I remember that once, in front of the Hercules Farnese, people formed a circle to admire him and marvel at him, he was so handsome, was that child!
He had a head such as you see in pictures.
I talked in a deep voice, and I frightened him with my cane, but he knew very well that it was only to make him laugh.
In the morning, when he entered my room, I grumbled, but he was like the sunlight to me, all the same.
One cannot defend oneself against those brats.
They take hold of you, they hold you fast, they never let you go again.
The truth is, that there never was a cupid like that child.
Now, what can you say for your Lafayettes, your Benjamin Constants, and your Tirecuir de Corcelles who have killed him?
This cannot be allowed to pass in this fashion.”
He approached Marius, who still lay livid and motionless, and to whom the physician had returned, and began once more to wring his hands.
The old man’s pallid lips moved as though mechanically, and permitted the passage of words that were barely audible, like breaths in the death agony:
“Ah! heartless lad!
Ah! clubbist!
Ah! wretch!
Ah! Septembrist!”
Reproaches in the low voice of an agonizing man, addressed to a corpse.
Little by little, as it is always indispensable that internal eruptions should come to the light, the sequence of words returned, but the grandfather appeared no longer to have the strength to utter them, his voice was so weak, and extinct, that it seemed to come from the other side of an abyss:
“It is all the same to me, I am going to die too, that I am.
And to think that there is not a hussy in Paris who would not have been delighted to make this wretch happy!
A scamp who, instead of amusing himself and enjoying life, went off to fight and get himself shot down like a brute!
And for whom? Why?
For the Republic!
Instead of going to dance at the Chaumiere, as it is the duty of young folks to do!
What’s the use of being twenty years old?
The Republic, a cursed pretty folly!
Poor mothers, beget fine boys, do!
Come, he is dead.
That will make two funerals under the same carriage gate.
So you have got yourself arranged like this for the sake of General Lamarque’s handsome eyes!
What had that General Lamarque done to you?
A slasher! A chatter-box!
To get oneself killed for a dead man!
If that isn’t enough to drive any one mad!
Just think of it!
At twenty!
And without so much as turning his head to see whether he was not leaving something behind him!
That’s the way poor, good old fellows are forced to die alone, nowadays.
Perish in your corner, owl!
Well, after all, so much the better, that is what I was hoping for, this will kill me on the spot.
I am too old, I am a hundred years old, I am a hundred thousand years old, I ought, by rights, to have been dead long ago.
This blow puts an end to it.
So all is over, what happiness!
What is the good of making him inhale ammonia and all that parcel of drugs?
You are wasting your trouble, you fool of a doctor!
Come, he’s dead, completely dead.
I know all about it, I am dead myself too.
He hasn’t done things by half.
Yes, this age is infamous, infamous and that’s what I think of you, of your ideas, of your systems, of your masters, of your oracles, of your doctors, of your scape-graces of writers, of your rascally philosophers, and of all the revolutions which, for the last sixty years, have been frightening the flocks of crows in the Tuileries!
But you were pitiless in getting yourself killed like this, I shall not even grieve over your death, do you understand, you assassin?”
At that moment, Marius slowly opened his eyes, and his glance, still dimmed by lethargic wonder, rested on M. Gillenormand.