of Les Miserables, 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 Linda Woods. Les Miserables, volume three by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood. Book five, Les Miserables, chapter one, Marius Indigent. Life became hard for Marius. There was nothing to eat his clothes and his watch. He ate of that terrible, inexpressible thing that is called t'é la vache en rage. That is to say, he endured great hardships and privations. The terrible thing it is, containing days without bread, nights without sleep, evenings without a candle, a hearth without a fire, weeks without work, a future without hope, a coat out at the elbows, an old hat which evokes the laughter of young girls, a door which one finds locked on one at night because one's rent is not paid, the insolence of the porter and the cook-shop man, the sneers of neighbors, humiliations, dignity trampled on, work of whatever nature accepted, discussed, bitterness, despondency. Marius learned how all this is eaten and how such are often the only things which one has to devour. At that moment of his existence when a man needs his pride because he needs love, he felt that he was jeered at because he was badly dressed and ridiculous because he was poor. At the age when youth swells the heart with imperial pride, he dropped his eyes more than once on his dilapidated boots and he knew the unjust shame and the poignant blushes of wretchedness. At Merlin, terrible trial from which the feeble emerged base, from which the strong emerged sublime, a crucible into which destiny casts a man whenever it desires a scoundrel or a demagogue. For many great deeds are performed in petty combat there are instances of bravery ignored and obstinate which defend themselves step by step in that fatal onslaught of necessities and turpitudes. Noble and mysterious triumphs which no eye beholds which are requited with no renown which are saluted with no trumpet blast. Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment, poverty are fields of battle which have their heroes obscure heroes who are sometimes grander than the heroes who win renown. Firm and rare natures are thus created. Misery, almost always a stepmother is sometimes a mother. Destitution gives birth to might of soul and spirit. Distress is the nurse of pride. Unhappiness is a good milk for the magnanimous. There came a moment in Marius' life when he swept his own landing, when he bought his Sue's worth of breed cheese at the fruiterers, when he waited until twilight had fallen to slip into the bakers and purchase a loaf which he carried off furtively to his attic as though he had stolen it. Sometimes there could be seen gliding into the butcher's shop on the corner in the midst of the bantering cooks who elbowed him an awkward young man carrying big books under his arm who had a timid yet angry ear who on entering removed his hat from a brow whereon stood drops of perspiration, made a profound bow to the butcher's astonished wife, asked for a mutton cutlet, paid six or seven Sue's for it, wrapped it up in a paper, put it under his arm between two books, and went away. It was Marius. On this cutlet which he cooked for himself he lived for three days. On the first day he ate the meat. On the second he ate the fat. On the third he gnawed the bone. Aunt Gyllen Norman made repeated attempts and sent him the sixty pistolas several times. Marius returned on him every occasion saying that he needed nothing. He was still in mourning for his father when the revolution which we have just described was affected within him. From that time forth he had not put off his black garments. But his garments were quitting him. The day came when he had no longer a coat. The trousers would go next. What was to be done? Corphorac, to whom he had on his side done some good turns, gave him an old coat. For thirty Sue's Marius got it turned by some porter or other and it was a new coat. But this coat was green. Then Marius ceased to go out until after nightfall. This made his coat black. As he wished always to appear in mourning he clothed himself with the night. In spite of all this he got admitted to practice as a lawyer. He was supposed to live in Corphorac's room which was decent and where a certain number of law books backed up and completed by several dilapidated volumes of romance passed as the library required by the regulations. He had his letters addressed to Corphorac's quarters. When Marius became a lawyer he informed his grandfather of the fact in a letter which was cold but full of submission and respect. And Gyllenormand trembled as he took the letter, read it, toured in four pieces and threw it into the waste basket. Two or three days later Mademoiselle Gyllenormand heard her father who was alone in his room talking aloud to himself. He always did this whenever he was greatly agitated. She listened and the old man was saying if you were not a fool you would know that one cannot be a baron and a lawyer at the same time. Chapter 2 Marius Poor It is the same with wretchedness as everything else. It ends by becoming bearable. It finally resumes the form and adjusts itself. One vegetates, there is to say. One develops in a certain meager fashion which is, however, sufficient for life. Mr. Moth in which the existence of Marius Portmancy was arranged. He had passed the vast rates than there were passes opening out a little in front of him. By a kind of chore, perseverance, courage, and will he had managed a chore from his back about seven hundred Francia. He had learned German and English thanks to Kulfeidark. He had put him in communication with his friend, the publisher. Marius felt the modest pace of the utility man in literature at the publishing house. He drew prospectuses, translated newspapers, annotated editions, compiled