Basque and the porter had carried Marius into the drawing-room. The doctor who had been sent for had hastened thither. The aunt had risen. She went and came, in affright, wringing her hands, capable of nothing but saying that it was not possible, and that everything would be covered with blood. When her first horror had passed off, a certain philosophy of the situation took form: It was bound to end in this way. She did not go so far as I told you so. At the physician's orders a camp bed was prepared. The doctor examined Marius. The pulse was still beating. There was no very deep wound on the breast. The blood on the lips proceeded from the nostrils. He had him placed flat on the bed, without a pillow, the head a trifle lower, the bust bare. The aunt, on perceiving that they were undressing him, withdrew and set herself to telling her beads. A bullet, deadened by the pocket-book, had turned aside and made the tour of the ribs. The long underground journey had completed the dislocation of the broken collar-bone. The arms had been slashed. Not a single scar disfigured the face, but the head was fairly covered with cuts, and it could not yet be decided whether they would stop short or attack the brain. A grave symptom was the swoon. From the waist down, the barricade had protected him. Basque and Nicolette tore up linen. The doctor arrested the bleeding with wadding. A full pail was reddened in an instant. The doctor seemed to be pondering sadly, and from time to time he made a negative sign with his head. A bad sign for the sick man are these mysterious dialogues of the doctor with himself.
At the moment when the doctor was wiping Marius's face, a door opened at the end of the drawing-room, and a long, pallid figure made its appearance. This was the grandfather. The revolt had, for the past two days, deeply agitated him. He had gone to bed very early, recommending that everything should be well barred, and he had fallen into a doze through sheer fatigue. The noise had awakened him. He stood astonished on the threshold, wrapped in a white dressing-gown as destitute of folds as a winding-sheet, with the air of a phantom who is gazing into a tomb. He saw the bed, and on the mattress that young man, bleeding, white with a waxen whiteness, stripped to the waist, slashed all over with crimson wounds. He trembled from head to foot, his face assumed the earthy angles of a skull, and he murmured: Marius. Basque began to say that the young man had just been brought back from the barricade. He is dead, cried the old man. The rascal. Then a sort of sepulchral transformation straightened up this centenarian as erect as a young man. He is dead, is he not. The doctor remained silent. The grandfather wrung his hands with an outburst of terrible laughter. He has got himself killed on the barricades. Out of hatred to me. He did that to spite me. He went to the window, threw it wide open, and talked into the night: the room arranged, the child's portrait at the head of the bed, the years of recalling, the fireside with hands on knees. He knew well that he had only to come back and say it is I. And he went to the barricades out of malice. The doctor took his arm. The grandfather said that he was composed, that he was a man, that one does not fly into a rage against a dead man. Then the childhood returned: the shovel in the garden, the holes stopped with a cane, the rosy blond boy, the bird-like speech, the sunlight in the morning room. Now, what can you say for those who have killed him. He approached Marius and began once more to wring his hands. Reproaches in the low voice of an agonizing man, addressed to a corpse. Little by little the voice came from the other side of an abyss. He is going to die too. Two funerals under the same carriage gate. What is the good of ammonia. He is dead, completely dead. I am dead myself too. I shall not even grieve over your death, do you understand, you assassin.
At that moment, Marius slowly opened his eyes, and his glance, still dimmed by lethargic wonder, rested on the grandfather. Marius, cried the old man. Marius. My little Marius. My child. My well-beloved son. You open your eyes, you gaze upon me, you are alive, thanks. And he fell fainting.
