“I had the honor to ask Mademoiselle Gillenormand never to mention him to me.”
Aunt Gillenormand renounced every effort, and pronounced this acute diagnosis:
“My father never cared very much for my sister after her folly.
It is clear that he detests Marius.”
“After her folly” meant: “after she had married the colonel.”
However, as the reader has been able to conjecture, Mademoiselle Gillenormand had failed in her attempt to substitute her favorite, the officer of lancers, for Marius.
The substitute, Theodule, had not been a success.
M. Gillenormand had not accepted the quid pro quo.
A vacancy in the heart does not accommodate itself to a stop-gap.
Theodule, on his side, though he scented the inheritance, was disgusted at the task of pleasing.
The goodman bored the lancer; and the lancer shocked the goodman.
Lieutenant Theodule was gay, no doubt, but a chatter-box, frivolous, but vulgar; a high liver, but a frequenter of bad company; he had mistresses, it is true, and he had a great deal to say about them, it is true also; but he talked badly.
All his good qualities had a defect.
M. Gillenormand was worn out with hearing him tell about the love affairs that he had in the vicinity of the barracks in the Rue de Babylone.
And then, Lieutenant Gillenormand sometimes came in his uniform, with the tricolored cockade.
This rendered him downright intolerable.
Finally, Father Gillenormand had said to his daughter:
“I’ve had enough of that Theodule.
I haven’t much taste for warriors in time of peace.
Receive him if you choose.
I don’t know but I prefer slashers to fellows that drag their swords.
The clash of blades in battle is less dismal, after all, than the clank of the scabbard on the pavement.
And then, throwing out your chest like a bully and lacing yourself like a girl, with stays under your cuirass, is doubly ridiculous.
When one is a veritable man, one holds equally aloof from swagger and from affected airs.
He is neither a blusterer nor a finnicky-hearted man.
Keep your Theodule for yourself.”
It was in vain that his daughter said to him:
“But he is your grandnephew, nevertheless,”—it turned out that M. Gillenormand, who was a grandfather to the very finger-tips, was not in the least a grand-uncle.
In fact, as he had good sense, and as he had compared the two, Theodule had only served to make him regret Marius all the more.
One evening,—it was the 24th of June, which did not prevent Father Gillenormand having a rousing fire on the hearth,—he had dismissed his daughter, who was sewing in a neighboring apartment.
He was alone in his chamber, amid its pastoral scenes, with his feet propped on the andirons, half enveloped in his huge screen of coromandel lacquer, with its nine leaves, with his elbow resting on a table where burned two candles under a green shade, engulfed in his tapestry armchair, and in his hand a book which he was not reading.
He was dressed, according to his wont, like an incroyable, and resembled an antique portrait by Garat.
This would have made people run after him in the street, had not his daughter covered him up, whenever he went out, in a vast bishop’s wadded cloak, which concealed his attire.
At home, he never wore a dressing gown, except when he rose and retired.
“It gives one a look of age,” said he.
Father Gillenormand was thinking of Marius lovingly and bitterly; and, as usual, bitterness predominated.
His tenderness once soured always ended by boiling and turning to indignation.
He had reached the point where a man tries to make up his mind and to accept that which rends his heart.
He was explaining to himself that there was no longer any reason why Marius should return, that if he intended to return, he should have done it long ago, that he must renounce the idea.
He was trying to accustom himself to the thought that all was over, and that he should die without having beheld “that gentleman” again.
But his whole nature revolted; his aged paternity would not consent to this.
“Well!” said he,—this was his doleful refrain,—“he will not return!”
His bald head had fallen upon his breast, and he fixed a melancholy and irritated gaze upon the ashes on his hearth.
In the very midst of his reverie, his old servant Basque entered, and inquired:—
“Can Monsieur receive M. Marius?”
The old man sat up erect, pallid, and like a corpse which rises under the influence of a galvanic shock.
All his blood had retreated to his heart.
He stammered:—
“M. Marius what?”
“I don’t know,” replied Basque, intimidated and put out of countenance by his master’s air; “I have not seen him.