Nevertheless, in the society into which his grandfather took him, whispers, innuendoes, and winks, had eventually enlightened the little boy’s mind; he had finally understood something of the case, and as he naturally took in the ideas and opinions which were, so to speak, the air he breathed, by a sort of infiltration and slow penetration, he gradually came to think of his father only with shame and with a pain at his heart.
While he was growing up in this fashion, the colonel slipped away every two or three months, came to Paris on the sly, like a criminal breaking his ban, and went and posted himself at Saint-Sulpice, at the hour when Aunt Gillenormand led Marius to the mass.
There, trembling lest the aunt should turn round, concealed behind a pillar, motionless, not daring to breathe, he gazed at his child.
The scarred veteran was afraid of that old spinster.
From this had arisen his connection with the cure of Vernon, M. l’Abbe Mabeuf.
That worthy priest was the brother of a warden of Saint-Sulpice, who had often observed this man gazing at his child, and the scar on his cheek, and the large tears in his eyes.
That man, who had so manly an air, yet who was weeping like a woman, had struck the warden.
That face had clung to his mind.
One day, having gone to Vernon to see his brother, he had encountered Colonel Pontmercy on the bridge, and had recognized the man of Saint-Sulpice.
The warden had mentioned the circumstance to the cure, and both had paid the colonel a visit, on some pretext or other.
This visit led to others.
The colonel, who had been extremely reserved at first, ended by opening his heart, and the cure and the warden finally came to know the whole history, and how Pontmercy was sacrificing his happiness to his child’s future.
This caused the cure to regard him with veneration and tenderness, and the colonel, on his side, became fond of the cure.
And moreover, when both are sincere and good, no men so penetrate each other, and so amalgamate with each other, as an old priest and an old soldier.
At bottom, the man is the same.
The one has devoted his life to his country here below, the other to his country on high; that is the only difference.
Twice a year, on the first of January and on St. George’s day, Marius wrote duty letters to his father, which were dictated by his aunt, and which one would have pronounced to be copied from some formula; this was all that M. Gillenormand tolerated; and the father answered them with very tender letters which the grandfather thrust into his pocket unread.
CHAPTER III—REQUIESCANT
Madame de T.‘s salon was all that Marius Pontmercy knew of the world.
It was the only opening through which he could get a glimpse of life.
This opening was sombre, and more cold than warmth, more night than day, came to him through this skylight.
This child, who had been all joy and light on entering this strange world, soon became melancholy, and, what is still more contrary to his age, grave.
Surrounded by all those singular and imposing personages, he gazed about him with serious amazement.
Everything conspired to increase this astonishment in him.
There were in Madame de T.‘s salon some very noble ladies named Mathan, Noe, Levis,—which was pronounced Levi,—Cambis, pronounced Cambyse.
These antique visages and these Biblical names mingled in the child’s mind with the Old Testament which he was learning by heart, and when they were all there, seated in a circle around a dying fire, sparely lighted by a lamp shaded with green, with their severe profiles, their gray or white hair, their long gowns of another age, whose lugubrious colors could not be distinguished, dropping, at rare intervals, words which were both majestic and severe, little Marius stared at them with frightened eyes, in the conviction that he beheld not women, but patriarchs and magi, not real beings, but phantoms.
With these phantoms, priests were sometimes mingled, frequenters of this ancient salon, and some gentlemen; the Marquis de Sass****, private secretary to Madame de Berry, the Vicomte de Val***, who published, under the pseudonym of Charles-Antoine, monorhymed odes, the Prince de Beauff*******, who, though very young, had a gray head and a pretty and witty wife, whose very low-necked toilettes of scarlet velvet with gold torsades alarmed these shadows, the Marquis de C***** d’E******, the man in all France who best understood “proportioned politeness,” the Comte d’Am*****, the kindly man with the amiable chin, and the Chevalier de Port-de-Guy, a pillar of the library of the Louvre, called the King’s cabinet, M. de Port-de-Guy, bald, and rather aged than old, was wont to relate that in 1793, at the age of sixteen, he had been put in the galleys as refractory and chained with an octogenarian, the Bishop of Mirepoix, also refractory, but as a priest, while he was so in the capacity of a soldier.
