Marius Poor — Les Misérables

It is the same with wretchedness as with everything else. It ends by becoming bearable. It finally assumes a form and adjusts itself. One vegetates, that is to say one develops in a certain meagre fashion, which is however sufficient for life. Marius had passed the worst straits. By dint of toil, perseverance, courage, and will, he had managed to draw from his work about seven hundred francs a year. He had learned German and English. Thanks to Courfeyrac, who had put him in communication with his friend the publisher, he filled the modest post of utility man in the literature of the house: prospectuses, translations, annotated editions, biographies; net product, year in and year out, seven hundred francs. He lived on it. Not so badly.

He occupied in the Gorbeau house, for thirty francs a year, a den minus a fireplace, called a cabinet, which contained only the most indispensable furniture. He gave three francs a month to the old principal tenant to sweep his hole and bring him a little hot water, a fresh egg, and a penny roll. At six o'clock he descended the Rue Saint-Jacques to dine at Rousseau's. He ate no soup. A six-sou plate of meat, vegetables for three, a three-sou dessert, as much bread as he wished for three sous, and water for wine. When he paid, he gave a sou to the waiter, and Madam Rousseau gave him a smile. For sixteen sous he had a smile and a dinner. Breakfast four sous, dinner sixteen: twenty sous a day, three hundred and sixty-five francs a year. Add rent, the old woman, clothing, linen, washing: the whole did not exceed six hundred and fifty francs. He was rich. He sometimes lent ten francs to a friend. Courfeyrac had once been able to borrow sixty of him. As far as fire was concerned, having no fireplace, he had simplified matters. It had required years to attain this flourishing condition. He had endured everything except contract debts. A debt was, to him, the beginning of slavery. A creditor is worse than a master; for the master possesses only your person, a creditor possesses your dignity and can administer to it a box on the ear. Rather than borrow, he went without food. He had passed many a day fasting. His face wore a sort of severe flush. He was timid even to rudeness. During all these trials he had felt himself uplifted by a secret force. The soul aids the body, and at certain moments raises it. It is the only bird which bears up its own cage.

Besides his father's name, another name was graven in Marius's heart: Thenardier. He surrounded with a sort of aureole the sergeant who had saved the colonel amid the bullets of Waterloo. It was a worship in two steps, with the grand altar for the colonel and the lesser one for Thenardier. What redoubled the tenderness was the distress into which Thenardier had fallen. Marius had learned at Montfermeil of the ruin of the unfortunate inn-keeper. He had beaten the whole country for three years, expending the little money he had laid by. No one had been able to give him any news. Thenardier was supposed to have gone abroad. His creditors had also sought him, with less love than Marius, and had not laid their hands on him. It was the only debt left him by the colonel, and Marius made it a matter of honour to pay it. When my father lay dying, Thenardier found him amid the smoke and bore him off, and yet he owed him nothing; and I, who owe so much, cannot join him in this shadow. Oh, I will find him. To find Thenardier he would have given one of his arms; to rescue him, all his blood. To say to him: You do not know me; well, I do know you. Here I am. Dispose of me. This was Marius's sweetest and most magnificent dream.