biographies, et cetera, net product, year in and year out, seven hundred francs. He lived in it. How? Not so badly, we will explain. Marius occupied at the Gorbo house for an annual sum of thirty francs, a den minus a fireplace, called a cabinet, which contained all of the most indispensable articles of furniture. This furniture belonged to him. He gave it three francs a month to the old principal tenant to come and sweep his house, and to bring him a little hot water every morning, a fresh egg, and a penny of all. He break faster than his egg and all. His breakfast varied in course from two to four soon, recording as eggs with D or cheap. At six o'clock in the evening he brought the roux Saint-Jacques to Dynaprosos, opposite Bassets, the Stamptiles, or the corner of Rude Materine. He ate no soup. He took a sick soup by it of mate, half portion of vegetables for a tree-soup. And tree-soup deserved. For tree-soup he got as much bread as he wished. As for wine, he drank water, when he paid at the Jesuit mademoiselle, at that periods to a plumbin' he digestically presided. He gave a soup to the waiter, and mademoiselle gave him a smah. Then he went away. With exchange soup, he had as now in the dinner. This restaurant roux, with so few bottles and so many water-carafes, were empty, with a calming potion rather than a restaurant. They no longer exist. The proprietor to find a nickname he was called Rousseau the Aquatic. Then as exchange-soup, his foot cost him twenty-soup a day, which made three hundred and sixty-five francs a year. Add the thirty francs for rent, and thirty-six francs for the old woman, plus a few trifling expenses, but four hundred and fifty francs. Marrys was fed, lodged, and weighed to dawn. His clothing cost him a hundred francs. There still no fifty francs. His washing foot, fifty francs. The whole dinner exceeds six hundred francs. He was rich. He sometimes lent ten francs to a friend. Cool phoenix had once been able to borrow sixty francs from him. As far as fire was concerned, as Marrys in a fireplace, he had simplified matters. Marrys always had two complete suzer clothes, the one old for every day, the other, brand new for special occasions. Both were black. He had three shirts, one on his person, the second in the commode, and the third in the washroom and hands. He renewed their Masjid War Act. They were always ragged, which caused him to bust in his coat with a chin. It had required years for Marrys to attain this flourishing condition. Hard years, difficult, some of them, to traverse, others to climb. Marrys had not failed for a single day. He had endured everything in the way of the institution. He had done everything except contract debts. He did himself the justice to say that he had never owed anyone a sue. A debt was, to him, the beginning of slavery. He even said to himself that a creditor is versed in a master for the master possesses only a person, a creditor possesses a dignity, and can administer to it a box all the year. Rather than borrow, he went without food. He had many a day fasting, feeling that all extremes meet and that if one is not a one's guard, although at fortunes may lead to baseness of soul, he kept such a jealous watch in his pride, such in such a formality of action, which in any other situation would have a paired melody for instance to him. Now seemed in sepidity, and he nerve himself against it. His face wore sword of savief lush. He was timid, even, to rudeness. During all this trials he had felt himself encouraged and even uplifted, at times by a secret force that he possessed within himself. The soul aged the body, and at certain moments he raises it. It is the only badge that bears of his own cage. Besides his father's name, another name was Graven in Marius' heart, the name of the Nardier. Marius, with his Graven the signature, surrounded by the sword of Oriol the man to whom in his thought, he owed his father's life, that intrepid surgeon who had saved the colonel amid the bullets and the cannonballs of Waterloo. He never separated the memory of this man from the memory of his father, and he associated them with his veneration. He was a sword of worship in two steps, with a grand altar for the colonel, and the lesser one towards the Nardier. What redoubled the tenderness of this gratitude towards the Nardier was the idea of distress into which he knew that the Nardier had fallen, and which had engulfed the latter. Marius had learned at Montfermay as a rune and bankruptcy of the unfortunate innkeeper. Since that time he had made an herd of efforts to find traces of him, and to reach him in that dark abyss of misery in which the Nardier had disappeared. Marius had beaten the whole country. He had gone to Shell, to Bondi, to Gourney, to Norge, to Lagney. He had persisted for three years expending of these explorations of little money which he had laid by. No one had been able to give him any news of the Nardier. He was opposed to have gone abroad. His creditors had also sought him with less love than Marius. But with as much as security, he had not been able to lay their hands on him. Marius blamed himself, and was almost angry with himself for his lack of success in his researches. He was to only death left him by the Colonel, and Marius married a matter of honour to pay it. What, he thought, when my father lay dying on the field of battle, did the Nardier can try to find him amid the snow in a great shot? And bear him off on his shoulders, and yet he owed him nothing, and I, who owes so much to the Nardier, cannot join him in this shadow where he is lying with the palms of death, and in my churn bring him back from death to life. Oh, I will find him. To find the Nardier, in fact, Marius would have given one of his arms to rescue him from his misery. He would have