Marble against Granite — Les Misérables

It was hither that Marius had come every time the old man had said he is sleeping out. Lieutenant Théodule, put out of countenance by a sepulchre, retreated with something like a military salute and decided not to write at all. Nothing would have come of it if the scene at Vernon had not had an almost immediate counter-shock at Paris. Marius returned on the third day, wearied by two nights in the diligence, threw off his travelling-coat and the black ribbon, and went to the bath. Gillenormand, who had risen betimes, climbed toward the attic to embrace him and to find out where he had been. The youth had taken less time to descend than the old man to ascend. The bed had not been disturbed. On it lay the great-coat and the black ribbon. I like this better, said the old man.

He made a triumphant entrance into the salon, coat in one hand, ribbon in the other. Victory! We are about to penetrate the mystery! I have the portrait! A case of black shagreen hung from the ribbon. He gazed at it without opening it, with the rapture and wrath of a hungry man watching a dinner that is not for him. Young men have such bad taste nowadays. The case opened by a spring. They found nothing but a carefully folded paper. A billet-doux, said the old man, bursting with laughter. They unfolded it and read the colonel's lines: the Emperor had made him a Baron at Waterloo; the son should take the title. They felt chilled as by the breath of a death's-head. It is the slasher's handwriting, said Gillenormand in a low voice. A little oblong packet in blue paper fell from the coat. It contained Marius's hundred cards. The old man read: Le Baron Marius Pontmercy. He rang for Nicolette, flung ribbon, case, and coat on the floor, and said, Carry those duds away. A full hour passed in the most profound silence, the old man and the old spinster seated with their backs to each other, thinking, in all probability, the same things.

Marius entered. Even before he had crossed the threshold he saw his grandfather holding one of his cards. Well! so you are a baron now. What is the meaning of this? It means that I am the son of my father. I am your father, said the old man harshly. Marius, with downcast eyes, answered that his father had been a humble and heroic man who served the Republic and France, who received twenty wounds, who died forgotten, and whose only mistake was to love too fondly two ingrates, his country and myself. At the word republic the old Royalist sprang to his feet and went from dull to red to purple to flame-coloured. Abominable child! There never was anything but scoundrels among those men. You are no more a baron than my slipper is. All who served Buonaparte were brigands. They fled at Waterloo. Whether Monsieur your father comes in that category I do not know. Marius quivered. His father had been trampled under foot by his grandfather. How was he to avenge the one without outraging the other? On the one hand a sacred grave, on the other hoary locks. He cried in a voice of thunder: Down with the Bourbons, and that great hog of a Louis the Eighteenth! The old man, who had been crimson, turned whiter than his hair. He bowed to a bust of the Duc de Berry, paced the polished floor like a stone statue, and said to his daughter, almost calm: A baron like this gentleman, and a bourgeois like myself cannot remain under the same roof. Then, pallid, trembling, terrible, he extended his arm and shouted, Be off! Marius left the house. On the following day the old man told his daughter to send sixty pistoles every six months to that blood-drinker, and never to mention his name. Nicolette, carrying the duds upstairs, let the black case fall on the dark attic staircase. It could not afterwards be found. Marius was convinced the old man had flung his father's testament in the fire. He knew the lines by heart. The paper, the writing, that sacred relic, was his very heart. He went forth with thirty francs, his watch, and a few clothes, and directed a hackney-coach at hap-hazard towards the Latin quarter. What was to become of Marius?