This was at Toulon.
Their business was to go at night and gather up on the scaffold the heads and bodies of the persons who had been guillotined during the day; they bore away on their backs these dripping corpses, and their red galley-slave blouses had a clot of blood at the back of the neck, which was dry in the morning and wet at night.
These tragic tales abounded in Madame de T.‘s salon, and by dint of cursing Marat, they applauded Trestaillon.
Some deputies of the undiscoverable variety played their whist there; M. Thibord du Chalard, M. Lemarchant de Gomicourt, and the celebrated scoffer of the right, M. Cornet-Dincourt.
The bailiff de Ferrette, with his short breeches and his thin legs, sometimes traversed this salon on his way to M. de Talleyrand.
He had been M. le Comte d’Artois’ companion in pleasures and unlike Aristotle crouching under Campaspe, he had made the Guimard crawl on all fours, and in that way he had exhibited to the ages a philosopher avenged by a bailiff.
As for the priests, there was the Abbe Halma, the same to whom M. Larose, his collaborator on la Foudre, said:
“Bah! Who is there who is not fifty years old? a few greenhorns perhaps?”
The Abbe Letourneur, preacher to the King, the Abbe Frayssinous, who was not, as yet, either count, or bishop, or minister, or peer, and who wore an old cassock whose buttons were missing, and the Abbe Keravenant, Cure of Saint-Germain-des-Pres; also the Pope’s Nuncio, then Monsignor Macchi, Archbishop of Nisibi, later on Cardinal, remarkable for his long, pensive nose, and another Monsignor, entitled thus: Abbate Palmieri, domestic prelate, one of the seven participant prothonotaries of the Holy See, Canon of the illustrious Liberian basilica, Advocate of the saints, Postulatore dei Santi, which refers to matters of canonization, and signifies very nearly: Master of Requests of the section of Paradise.
Lastly, two cardinals, M. de la Luzerne, and M. de Cl****** T*******.
The Cardinal of Luzerne was a writer and was destined to have, a few years later, the honor of signing in the Conservateur articles side by side with Chateaubriand; M. de Cl****** T******* was Archbishop of Toul****, and often made trips to Paris, to his nephew, the Marquis de T*******, who was Minister of Marine and War.
The Cardinal of Cl****** T******* was a merry little man, who displayed his red stockings beneath his tucked-up cassock; his specialty was a hatred of the Encyclop?dia, and his desperate play at billiards, and persons who, at that epoch, passed through the Rue M***** on summer evenings, where the hotel de Cl****** T******* then stood, halted to listen to the shock of the balls and the piercing voice of the Cardinal shouting to his conclavist, Monseigneur Cotiret, Bishop in partibus of Caryste:
“Mark, Abbe, I make a cannon.”
The Cardinal de Cl****** T******* had been brought to Madame de T.‘s by his most intimate friend, M. de Roquelaure, former Bishop of Senlis, and one of the Forty.
M. de Roquelaure was notable for his lofty figure and his assiduity at the Academy; through the glass door of the neighboring hall of the library where the French Academy then held its meetings, the curious could, on every Tuesday, contemplate the Ex-Bishop of Senlis, usually standing erect, freshly powdered, in violet hose, with his back turned to the door, apparently for the purpose of allowing a better view of his little collar.
All these ecclesiastics, though for the most part as much courtiers as churchmen, added to the gravity of the T. salon, whose seigniorial aspect was accentuated by five peers of France, the Marquis de Vib****, the Marquis de Tal***, the Marquis de Herb*******, the Vicomte Damb***, and the Duc de Val********.
This Duc de Val********, although Prince de Mon***, that is to say a reigning prince abroad, had so high an idea of France and its peerage, that he viewed everything through their medium.
It was he who said:
“The Cardinals are the peers of France of Rome; the lords are the peers of France of England.”
Moreover, as it is indispensable that the Revolution should be everywhere in this century, this feudal salon was, as we have said, dominated by a bourgeois.
M. Gillenormand reigned there.
There lay the essence and quintessence of the Parisian white society.
There reputations, even Royalist reputations, were held in quarantine.