sacrificed all his blood to see the Nardier, to render the Nardier some service to say to him, you do not know me, well, I do know you. He I am, disposed of me. This was Marius's sweetest and most magnificent dream. End of Chapter 2 Recording by Ipil Gonsalis in Cavita, Philippines Chapter 3 of Book 5 of Les Miserables Volume 3 by Victor Hugo This is a LibraVox recording. The recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibraVox.org Recording by May Lowe Les Miserables Volume 3 by Victor Hugo Translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood Book 5 The Excellence of Misfortune Chapter 3 Marius Grown Up At this epoch Marius was twenty years of age. Three years since he had left his grandfather. Both parties had remained on the same terms, without attempting to approach each other and without seeking to see each other. Besides, what was the use of seeing each other? Marius was the brass vase while Father Guilinon Mond was the iron pot. We admit that Marius was mistaken as to his grandfather's heart. He had imagined that Mr. Guilinon Mond had never loved him that crusty, harsh and smiling old fellow who cursed, shouted and stormed and brandished his cane, cherished for him at the most, only that affection which is at once slight and severe of the doteds of comedy. Marius was in error. There are fathers who do not love their children. There exists no grandfather who does not adore his grandson. At bottom, as we have said, Mr. Guilinon Mond idolized Marius. He idolized him after his own fashion with an accompaniment of snappishness and boxes on the ear. But, this child once gone, he felt a black void in his heart. He would allow no one to mention the child to him, and all the wilds secretly regretted that he was so well obeyed. At first, he hoped that this born-apartist, this Jacobin, this terrorist, this Septemberist would return. But the weeks passed by, years passed, to Mr. Guilinon Mond's great despair, the blood-drinker did not make his appearance. I could not do otherwise than turn him out, said the grandfather to himself, and he asked himself, if the thing were to do over again, would I do it? His pride instantly answered yes, but his aged head, which he shook in silence, replied sadly no. He had his hours of depression. He missed Marius. Old men need affection as they need the sun. It is warmth. Strong as his nature was, the absence of Marius had wrought some change in him. Nothing in the world could have induced him to take a step towards that rogue, but he suffered. He never inquired about him, but he thought of him incessantly. He lived in the Meret in a more and more retired manner. He was still merry and violent as of old, but his merry men had a convulsive harshness, and his violences always terminated in a sort of gentle and gloomy dejection. He sometimes said, oh, if only he would return, what a good box on the ear I would give him. As for his aunt, she thought too little to love much. Marius was no longer for her much more than a vague black form, but eventually came to occupy herself with him much less than with the cat or the parakeet which she probably had. What augmented Father Gillin-on-Wall's secret suffering was that he locked it all up within his breast and did not allow its existence to be divined. His sorrow was like those recently invented furnaces which consumed their own smoke. It sometimes happened that a vicious busy body spoke to him of Marius and asked him, what is your grandson doing, and what has become of him. The old bourgeois replied with a sigh that he was a sad case, and giving a fillip to his cuff if he wished to appear gay, Monsieur Le Badon de Pont-Mercy is practising pettifogging in some corner or other. While the old man regretted, Marius applauded himself. As is the case with all good-hearted people, Miss Fortune had eradicated his bitterness. He thought only of Monsieur Gillin-on-Wall in an amiable light, but he had set his mind on not receiving anything more from the man who had been unkind to his father. This was the mitigated translation of his first indignation. Moreover he was happy at having suffered and at suffering still. It was for his father's sake. The hardness of his life satisfied and pleased him. It was also for the sort of joy that it was certainly the least he could do that it was an expiation that, had it not been for that he would have been punished in some other way and later on for his empire's indifference towards his father and such a father that it would not have been just that his father should have all the suffering and he none of it. And that, in any case, what were his toils and his destitution compared with the Colonel's heroic life that, in short, the only way for him to approach his father and resemble him was to be brave in the face of indigence, as the other had been valiant before the enemy and that that was, no doubt, what the Colonel had meant to imply by the words, he will be worthy of it. Words which Marius continued to wear, not on his breast, since the Colonel's writing had disappeared, but in his heart. And then on the day when his grandfather had turned him out of doors he had been only a child. Now he was a man. He felt it. Misery, we repeat, had been good for him. Poverty in youth, when it succeeds has this magnificent property about it that it turns the whole will towards effort and the whole soul towards aspiration. Poverty instantly lays material life bare and renders it hideous. Inexpressible bounds towards the ideal life. The wealthy young man has a hundred course and brilliant distractions horse races, hunting, dogs, tobacco, gaming good repasts and all the rest of it occupations for the baser side of the soul at the expense of the loftier and more delicate sides. The poor young man wins his bread with difficulty. He