It was a sort of worship in two steps, with the grand altar for the colonel and the lesser one for Thenardier.
What redoubled the tenderness of his gratitude towards Thenardier, was the idea of the distress into which he knew that Thenardier 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 Thenardier 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 Thenardier: 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 Thenardier 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 Thenardier, 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 Thenardier, 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 Thenardier, to render Thenardier 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.
CHAPTER III—MARIUS GROWN UP
At this epoch, Marius was twenty years of age.
It was 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 Gillenormand was the iron pot.
We admit that Marius was mistaken as to his grandfather’s heart.
He had imagined that M. Gillenormand had never loved him, and that 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 dotards 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, M. Gillenormand 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 while secretly regretted that he was so well obeyed.
At first, he hoped that this Buonapartist, this Jacobin, this terrorist, this Septembrist, would return.
But the weeks passed by, years passed; to M. Gillenormand’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 Marais in a more and more retired manner; he was still merry and violent as of old, but his merriment had a convulsive harshness, and his violences always terminated in a sort of gentle and gloomy dejection.
He sometimes said: “Oh! if he only 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; and she eventually came to occupy herself with him much less than with the cat or the paroquet which she probably had.
What augmented Father Gillenormand’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 consume their own smoke.
It sometimes happened that officious busybodies spoke to him of Marius, and asked him:
“What is your grandson doing?” “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 Baron de Pontmercy 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, misfortune had eradicated his bitterness.