The Consequences of Having Met a Warden — Les Misérables

Marius was absent for three days, then he returned to Paris, went straight to the library of the law-school, and asked for the files of the Moniteur. He read the Moniteur, the histories of the Republic and the Empire, the Memorial of Saint Helena, the memoirs, the newspapers, the bulletins, the proclamations. He devoured everything. The first time he came across his father's name in the bulletins of the grand army, he had a fever for a week. He went to see the generals under whom Georges Pontmercy had served. Church-warden Mabeuf, whom he went to see again, told him about the life at Vernon, the colonel's retreat, his flowers, his solitude. Marius came to a full knowledge of that rare, sweet, and sublime man, that species of lion-lamb who had been his father. Occupied with this study, he hardly saw the Gillenormands. He appeared at meals, then he was not to be found. The old man smiled. He is just of the age for the girls. It was a passion, in fact. Marius was on the high road to adoring his father.

His ideas underwent an extraordinary change. Up to that time the Republic and the Empire had been to him only monstrous words: a guillotine in the twilight, a sword in the night. Where he had expected a chaos of shadows he beheld stars, and a sun arise, Napoleon. Little by little he contemplated these deeds without dizziness. He asserted in his conscience that all this had been good. He perceived that he had comprehended his country no more than he had comprehended his father. A voluntary night had obscured his eyes. Now he saw, and on the one hand he admired, while on the other he adored. He was filled with regret and remorse. All he had in his soul could now be said only to the tomb. He became more truly serious, more sure of his thought. He was conscious of a sort of natural enlargement which gave him two things that were new to him: his father and his country. From the rehabilitation of his father he passed to the rehabilitation of Napoleon, not without labour. The party of 1814 had made Bonaparte a fabulous monster. There was in him a headstrong little man who hated Napoleon. On reading the documents the veil was gradually rent. One night, alone in his little chamber near the roof, his candle burning, the window open, he was perusing the bulletins of the grand army. At intervals he beheld his father's name, always the name of the Emperor. It seemed to him that his father passed close to him like a breath. He thought he heard drums, cannon, trumpets. All at once he sprang to his feet, stretched both arms out of the window, gazed into the gloom, and exclaimed: Long live the Emperor!

From that moment the ogre and the usurper vanished. He went too far, as new converts do. Fanaticism for the sword took possession of him. He had turned squarely round. All these revolutions were accomplished without his family obtaining an inkling. When he had entirely shed his old ultra skin he went to an engraver and ordered a hundred cards bearing this name: Le Baron Marius Pontmercy. He put them in his pocket, because he did not know anyone. As he drew nearer to his father he receded from his grandfather. The bridge of shared opinions fell, and an abyss was formed. By dint of pity for his father, Marius had nearly arrived at aversion for his grandfather. Nothing of this was betrayed. He grew colder, laconic at meals, rare in the house. The old man never departed from his diagnosis: In love! I know all about it. On one brief trip he went to Montfermeil to seek Thenardier. The inn was closed, and no one knew what had become of him. They thought they had noticed that he wore something on his breast, under his shirt, attached to his neck by a black ribbon.