Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the one hundred seventy-fifth chapter of Les Miserables.

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Today well be continuing. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo chapter eight marble against granite.

It was hither that Marius had come on the first occasion of his absenting himself from Paris. It was hither that he had come every time that Monsieur de Lenormand had said, he is sleeping out.

Lieutenant Theodol was absolutely put out of his countenance by this unexpected encounter with a sepulchre.

He experienced a singular and disagreeable sensation which he was incapable of analyzing, and which was composed of respect for the tomb mingled with respect for the colonel. He retreated, leaving Marius alone in the cemetery, and there was discipline in this retreat.

Death appeared to him with large epaulets, and he almost made the military salute to him. Not knowing what to write to his aunt, he decided not to write at all.

And it is probable that nothing would have resulted from the discovery made by Theodule as to the love affairs of Marius, if by one of those mysterious arrangements which are so frequent in chance. The scene at Vernon had not had an almost immediate countershock at Paris.

Marius returned from Vernon on the third day in the middle of the morning, descended at his grandfathers door, and, wearied by the two nights spent in the diligence and feeling the need of repairing his loss of sleep by an hour at the swimming school, he mounted rapidly to his chamber, took merely time enough to throw off his traveling coat and the black ribbon which he wore around his neck, and went off to the bath. M.

De Lenormand, who had risen betimes like all old men in good health, had heard his entrance and had made haste to climb as quickly as his old legs, permitted the stairs to the upper story where Marius lived, in order to embrace him and to question him while doing so, and to find out where he had been. But the youth had taken less time to descend than the old man had to ascend.

And when Father Jillianormand entered the attic, Marius was no longer there. The bed had not been disturbed, and on the bed lay outspread, but not defiantly. The great coat and the black ribbon.

I like this better, said Monsieur Gillenormand, and a moment later he made his entrance into the salon, where Mademoiselle Gillenormand was already seated, busily embroidering her cartwheels. The entrance was a triumphant one. M. De Lenormand held in one hand the greatcoat and in the other the neck ribbon, and exclaimed victory.

Were about to penetrate the mystery. We are going to learn the most minute details. We are going to lay our finger on the debaucheries of our sly friend. Here we have the romance itself.

I have the portrait.

In fact, a case of black shagreen, resembling a medallion portrait, was suspended from the ribbon.

The old man took this case and gazed at it for some time without opening it, with that air of enjoyment, rapture, and wrath with which a poor hungry fellow beholds an admirable dinner, which is not for him pass under his very nose.

For this evidently is a portrait. I know about such things that is worn tenderly on the heart.

How stupid they are.

Some abominable fright that will make us shudder. Probably young men have such bad taste nowadays.

Let us see, Father, said the old spinster. The case opened by the pressure of a spring. They found in it nothing but a carefully folded paper.

From the same to the same, said.

Monsieur Gillenormand, bursting with laughter.

I know what it is. A billydew.

Ah, let us read it, said the aunt. Then she put on her spectacles. They unfolded the paper and read. As 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 is a matter of course. The feelings of father and daughter cannot be described.

They felt chilled, as by the breath of a deaths head. They did not exchange a word. Only Monsieur Gelanorman said in a low voice, as though speaking to himself, it.

Is the slashers handwriting.

The aunt examined the paper, turned it about in all directions, then put it back in its case. At the same moment a little oblong packet enveloped in blue paper fell from one of the pockets of the greatcoat.

Mademoiselle Gillenormand picked it up and unfolded the blue paper. It contained Marius hundred cards. She handed one of them to Monsieur Gillenormand, who read Le baron Marius Pontmercy. The old man rang the bell.

Nicolette came. Monsieur de Lenormand took the ribbon, the case and the coat, flung them all on the floor in the middle of the room, and said, carry those duds away.

A full hour passed in the most profound silence.

The old man and the old spinster had seated themselves with their backs to each other and were thinking, each on his own account, the same things, in all probability, at the expiration of this hour. Aunt Jella Norman said a pretty state of things. A few moments later Marius made his appearance. He entered even before he had crossed the threshold.

He saw his grandfather holding one of his own cards in his hand, and on catching sight of him, the latter exclaimed with his air of bourgois and grinning superiority, which was something crushing.

Well, well, well. So you are a baron now. I present you my compliments. What is the meaning of this?

Marius reddened slightly and replied, it means that im the son of my father. M. De Lenormand ceased to laugh and.

Said harshly, I am your father.