eats when he has eaten nothing more but meditation. He goes to the spectacles which God furnishes gratis. He gazes at the sky, space, the stars, flowers, children, the humanity among which he is suffering, the creation amid which he beams. He gazes so much on humanity that he perceives its soul. He gazes upon creation to such an extent that he beholds God. He dreams. He feels himself great. He dreams on and feels himself tender. From the egotism of the man who suffers, he passes to the compassion of the man who meditates. An admirable sentiment breaks forth in him. Forgetfulness of self and pity for all. As he thinks of the innumerable enjoyments which nature offers gives and lavishes to the souls which stand open and refuses to souls that are closed. He comes to pity he, the millionaire of the mind the millionaire of money. All hatred departs from his heart in proportion as light penetrates his spirit. And is he unhappy? No. The misery of a young man is never miserable. The first young lad who comes to hand however poor he may be with his strength, his health his rapid walk, his brilliant eyes his warmly circulating blood his black hair, his red lips his white teeth, his pure breath will always arouse the envy of an aged emperor. And then, every morning he sets himself afresh to the task of earning his bread and while his hands earn his bread his dorsal column gains pride his brain gathers ideas. His task is finished he returns to ineffable ecstasies to contemplation to joys. He holds his feet set in afflictions in obstacles on the pavement in the nettles, sometimes in the mire his head in the light. He is firm serene gentle, peaceful, attentive serious content with little kindly and he thanks God for having bestowed on him those two forms of riches which many a rich man lacks work which makes him free and thought which makes him satisfied. This is what happened with Marius to tell the truth he inclined a little too much to the side of contemplation from the day when he had succeeded in learning his living with some approach to certainty he had stopped thinking it good to be poor and retrenching time from his work to give to thought that is to say he sometimes passed entire days in meditation absorbed engulfed like a visionary in the mute voluptuousness ecstasy and inward radiance he had thus propounded the problem of his life to toil as little as possible at material labour in order to toil as much as possible at the labour which is impalpable in other words to bestow a few hours on real life and to cast the rest to the infinite as he believed that he lacked nothing he did not perceive that contemplation thus understood ends by becoming one of the forms of idleness that he was contenting himself with conquering the first necessities of life and that he was resting from his labours too soon it was evident that for this energetic and enthusiastic nature this could only be a transitory state and that at the first shock against the inevitable complications of destiny Marius would awaken in the meantime although he was a lawyer and whatever father Gillin-on-Mond thought about the matter he was not practising he was not even petty-fogging meditation had turned him aside from pleading to haunt attorneys to follow the court to hunt up cases, what a bore why should he do it he saw no reason for changing the matter of gaining his livelihood the obscure and ill-paid publishing establishment had come to mean for him a sure source of work which did not involve too much labour as we have explained one of the publishers for whom he worked Monsieur Magy-Mall I think offered to take him into his own house to lodge him well to furnish him with regular occupation and to give him 1500 francs a year to be well lodged 1500 francs no doubt but to renounce his liberty be fixed on wages a sort of hired man of letters according to Marius's opinion if he accepted his position would become both better and worse at the same time he acquired comfort and lost his dignity it was a fine and complete unhappiness converted into a repulsive and ridiculous state of torture something like the case of a blind man who should recover the sight of one eye he refused Marius dwelt in solitude owing to his taste for remaining outside of everything and through having been too much alarmed he had not entered decidedly into the group presided over by Engelra they had remained good friends they were ready to assist each other on occasion in every possible way but nothing more Marius had two friends one young and one old he inclined more to the old man in the first place he owed to him the revolution which had taken place within him to him he was indebted for having known and loved his father he operated on me for a cataract he said the church warden certainly played a decisive part it was not however that M. Abul had been anything but the calm and impassive agent of providence in this connection he had enlightened Marius by chance and without being aware of the fact as does the candle which someone brings he had been the candle and not the someone as for Marius's inward political revolution M. Abul was totally incapable of comprehending it of willing or of directing it as we shall see M. Abul again later on a few words will not be superfluous End of Book 5 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 of Book 5 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 May Lowe Les Miserables Volume 3 by Victor Hugo Translated by Isabelle Florence-Hapgood Book 5 The Excellence of Miss Fortune Chapter 4 M. Abul On the day when M. Abul said to Marius certainly I approve of political opinions he expressed the real state of his mind All political opinions were matters of indifference to him and he approved them all without distinction provided they left him in peace as the