MARIUS ATTACKS.
One day M. Gillenormand, while his daughter was arranging the phials and cups on the marble slab of the sideboard, leaned over Marius, and said in his most tender accent,—
"Look you, my little Marius, in your place I would rather eat meat than fish; a fried sole is excellent at the beginning of a convalescence; but a good cutlet is necessary to put the patient on his legs."
Marius, whose strength had nearly quite returned, sat up, rested his two clenched fists on his sheet, looked his grandfather in the face, assumed a terrible air, and said,—
"That induces me to say one thing to you."
"What is it?"
"That I wish to marry."
"Foreseen," said the grandfather, bursting into a laugh.
"How foreseen?"
"Yes, foreseen. You shall have your little maid."
Marius, stupefied and dazzled, trembled in all his limbs, and M. Gillenormand continued,—
"Yes, you shall have the pretty little dear. She comes every day in the form of an old gentleman to ask after you. Ever since you have been wounded she has spent her time in crying and making lint. I made inquiries; she lives at No. 7, Rue de l'Homme Armé. Ah, there we are! Ah, you want her, do you? Well, you shall have her. You're tricked this time; you had made your little plot, and had said to yourself, 'I will tell it point-blank to that grandfather, that mummy of the Regency and the Directory, that old beau, that Dorante who has become Géronte; he has had his frolics too, and his amourettes, and his grisettes, and his Cosettes; he has had his fling, he has had his wings, and he has eaten the bread of spring; he must surely remember it, we shall see. Battle!' Ah, you take the cock-chafer by the horns; very good. I offer you a cutlet, and you answer me, 'By the bye, I wish to marry,' By Jupiter! Here's a transition! Ah, you made up your mind for a quarrel, but you did not know that I was an old coward. What do you say to that? You are done; you did not expect to find your grandfather more stupid than yourself. You have lost the speech you intended to make me, master lawyer, and that is annoying. Well, all the worse, rage away; I do what you want, and that stops you, stupid! Listen! I have made my inquiries, for I too am cunning; she is charming, she is virtuous; the Lancer does not speak the truth, she made heaps of lint. She is a jewel; she adores you; if you had died there would have been three of us, and her coffin would have accompanied mine. I had the idea as soon as you were better of planting her there by your bedside; but it is only in romances that girls are introduced to the beds of handsome young wounded men in whom they take an interest. That would not do, for what would your aunt say? You were quite naked three parts of the time, sir; ask Nicolette, who never left you for a moment, whether it were possible for a female to be here? And then, what would the doctor have said? for a pretty girl does not cure a fever. Well, say no more about it; it is settled and done; take her. Such is my fury. Look you, I saw that you did not love me, and I said, 'What can I do to make that animal love me?' I said, 'Stay, I have my little Cosette ready to hand. I will give her to him, and then he must love me a little, or tell me the reason why.' Ah! you believed that the old man would storm, talk big, cry no, and lift his cane against all this dawn. Not at all. Cosette, very good; love, very good. I ask for nothing better; take the trouble, sir, to marry; be happy, my beloved child!"
After saying this the old man burst into sobs. He took Marius's head and pressed it to his old bosom, and both began weeping. That is one of the forms of supreme happiness.
"My father!" Marius exclaimed.
"Ah, you love me, then!" the old man said.
There was an ineffable moment; they were choking and could not speak. At length the old man stammered,—
"Come! the stopper is taken out of him; he called me father."
Marius disengaged his head from his grandfather's arms, and said gently,—
"Now that I am better, father, I fancy I could see her."
"Foreseen, too; you will see her to-morrow."
"Father?"
"Well, what?"
"Why not to-day?"
"Well, to-day; done for to-day. You have called me father thrice, and it's worth that. I will see about it, and she shall be brought here. Foreseen, I tell you. That has already been put in verse, and it is the denouement of André Chénier's elegy, the 'Jeune Malade,'—André Chénier, who was butchered by the scound—by the giants of '93."
M. Gillenormand fancied he could see a slight frown on Marius's face, though, truth to tell, he was not listening, as he had flown away into ecstasy, and was thinking much more of Cosette than of 1793. The grandfather, trembling at haying introduced André Chénier so inopportunely, hurriedly continued,—
"Butchered is not the word. The fact is that the great revolutionary geniuses who were not wicked, that is incontestable, who were heroes, Pardi, found that André Chénier was slightly in their way, and they had him guillo—that is to say, these great men on the 7th Thermidor, in the interest of the public safety, begged André Chénier to be kind enough to go—"
M. Gillenormand, garroted by his own sentence, could not continue. Unable to terminate it or retract it, the old man rushed, with all the speed which his age allowed, out of the bed-room, shut the door after him, and purple, choking, and foaming, with his eyes out of his head, found himself nose to nose with honest Basque, who was cleaning boots in the anteroom. He seized Basque by the collar and furiously shouted into his face, "By the hundred thousand Javottes of the devil, those brigands assassinated him!"
"Whom, sir?"
"André Chénier."
"Yes, sir," said the horrified Basque,