My father, retorted Marius, with downcast eyes and a severe air, was a humble and heroic man who served the republic in France gloriously, who was great in the greatest history that men have ever made, who lived in a bivouac for a quarter of a century beneath grapeshot and bullets, in snow and mud by day, beneath rain at night, who captured two flags, who received 20 wounds, who died forgotten and abandoned, and who never committed but one mistake, which was to love two fondly to ingrates his country and myself. This was more than Monsieur Gillenormand could bear to hear. At the word republic he rose, or, to speak more correctly, he sprang to his feet.

Every word that Marius had just uttered produced on the visage of the old royalist the effect of the puffs of air from a forge upon a blazing brand. From a dull hue he had turned red from redhead, purple, and from purple flame colored.

Marius.

He cried.

Abominable child. I do not know what your father was. I do not wish to know. I know nothing about that and I do not know him.

But what I do know is that there never was anything but scoundrels among those men. They were all rascals, assassins, redcaps, thieves. I say all. I say all. I know not one. I say all. Do you hear me, Marius? See here.

You are no more a baron than my slipper is. They were all bandits in the service of Robespierre. All who served Bonaparte were brigands.

They were all traitors who betrayed, betrayed, betrayed their legitimate king. All cowards who fled before the Prussians and the English at Waterloo. That is what I do know.

Whether, monsieur, your father comes in that category, I do not know. I am sorry for it. So much the worse. Your humble servant.

In his turn, it was Marius who was the firebrand, and Monsieur Gillenormand who was the bellows. Marius quivered in every limb. He did not know what would happen next. His brain was on fire.

He was the priest who beholds all his sacred wafers cast to the winds. The fakir who beholds a passerby spit upon his idol. It could not be that such things had been uttered in his presence. What was he to do?

His father had just been trampled underfoot. And stamped upon in his presence. But by whom? By his grandfather. How was he to avenge the one without outraging the other?

It was impossible for him to insult his grandfather, and it was equally impossible for him to leave his father unavenged. On the one hand was a sacred grave. On the other, horry locks.

He stood there for several moments, staggering, as though intoxicated, with all this whirlwind dashing through his head.

Then he raised his eyes, gazed fixedly at his grandfather, and cried in a voice of thunder, down with the bourbons and that great hog of a Louis XVIII. Louis XVIII had been dead for four years, but it was all the same to him. The old man, who had been crimson turned whiter than his hair.

He wheeled round towards a burst of Monsieur du luc de Berry, which stood on the chimney piece and made a profound bow with a sort of peculiar majesty.

Then he paced twice, slowly and in silence, from the fireplace to the window and from the window to the fireplace, traversing the whole length of the room and making the polished floor creak, as though he had been a stone statue.

Walking on his second turn, he bent over his daughter, who was watching this encounter with the stupefied air of an antiquated lamb, and said to her with a smile that was almost a baron.

Like this gentleman, and a bourgois like myself cannot remain under the same roof.

And drawing himself up all at once, pallid, trembling, terrible, with his brow rendered more lofty by the terrible radiance of wrath, he extended his arm towards Marius.

And shouted to him, be off.

Marius left the house. On the following day, M. De Lenormand said to his daughter, you will send.

60 pistoles every six months to that blood drinker, and you will never mention.

His name to me.

Having an immense reserve fund of wrath to get rid of, and not knowing what to do with it, he continued to address his daughter as you instead of thou. For the next three months, Marius, on his side, had gone forth in indignation.

There was one circumstance which, it must be admitted, aggravated as exasperation. There are always petty fatalities of the sort which complicate domestic dramas.

They augment the grievances in such cases, although in reality the wrongs are not increased by them.

While carrying Mariuss duds precipitately to his chamber, at his grandfathers command, Nicolette had inadvertently let fall, probably on the attic staircase, which was dark, that medallion of black shagreen which contained the paper penned by the colonel. Neither paper nor case could afterwards be found. Marius was convinced that Monsieur de Lenormand.

From that day forth, he never alluded to him otherwise, had flung his father's testament in the fire.

He knew by heart the few lines which the colonel had written, and consequently, nothing was lost but the paper, the writing, that sacred relic, all that was his very heart. What had been done with it? Marius had taken his departure without saying whither he was going and without knowing where.

With 30 francs, his watch and a few clothes and a handbag, he had entered a hackney coach, had engaged it by the hour, and had directed his course at haphazard towards the latin quarter. What was to become of Marius? Thank you for joining bite at a time books today while we read 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 of le miserable.