Greeks called the Furies the beautiful, the good, the charming the humanities M. Abul's political opinion consisted in a passionate love for plants and above all for books Like all the rest of the world he possessed the termination in Ist without which no one could exist at that time but he was neither a royalist a bonapartist a charterst an olianist nor an anarchist he was a bookwinnest a collector of old books to understand how men could busy themselves with hating each other because of silly stuff like the charter, democracy legitimacy, monarchy the republic etc when there were in the world all sorts of mosses, grasses and shrubs which they might be looking at and heaps of folios and even of 32 Moes which they might turn over he took good care not to become useless having books did not prevent his reading and the opportunist did not prevent his being a gardener when he made Ponte-Mercy's acquaintance this sympathy had existed between the colonel and himself that what the colonel did for flowers he did for fruits M. Abul had succeeded in producing seedling pairs a savoury as the pairs of Saint-Germain it is from one of his combinations apparently that the October Mirabelle now celebrated and no less perfumed than the summer Mirabelle owes its origin he went to Mass rather from gentleness than from piety and because as he loved the faces of men but hated their noise he found them assembled and silent only in church feeling that he must be something in the state he had chosen the career of Warden however he had never succeeded in loving any woman as much as a tulip bulb or any man as much as an Elsevier he had long passed sixty when one day someone asked him have you never been married I have forgotten, said he when it sometimes happened to him and to whom does it not happen to say, oh if I were only rich it was not when ogling a pretty girl as was the case with Father Gillin-Od Mond but when contemplating an old book he lived alone with an old housekeeper he was somewhat gouty and when he was asleep his aged fingers stiffened with rheumatism lay crooked up in the folds of his sheets he had composed and published a flora of the environs of quartalettes with coloured plates a work which enjoyed a tolerable measure of esteem and which sold well people rang his bell in the room as yells two or three times a day to ask for it he drew as much as two thousand francs a year from it this constituted nearly the whole of his fortune although poor he had had the talent to form for himself by dint of patience pervations and time a precious collection of rare copies of every sort he never went out without a book under his arm and he often returned with two the sole decoration of the four rooms on the ground floor which composed his lodgings consisted of framed herbariums and engravings of the old masters the sight of a sword or a gun chilled his blood he had never approached a cannon in his life even at the invalid he had a passable stomach a brother who was a cure perfectly white hair no teeth either in his mouth or his mind a trembling in every limb an accent an infantile laugh the air of an old sheep and he was easily frightened add to this that he had no other friendship no other acquaintance among the living than an old bookseller of the Porte Saint-Jacques named Royal his dream was to naturalise indigo in France his servant was also a sort of innocent the poor good old woman and her sister sultan her cat which might have mewed Allegri's Mizzere in the sixteen chapel had filled her heart and sufficed for the quantity of passion which existed in her none of her dreams had ever proceeded as far as a man she had never been able to get further than her cat like him she had a moustache her glory consisted in her caps which were always white in her mask in counting over the linen in her chest and in spreading out on her bed the dresses in the piece which she bought and had never made up she knew how to read M. Marbeau had nicknamed her mother Plutarch M. Marbeau had taken a fancy to Marius because Marius being young and gentle warmed his age without startling his timidity youth combined with gentleness produces on old people respect of the sun without wind when Marius was saturated with military glory with gunpowder with marches and counter marches and with all those prodigious battles in which his father had given and received such tremendous blows of the sword he went to see M. Marbeau and M. Marbeau talked to him of his hero from the point of view of flowers his brother the cure died about 1830 almost immediately as when the night is drawing on the whole horizon grew dark for M. Marbeau a notary's failure deprived him of the sum of 10,000 francs which was all that he possessed in his brother's right and his own the revolution of July brought a crisis to publishing in a period of embarrassment the first thing which does not sell is a flora the flora of the environs gave up short weeks passed by without a single purchaser sometimes M. Marbeau started at the sound of the bell M. Marbeau said mother Plotac sadly it is the water-carrier in short one day M. Marbeau quitted the legumesielles abdicated the functions of Warden gave up Saint-Solpice sold not a part of his books but of his prince to which he was least attached and installed himself in a little house on the Rue Montparnasse where however he remained but one quarter for two reasons in the first place the ground floor and the garden cost 300 francs and he did not spend more than 200 francs on his rent in the second being near Faton's shooting gallery he could hear the pistol shots which was intolerable to him he carried off his flora his copper plates his herbariums his portfolios and his books and established himself near the Sol Pétrieu in a sort of thatched cottage of the village of