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
Courfeyrac and sought out M. Mabeuf. 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, or in the least frequented alleys
of the Luxembourg. He often spent half a day in gazing 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 mien sinister. He
was only a poor young man dreaming in an objectless way.
It was during one of his strolls that he had hit upon the Gorbeau
house, and, tempted by its isolation and its cheapness, had taken up
his abode there. He was known there only under the name of M. 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 Comte Pajol, to General Bellavesne,
to General Fririon, 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 with boots 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 insure 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 Marengo. 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 her 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 consciences 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 depth of our soul, than our unpremeditated and boundless
aspirations towards the splendors of destiny. In these aspirations,
much more than in deliberate, rational co-ordinated ideas, is the real
character of a man to be found. Our chimæras 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 Jondrette 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?”
“Twenty francs,” said the old woman.
Marius had thirty francs saved up in a drawer.
“Here,” he said to the old woman, “take these twenty-five francs. Pay
for the poor people and give them five francs, and do not tell them
that it was I.”