Poverty a Good Neighbor for Misery — Les Misérables

Marius liked this candid old man who saw himself falling into indigence and came to feel astonishment without being made melancholy by it. He met Courfeyrac and sought out Mabeuf, but rarely: twice a month at most. His pleasure consisted in taking long walks alone on the outer boulevards, or in the Champs-de-Mars, or in the least frequented alleys of the Luxembourg. He often spent half a day gazing at a market garden, the beds of lettuce, the chickens on the dung-heap, the horse turning the water-wheel. Passers-by stared at him. Some thought his attire suspicious and his mien sinister. He was only a poor young man dreaming in an objectless way. It was during one of those strolls that he had hit upon the Gorbeau house, and, tempted by its isolation and its cheapness, had taken up his abode there. He was known there only under the name of Marius. Some of his father's old generals or old comrades invited him when they learned about him. He did not refuse. They afforded opportunities of talking about his father. On such evenings he put on his new coat. He never went except on days when it was freezing cold, because he could not afford a carriage, and he did not wish to arrive with boots otherwise than like mirrors. He said sometimes, without bitterness, that men are so made that in a drawing-room you may be soiled everywhere except on your shoes. In order to ensure a good reception there, only one irreproachable thing is asked of you. Your conscience? No, your boots.

All passions except those of the heart are dissipated by reverie. Marius's political fevers vanished thus. The Revolution of 1830 assisted in the process, by satisfying and calming him. He remained the same, setting aside his fits of wrath. He still held the same opinions. Only, they had been tempered. To speak accurately, he had no longer any opinions: he had sympathies. To what party did he belong? To the party of humanity. Out of humanity he chose France; out of the Nation he chose the people; out of the people he chose the woman. Now he preferred an idea to a deed, a poet to a hero, and he admired a book like Job more than an event like Marengo. After a day spent in meditation, returning in the evening through the boulevards, catching a glimpse through the branches of the fathomless space beyond, all that which is only human seemed very pretty indeed to him. He thought that he had arrived at the truth of life and of human philosophy, and he had ended by gazing at nothing but heaven. This did not prevent him from multiplying his plans, his combinations, his scaffoldings, his projects for the future. An eye which could have cast a glance into his interior would have been dazzled with the purity of that soul. We judge a man much more surely according to what he dreams than according to what he thinks. There is will in thought; there is none in dreams. Our chimaeras are the things which most resemble us. Each one of us dreams of the unknown and the impossible in accordance with his nature.

Towards the middle of this year 1831, the old woman who waited on Marius told him that his neighbours, the wretched Jondrette family, had been turned out of doors. Marius, who passed nearly the whole of his days out of the house, hardly knew that he had any neighbours. Why are they turned out? Because they do not pay their rent; they owe for two quarters. How much is it? Twenty francs. Marius had thirty francs saved up in a drawer. Here, he said to the old woman. Take these twenty-five francs. Pay for the poor people and give them five francs, and do not tell them that it was I.