Outstilitz where for 50 crowns a year he got three rooms in a garden enclosed by a hedge and containing a well he took advantage of this removal to sell off nearly all his furniture on the day of his entrance in his new quarters he was very gay and drove the nails on which his engravings and herbariums were to hang with his own hands dug in his garden the rest of the day and at night perceiving that mother Plutarch had a melancholy air and was very thoughtful he tapped her on the shoulder and said to her with a smile we have the indigo only two visitors were admitted to view the thatched cottage at Outstilitz a brawling name which was to tell the truth extremely disagreeable to him however as we have just pointed out brains which are absorbed in some bit of wisdom or folly or as it often happens in both at once are but slowly accessible to the things of actual life their own destiny is a far-off thing to them their results from such concentration a passivity which if it were the outcome of reasoning would resemble philosophy one declines descends trickles away even crumbles away and yet is hardly conscious of it oneself it always ends it is true in an awakening but the awakening is tardy in the meantime it seems as though we held ourselves neutral in the game which is going on between our happiness and our unhappiness we are the stake and we look on at the game with indifference it is thus that a thwart the cloud which formed about him when all his hopes were extinguished one after the other Monsieur Marbeau remained rather pure-reilly but profoundly serene his habits of mind had the regular swing of a pendulum once mounted on an illusion he went for a very long time even after the illusion had disappeared a clock does not stop short at the precise moment when the key is lost Monsieur Marbeau had his innocent pleasures these pleasures were inexpensive and unexpected the merest chance furnished them one day mother Plutarch was reading a romance in one corner of the room she was reading aloud finding that she understood better thus to read aloud is to assure oneself of what one is reading there are people who read very loud and who have the appearance of giving themselves their word of honour as to what they are perusing it was with this sort of energy that mother Plutarch was reading the romance which she had in hand Monsieur Marbeau heard her without listening to her in the course of her reading mother Plutarch came to this phrase it was a question of an officer of dragoons and a beauty the beauty powdered and the dragoon here she interrupted herself to wipe her glasses Buddha and the dragon struck in Monsieur Marbeau in a low voice yes it is true that there was a dragon which from the depths of its cave spouted flame through his moor and set the heavens on fire many stars had already been consumed by this monster which besides had the claws of a tiger Buddha went into its den and ended in converting the dragon that is a good book that you are reading mother Plutarch there is no more beautiful legend in existence and Monsieur Marbeau fell into a delicious reverie end of book 5 chapter 4 chapters 5 and 6 of book 5 of Les Miserables volume 3 by Victor Hugo this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Robert Kuiper Les Miserables volume 3 by Victor Hugo translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood book number 5 The Excellence of Miss Fortune chapter 5 poverty a good neighbor for misery Marius liked this candid old man who saw himself gradually falling into the clutches of indigence and who came to feel astonishment little by little without however being made melancholy by it Marius met Corfe Ray and sought out Monsieur Marbeau very rarely however twice a month at most Marius' pleasure consisted in taking long walks alone on the outer boulevards or in the Champs-de-Mars in the least frequented alleys of the Luxembourg he often spent half a day engaging at a market garden the beds of lettuce the chickens on the dung heap the horse turning the water-wheel the passers-by stared at him in surprise and some of them thought his attire suspicious and his mean sinister he was only a poor young man dreaming in an objectless way it was during one of his strolls that he hit upon the Gorbo House and tempted by its isolation and its cheapness had taken up his abode there he was known there only under the name of Monsieur Marius some of his father's old generals or old comrades had invited him to go and see them when they learned about him Marius had not refused their invitations they afforded opportunities of talking about his father thus he went from time to time to Compagiole to General Bellevisny to General Freerion to the Invalides there was music and dancing there on such evenings Marius put on his new coat but he never went to these evening parties or balls except on days when it was freezing cold because he could not afford a carriage and he did not wish to arrive otherwise than like mirrors he said sometimes but without bitterness men are so made that in a drawing room you may be soiled everywhere except on your shoes in order to ensure a good reception there only one irreproachable thing is asked of you your conscience? no your boots all passions except those of the heart are dissipated by reverie Marius' political fevers vanished thus the revolution of 1830 assisted in the process by satisfying and calming him he remained the same setting aside his fits of wrath he still held the same opinions only they had been tempered to speak accurately he had no longer any opinions he had sympathies to what party did he belong to the party of humanity out of humanity he chose France out of the nation he chose the people out of the people he chose the woman it was to that point above all that his pity was directed now he