Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the one hundred seventy-first chapter of Les Miserables.
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Les Miserables by Victor Hugo chapter four end of the brigand the conclusion of Marius classical studies coincided with Monsieur Gillenormand's departure from society.
The old man bade farewell to the Faubourg Saint Germain and to Madame de th Salon, and established himself in the Marais in his house of the rue des flot du Calverts.
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Marius, said, Monsieur Gillenormand, you will set out for Vernon tomorrow. Why, said Marius, to see your father. Marius was seized with a trembling fit.
He had thought of everything except this, that he should one day be called upon to see his father. Nothing could be more unexpected, more surprising, and, let us admit it, more disagreeable. To him it was forcing estrangement and reconciliation.
It was not an affliction, but it was an unpleasant duty.
Marius, in addition to his motives of political antipathy, was convinced that his father, the slasher, as Monsieur de Lenormand called him on his amiable days, did not love him. This was evident since he had abandoned him to others, feeling that he was not beloved, he did not love. Nothing is more simple, he said to himself.
He was so astounded that he did not question Monsieur de Lenormand. The grandfather resumed, it appears that he is ill. He demands your presence. And after a pause he added, set out tomorrow morning.
ves the cour des Fontaines at:
Marius might have set out that very evening and have been with his father on the following morning. A diligence from the rue de Beaulieu took the trip to Rouen by night at that date, and passed through Vernon.
Neither Marius nor Monsieur de la Normand thought of making inquiries about it. The next day, at twilight, Marius reached Vernon. People were just beginning to light their candles.
He asked the first person whom he met for Monsieur Pontmercy's house, for in his own mind he agreed with the restoration and, like it, did not recognize his father's claim to the title of either colonel or baron. The house was pointed out to him. He rang. A woman with a little lamp in her hand opened the door. Monsieur Pontmercy said Marius.
The woman remained motionless. Is this his house? Demanded Marius. The woman nodded affirmatively. Can I speak with him? The woman shook her head. But im his son, persisted Marius.
Hes expecting me. He no longer expects you, said the woman. Then he perceived that she was weeping. She pointed to the door of a room on the ground floor.
He entered in that room, which was lighted by a tallow candle, standing on the chimney piece. There were three men, one standing erect, another kneeling, and one lying at full length on the floor in his shirt.
The one on the floor was the colonel. The other two were the doctor and the priest, who was engaged in prayer.
The colonel had been attacked by brain fever three days previously, as he had a foreboding of evil at the very beginning of his illness, he had written to Monsieur de Lenormand to demand his son. The malady had grown worse. On the very evening of Marius arrival at Vernon, the colonel had had an attack of delirium.
He had risen from his bed in spite of the servants efforts to prevent him crying. My son is not coming. I shall go to meet him. Then he ran out of his room and fell prostrate on the floor of the antechamber. He had just expired.
The doctor had been summoned. And the cure? The doctor had arrived too late. The sun had also arrived too late.
By the dim light of the candle, a large tear could be distinguished on the pale and prostrate colonel's cheek where it had trickled from his dead eye. The eye was extinguished, but the tear was not yet dry. That tear was his son's delay.
Marius gazed upon that man whom he beheld for the first time on that venerable and manly face, on those open eyes which saw not on those white locks those robust limbs on which here and there brown lines marking sword thrusts and a sort of red stars which indicated bullet holes were visible. He contemplated that gigantic seer which stamped heroism on that countenance upon which God had imprinted goodness.
He reflected that this man was his father and that this man was dead. And a chill ran over him.
The sorrow which he felt was the sorrow which he would have felt in the presence of any other man whom he had chanced to behold, stretched out in death. Anguish, poignant anguish was in that chamber. The servant woman was lamenting in a corner. Curie was praying, and his sobs were audible.
The doctor was wiping his eyes. The corpse itself was weeping. The doctor, the priest and the woman gazed at Marius in the midst of their affliction, without uttering a word.
He was a stranger there. Marius, who was far too little affected, felt ashamed and embarrassed at his own attitude.
He held his hat in his hand and he dropped it on the floor in order to produce the impression that grief had deprived him of the strength to hold it. At the same time, he experienced remorse, and he despised himself for behaving in this manner. But was it his fault he did not love his father?
Why should he? The colonel had left nothing. The sale of big furniture barely paid the expenses of his burial.
The servant found a scrap of paper which she handed to Marius. It contained the following in the colonel's handwriting. For my son, the emperor made me a baron on the battlefield of Waterloo.
Since the restoration disputes my right to this title which I purchased with my blood, my son shall take it and bear it, that he will be worthy of it as a matter of course. Below, the colonel had added, at that same battle of Waterloo, a sergeant saved my life. The man's name was Thenardiere.
I think that he has recently been keeping a little inn in a village in the neighborhood of Paris, at Chelles or Montfermeil. If my son meets him, he will do all the good he can.
To Thenardier, Marius took this paper and preserved it, not out of duty to his father, but because of that vague respect for death which is always imperious in the heart of man. Nothing remained of the colonel. Monsieur Julian Ormond had his sword and uniform sold to an old clothes dealer.
The neighbors devastated the garden and pillaged the rare flowers. The other plants turned to nettles and weeds and died. Marius remained only 48 hours at Vernon.
After the interment, he returned to Paris and applied himself again to his law studies, with no more thought of his father than if the latter had never lived. In two days, the colonel was buried, and in three, forgotten Marius wore crepe on his cap. That was all.
Thank you for joining Byte at a time books today while we wrote a bite of one of your favorite classics. Again, my name is Brie Carlisle, and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite. Ole miserable.
