Part 212 (1/2)
Marius replied with embarra.s.sment:--
”Monsieur--”
M. Gillenormand would have liked to have Marius throw himself into his arms. He was displeased with Marius and with himself. He was conscious that he was brusque, and that Marius was cold. It caused the goodman unendurable and irritating anxiety to feel so tender and forlorn within, and only to be able to be hard outside. Bitterness returned. He interrupted Marius in a peevish tone:--
”Then why did you come?”
That ”then” signified: If you do not come to embrace me. Marius looked at his grandfather, whose pallor gave him a face of marble.
”Monsieur--”
”Have you come to beg my pardon? Do you acknowledge your faults?”
He thought he was putting Marius on the right road, and that ”the child”
would yield. Marius s.h.i.+vered; it was the denial of his father that was required of him; he dropped his eyes and replied:--
”No, sir.”
”Then,” exclaimed the old man impetuously, with a grief that was poignant and full of wrath, ”what do you want of me?”
Marius clasped his hands, advanced a step, and said in a feeble and trembling voice:--
”Sir, have pity on me.”
These words touched M. Gillenormand; uttered a little sooner, they would have rendered him tender, but they came too late. The grandfather rose; he supported himself with both hands on his cane; his lips were white, his brow wavered, but his lofty form towered above Marius as he bowed.
”Pity on you, sir! It is youth demanding pity of the old man of ninety-one! You are entering into life, I am leaving it; you go to the play, to b.a.l.l.s, to the cafe, to the billiard-hall; you have wit, you please the women, you are a handsome fellow; as for me, I spit on my brands in the heart of summer; you are rich with the only riches that are really such, I possess all the poverty of age; infirmity, isolation!
You have your thirty-two teeth, a good digestion, bright eyes, strength, appet.i.te, health, gayety, a forest of black hair; I have no longer even white hair, I have lost my teeth, I am losing my legs, I am losing my memory; there are three names of streets that I confound incessantly, the Rue Charlot, the Rue du Chaume, and the Rue Saint-Claude, that is what I have come to; you have before you the whole future, full of suns.h.i.+ne, and I am beginning to lose my sight, so far am I advancing into the night; you are in love, that is a matter of course, I am beloved by no one in all the world; and you ask pity of me! Parbleu!
Moliere forgot that. If that is the way you jest at the courthouse, Messieurs the lawyers, I sincerely compliment you. You are droll.”
And the octogenarian went on in a grave and angry voice:--
”Come, now, what do you want of me?”
”Sir,” said Marius, ”I know that my presence is displeasing to you, but I have come merely to ask one thing of you, and then I shall go away immediately.”
”You are a fool!” said the old man. ”Who said that you were to go away?”
This was the translation of the tender words which lay at the bottom of his heart:--
”Ask my pardon! Throw yourself on my neck!”
M. Gillenormand felt that Marius would leave him in a few moments, that his harsh reception had repelled the lad, that his hardness was driving him away; he said all this to himself, and it augmented his grief; and as his grief was straightway converted into wrath, it increased his harshness. He would have liked to have Marius understand, and Marius did not understand, which made the goodman furious.
He began again:--
”What! you deserted me, your grandfather, you left my house to go no one knows whither, you drove your aunt to despair, you went off, it is easily guessed, to lead a bachelor life; it's more convenient, to play the dandy, to come in at all hours, to amuse yourself; you have given me no signs of life, you have contracted debts without even telling me to pay them, you have become a smasher of windows and a bl.u.s.terer, and, at the end of four years, you come to me, and that is all you have to say to me!”
This violent fas.h.i.+on of driving a grandson to tenderness was productive only of silence on the part of Marius. M. Gillenormand folded his arms; a gesture which with him was peculiarly imperious, and apostrophized Marius bitterly:--