preferred an idea to a deed a poet to a hero and he admired a book like Job more than an event like Maringo and then when after a day spent in meditation he returned in the evening through the boulevards and caught a glimpse through the branches of the trees of the fathomless space beyond the nameless gleams the abyss the shadow the mystery all that which is only human seemed very pretty indeed to him he thought that he had and he really had in fact arrived at the truth of life and of human philosophy and he had ended by gazing at nothing but heaven the only thing which truth can perceive from the bottom of our well this did not prevent him from multiplying his plans his combinations, his scaffoldings his projects for the future in this state of reverie an eye which could have cast a glance into Marius' interior would have been dazzled with the purity of that soul in fact, had it been given to our eyes of the flesh to gaze into the consciousnesses of others, we should be able to judge a man much more surely according to what he dreams than according to what he thinks there is will in thought there is none in dreams reverie which is utterly spontaneous takes and keeps even in the gigantic and the ideal the form of our spirit nothing proceeds more directly and more sincerely from the very depths of our soul than our unpremeditated and boundless aspirations toward the splendors of destiny in these aspirations much more than in deliberate rational coordinated ideas is the real character of a man to be found our shimmers are the things which the most resemble us each one of us dreams of the unknown and the impossible in accordance with his nature towards the middle of this year, 1831 the old woman who waited on Marius told him that his neighbors the wretched genret family had been turned out of doors Marius who passed nearly the whole of his days out of the house hardly knew that he had any neighbors why are they turned out he asked because they do not pay their rent they owe for two quarters how much is it 20 francs said the old woman Marius had 30 francs saved up in a drawer here he said to the old woman take these 25 francs pay for the poor people and give them 5 francs and do not tell them that it was I Chapter 6 The Substitute it chanced that the regiment to which Lieutenant Theodore belonged came to perform garrison duty in Paris this inspired Antiole Norman with a second idea she had on the first occasion hit upon the plan of having Marius spied upon by Theodore now she plotted to have Theodore take Marius place at all events and in case the grandfather should feel the vague need of a young face in the house these rays of dawn are sometimes sweet to ruin it was expedient to find another Marius take it as a simple irratum she thought such as one sees in books for Marius read Theodore a grand-nephew is almost the same as a grandson in default of a lawyer one takes a lancer one morning when Monsieur Gil-Norman was about to read something in the quitted yen his daughter entered and said to him in her sweetest voice for the question concerned her favorite father Theodore is coming to present his respects to you this morning who's Theodore your grand-nephew oh said the grandfather then he went back to his reading thought no more of his grand-nephew who was merely some Theodore and soon flew into a rage which almost always happened when he read the sheet which he held although royalist of course announced for the following day without any softening phrases one of these little events which were of daily occurrence at that date in Paris the students of the schools of law and medicine were to assemble on the Place de Pantheon at midday to deliberate the discussion concerned one of the questions of the moment the artillery of the National Guard and a conflict between the minister of war and the citizen's militia on the subject of the cannon parked in the courtyard of the Louvre oh yeah the students were to deliberate over this it did not take much more than this to swell Mr. Gil-Norman's rage he thought of Marius who was a student and who would probably go with the rest to deliberate at midday on the Place de Pantheon as he was indulging in this painful dream Lieutenant Theodore entered clad in plain clothes as a bourgeois which was clever of him and was discreetly introduced by Mademoiselle Gil-Norman the lancer had reasoned as follows the old druid has not sunk all his money in a life pension it is well to disguise oneself as a civilian from time to time Mademoiselle Gil-Norman said aloud to her father Theodore your grand-nephew and in a low voice to the Lieutenant approve of everything and she withdrew the Lieutenant who was but little accustomed to such venerable encounters stammered with some timidity a good day uncle and made a salute composed of the involuntary and mechanical outline of the military salute finished off as a bourgeois salute ah! so it's you that's well sit down said the old gentleman that said he totally forgot the lancer he treated himself and Monsieur Gil-Norman rose Monsieur Gil-Norman began to pace back and forth his hands in his pockets talking aloud and twitching with his irritated old fingers at the two watches which he wore in his two fobs that pack of brats they convene on the plaster pantheon my life urchins who were with their nurses yesterday if one were to squeeze their noses milk would burst out and they deliberate tomorrow and mid-day what are we coming to what are we coming to it is clear that we're making for the abyss that is what these commissados have brought us to deliberate on the citizen artillery to go and jabber in the open air over the jibes of the national guard and with whom are they to meet there just see whether Jacobinism leads I will bet anything you like a million against a counter