It is the same with wretchedness as with everything else. It ends by
becoming bearable. It finally assumes a form, and adjusts itself. One
vegetates, that is to say, one develops in a certain meagre fashion,
which is, however, sufficient for life. This is the mode in which the
existence of Marius Pontmercy was arranged:
He had passed the worst straits; the narrow pass was opening out a
little in front of him. By dint of toil, perseverance, courage, and
will, he had managed to draw from his work about seven hundred francs a
year. He had learned German and English; thanks to Courfeyrac, who had
put him in communication with his friend the publisher, Marius filled
the modest post of utility man in the literature of the publishing
house. He drew up prospectuses, translated newspapers, annotated
editions, compiled biographies, etc.; net product, year in and year
out, seven hundred francs. He lived on it. How? Not so badly. We will
explain.
Marius occupied in the Gorbeau house, for an annual sum of thirty
francs, a den minus a fireplace, called a cabinet, which contained only
the most indispensable articles of furniture. This furniture belonged
to him. He gave three francs a month to the old _principal tenant_ to
come and sweep his hole, and to bring him a little hot water every
morning, a fresh egg, and a penny roll. He breakfasted on this egg and
roll. His breakfast varied in cost from two to four sous, according as
eggs were dear or cheap. At six o’clock in the evening he descended the
Rue Saint-Jacques to dine at Rousseau’s, opposite Basset’s, the
stamp-dealer’s, on the corner of the Rue des Mathurins. He ate no soup.
He took a six-sou plate of meat, a half-portion of vegetables for three
sous, and a three-sou dessert. For three sous he got as much bread as
he wished. As for wine, he drank water. When he paid at the desk where
Madam Rousseau, at that period still plump and rosy majestically
presided, he gave a sou to the waiter, and Madam Rousseau gave him a
smile. Then he went away. For sixteen sous he had a smile and a dinner.
This Restaurant Rousseau, where so few bottles and so many water
carafes were emptied, was a calming potion rather than a restaurant. It
no longer exists. The proprietor had a fine nickname: he was called
_Rousseau the Aquatic_.
Thus, breakfast four sous, dinner sixteen sous; his food cost him
twenty sous a day; which made three hundred and sixty-five francs a
year. Add the thirty francs for rent, and the thirty-six francs to the
old woman, plus a few trifling expenses; for four hundred and fifty
francs, Marius was fed, lodged, and waited on. His clothing cost him a
hundred francs, his linen fifty francs, his washing fifty francs; the
whole did not exceed six hundred and fifty francs. He was rich. He
sometimes lent ten francs to a friend. Courfeyrac had once been able to
borrow sixty francs of him. As far as fire was concerned, as Marius had
no fireplace, he had “simplified matters.”
Marius always had two complete suits of clothes, the one old, “for
every day”; the other, brand new for special occasions. Both were
black. He had but three shirts, one on his person, the second in the
commode, and the third in the washerwoman’s hands. He renewed them as
they wore out. They were always ragged, which caused him to button his
coat to the chin.
It had required years for Marius to attain to this flourishing
condition. Hard years; difficult, some of them, to traverse, others to
climb. Marius had not failed for a single day. He had endured
everything in the way of destitution; he had done everything except
contract debts. He did himself the justice to say that he had never
owed any one a sou. A debt was, to him, the beginning of slavery. He
even said to himself, that a creditor is worse than a master; for the
master possesses only your person, a creditor possesses your dignity
and can administer to it a box on the ear. Rather than borrow, he went
without food. He had passed many a day fasting. Feeling that all
extremes meet, and that, if one is not on one’s guard, lowered fortunes
may lead to baseness of soul, he kept a jealous watch on his pride.
Such and such a formality or action, which, in any other situation
would have appeared merely a deference to him, now seemed insipidity,
and he nerved himself against it. His face wore a sort of severe flush.
He was timid even to rudeness.
During all these trials he had felt himself encouraged and even
uplifted, at times, by a secret force that he possessed within himself.
The soul aids the body, and at certain moments, raises it. It is the
only bird which bears up its own cage.
Besides his father’s name, another name was graven in Marius’ heart,
the name of Thénardier. Marius, with his grave and enthusiastic nature,
surrounded with a sort of aureole the man to whom, in his thoughts, he
owed his father’s life,—that intrepid sergeant who had saved the
colonel amid the bullets and the cannon-balls of Waterloo. He never
separated the memory of this man from the memory of his father, and he
associated them in his veneration. It was a sort of worship in two
steps, with the grand altar for the colonel and the lesser one for
Thénardier. What redoubled the tenderness of his gratitude towards
Thénardier, was the idea of the distress into which he knew that
Thénardier had fallen, and which had engulfed the latter. Marius had
learned at Montfermeil of the ruin and bankruptcy of the unfortunate
inn-keeper. Since that time, he had made unheard-of efforts to find
traces of him and to reach him in that dark abyss of misery in which
Thénardier had disappeared. Marius had beaten the whole country; he had
gone to Chelles, to Bondy, to Gourney, to Nogent, to Lagny. He had
persisted for three years, expending in these explorations the little
money which he had laid by. No one had been able to give him any news
of Thénardier: he was supposed to have gone abroad. His creditors had
also sought him, with less love than Marius, but with as much
assiduity, and 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. It was the only debt left him by the
colonel, and Marius made it a matter of honor to pay it. “What,” he
thought, “when my father lay dying on the field of battle, did
Thénardier contrive to find him amid the smoke and the grape-shot, and
bear him off on his shoulders, and yet he owed him nothing, and I, who
owe so much to Thénardier, cannot join him in this shadow where he is
lying in the pangs of death, and in my turn bring him back from death
to life! Oh! I will find him!” To find Thénardier, 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 Thénardier, to render
Thénardier some service, to say to him: “You do not know me; well, I do
know you! Here I am. Dispose of me!” This was Marius’ sweetest and most
magnificent dream.