You’re caught. You had arranged your little plot, you had said to
yourself:—‘I’m going to signify this squarely to my grandfather, to
that mummy of the Regency and of the Directory, to that ancient beau,
to that Dorante turned Géronte; he has indulged in his frivolities
also, that he has, and he has had his love affairs, and his grisettes
and his Cosettes; he has made his rustle, he has had his wings, he has
eaten of the bread of spring; he certainly must remember it.’ Ah! you
take the cockchafer by the horns. That’s good. I offer you a cutlet and
you answer me: ‘By the way, I want to marry.’ There’s a transition for
you! Ah! you reckoned on a bickering! You do not know that I am an old
coward. What do you say to that? You are vexed? You did not expect to
find your grandfather still more foolish than yourself, you are wasting
the discourse which you meant to bestow upon me, Mr. Lawyer, and that’s
vexatious. Well, so much the worse, rage away. I’ll do whatever you
wish, and that cuts you short, imbecile! Listen. I have made my
inquiries, I’m cunning too; she is charming, she is discreet, it is not
true about the lancer, she has made heaps of lint, she’s a jewel, she
adores you, if you had died, there would have been three of us, her
coffin would have accompanied mine. I have had an idea, ever since you
have been better, of simply planting her at your bedside, but it is
only in romances that young girls are brought to the bedsides of
handsome young wounded men who interest them. It is not done. What
would your aunt have said to it? You were nude three quarters of the
time, my good fellow. Ask Nicolette, who has not left you for a moment,
if there was any possibility of having a woman here. And then, what
would the doctor have said? A pretty girl does not cure a man of fever.
In short, it’s all right, let us say no more about it, all’s said,
all’s done, it’s all settled, take her. Such is my ferocity. You see, I
perceived that you did not love me. I said to myself: ‘Here now, I have
my little Cosette right under my hand, I’m going to give her to him, he
will be obliged to love me a little then, or he must tell the reason
why.’ Ah! so you thought that the old man was going to storm, to put on
a big voice, to shout no, and to lift his cane at all that aurora. Not
a bit of it. Cosette, so be it; love, so be it; I ask nothing better.
Pray take the trouble of getting married, sir. Be happy, my
well-beloved child.”
That said, the old man burst forth into sobs.
And he seized Marius’ head, and pressed it with both arms against his
breast, and both fell to weeping. This is one of the forms of supreme
happiness.
“Father!” cried Marius.
“Ah, so you love me!” said the old man.
An ineffable moment ensued. They were choking and could not speak.
At length the old man stammered:
“Come! his mouth is unstopped at last. He has said: ‘Father’ to me.”
Marius disengaged his head from his grandfather’s arms, and said
gently:
“But, father, now that I am quite well, it seems to me that I might see
her.”
“Agreed again, you shall see her to-morrow.”
“Father!”
“What?”
“Why not to-day?”
“Well, to-day then. Let it be to-day. You have called me ‘father’ three
times, and it is worth it. I will attend to it. She shall be brought
hither. Agreed, I tell you. It has already been put into verse. This is
the ending of the elegy of the ‘Jeune Malade’ by André Chénier, by
André Chénier whose throat was cut by the ras . . . by the giants of
’93.”
M. Gillenormand fancied that he detected a faint frown on the part of
Marius, who, in truth, as we must admit, was no longer listening to
him, and who was thinking far more of Cosette than of 1793.
The grandfather, trembling at having so inopportunely introduced André
Chénier, resumed precipitately:
“Cut his throat is not the word. The fact is that the great
revolutionary geniuses, who were not malicious, that is incontestable,
who were heroes, pardi! found that André Chénier embarrassed them
somewhat, and they had him guillot . . . that is to say, those great
men on the 7th of Thermidor, besought André Chénier, in the interests
of public safety, to be so good as to go....”
M. Gillenormand, clutched by the throat by his own phrase, could not
proceed. Being able neither to finish it nor to retract it, while his
daughter arranged the pillow behind Marius, who was overwhelmed with so
many emotions, the old man rushed headlong, with as much rapidity as
his age permitted, from the bed-chamber, shut the door behind him, and,
purple, choking and foaming at the mouth, his eyes starting from his
head, he found himself nose to nose with honest Basque, who was
blacking boots in the anteroom. He seized Basque by the collar, and
shouted full in his face in fury:—“By the hundred thousand Javottes of
the devil, those ruffians did assassinate him!”
“Who, sir?”
“André Chénier!”
“Yes, sir,” said Basque in alarm.