that there will be no one there but returned convicts and released galley slaves and the republicans and the galley slaves they form but one nose and one handkerchief Carnot used to say where would you have me go traitor he replied wherever you please imbecile that's what the republicans looked that is true said theodol monsieur gildormand half turned his head saw theodol and went on and one reflects that that scoundrel was so vile as to turn carbonaro why did you leave my house to go and become a republican in the first place the people want none of your republic they have common sense they know well that there always have been kings and that there always will be they know well that the people are only the people after all they make sport of it of your republic do you understand idiot is it not a horrible caprice to fall in love with pere du chien to make sheep's eyes at the guillotine to sing romances and play on the guitar under the balcony of 93 that's enough to make one spit on all these young fellows such fools are they they are all alike not one escapes it suffices for them to breathe the air which blows through the streets to lose their senses the 19th century is poison the first scamp that happens along let his beard grow like a goat thinks himself a real scoundrel and abandons his old relatives he's a republican he's a romantic what does that mean romantic do me the favor to tell me what it is all possible follies a year ago they ran to hernani now just ask you hernani handithesis abominations which are not even written in french and then they have cannons in the courtyard of the louvre what are such other rascalities of the age you are right uncle said theodol monsieur gill norman resumed cannons in the courtyard of the museum now for what purpose do you want to fire a grape shot at the apollo belvedere what are those cartridges to do with the venus de medici oh the young men of the present day are just all blackerts what a pretty creature is their benjamin constant and those who are not rascals are simpletons yet they do all they can to make themselves ugly they're badly dressed they are afraid of women in the presence of petticoats they have a mendicant air which sets the girls into fits of laughter one word of honor one would say the poor creatures are ashamed of love they are deformed they are stupid they repeat the puns of tircellin and patier they have sack coats stablemen's waist coats shirts of course linen trousers of course cloth boots of course leather and their rigamarole resembles their plumage one might make use of their jargon to put new souls on their old shoes and all this awkward batch of brats has political opinions if you please political opinions should be strictly forbidden they fabricate systems they recast society they demolish the monarchy they fling all laws to the earth they put the attic in the cellar's place and my porter in the place of the king they turn Europe topsy-turvy they reconstruct the world and all their love affairs consist in staring slyly at the ankles of the laundresses as these women climb into their carts oh Marius you blacker to go and vociferate on a public place to discuss to debate to take measures they call that measures just God disorder humbles itself and becomes silly I have seen chaos now I see a mess students deliberating on the national guard such a thing could not be seen among the Ojibwe's nor the Caddoches savages who go naked with their noodles dressed like a shuttlecock with a club in their paws are less of brutes than those bachelors of arts for penny monkeys and they set up for judges those creatures deliberate and rationate the end of the world is calm this is plainly the end of this miserable innocuous globe the final hiccup was required and France has omitted it deliberate my rascals such things will happen so long as they go and read the newspapers under the arcades of the Odeon that cost them a sue and a good sense and their intelligence and their heart and their soul and their wits they emerge tense and de-camp from their families all newspapers are pests all even the drapeau blanc at bottom Martin Bill was a jacobin ah just heaven you may boast of having driven your grandfather to despair that you may that is evident said Theodore and profiting by the fact that Mr. Gil-Norman was taking breath the Lancer added in a magisterial manner there should be no other newspaper than the monitor and no other book than the Annuné Militaire Mr. Gil-Norman continued it is like the Seyes a regicide ending in a senator for that is the way they always end they give themselves a scar with the address of thou as citizens in order to get themselves called eventually Monsieur Lecombe Monsieur Lecombe as big as my arm assassins of September the philosopher Seyes I will do myself the justice to say that I have never had any better opinion of the philosophies of all those philosophers than of the spectacles of the grimacer of Tivoli yeah one day I saw the senators cross the Cade Malplaqué in mantles of violet velvet sewn with bees with hats à la Henri Quatre they were hideous one would pronounce them monkeys from the Tigers court citizens I declare to you that your progress is madness that your humanity is a dream that your revolution is a crime that your republic is a monster that your young and virgin France comes from the brothel and I maintain it against all whoever you may be whether journalists economists, legists or even were you better judges of liberty, of equality and fraternity than the knife of the guillotine and that I announce to you my fine fellows Pablo cried the lieutenant that is wonderfully true Mr. Gil-Norman paused in a gesture which he had begun wheeled round, stared Lancer Theodore intently in the eyes and said to him you are a fool end of chapter