Res Angusta — Les Misérables

That evening left Marius profoundly shaken, with a melancholy shadow in his soul. He felt what the earth may feel when it is torn open for grain: only the wound; the quiver of the germ arrives later. He had but just acquired a faith; must he then reject it already? He declared that he would not doubt, and he began to doubt in spite of himself. To stand between two religions, from one of which you have not yet emerged and another into which you have not yet entered, is intolerable. Twilight is pleasing only to bat-like souls. He feared, after so many steps toward his father, to take a step that would estrange him. He was in accord neither with his grandfather nor with his friends: daring in the eyes of the one, behind the times in the eyes of the others, doubly isolated on the side of age and on the side of youth. He ceased to go to the Café Musain.

In the troubled state of his conscience he no longer thought of certain serious sides of existence. The realities of life elbowed him abruptly. One morning the proprietor of the hotel entered and said that Courfeyrac had answered for him, but that he must have his money. Marius told Courfeyrac what it had not occurred to him to relate: he was the same as alone in the world and had no relatives. Fifteen francs. A gold watch. Never a loan. A clothes-dealer paid twenty francs for the cast-off garments. A watchmaker bought the watch for forty-five. With my fifteen francs, that makes eighty, said Marius. And the hotel bill? He had forgotten that. It amounted to seventy francs, to be paid on the spot. I have ten francs left. You will eat up five while you are learning English, and five while learning German, said Courfeyrac.

In the meantime Aunt Gillenormand, a rather good-hearted person at bottom in difficulties, hunted up his abode. One morning, on his return from the law-school, Marius found a letter from his aunt and the sixty pistoles, six hundred francs in gold, in a sealed box. He sent back the thirty louis with a respectful letter stating that he had sufficient means of subsistence. At that moment he had three francs left. His aunt did not inform the grandfather of the refusal, for fear of exasperating him. Besides, had he not said: Let me never hear the name of that blood-drinker again? Marius left the hotel de la Porte Saint-Jacques. He did not wish to run in debt there.